From yesterday's Portsmouth Daily Times (click
here for full story):
We are not attorneys.
We are not attorney spokespersons.
We don't play attorneys on TV.
We didn't even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
But we do have some free legal advice for the Mayor.
1. Anyone who knows anything about labor law and collective bargaining can tell you when a company or government administrator meets with employees' union officials, the parties are considered to be equals. You might think the boss is still in charge, even when meeting with Unions. But US labor law doesn't work that way.
Madam Mayor, when you meet with representatives of the city's unions, you are to meet as equals. It's a matter of fairness. After all, how can a Union fairly represent its members if the mayor gets to dictate how the meeting is ran, who gets to speak, and what is allowed to be said. That's why there are labor lawyers, national labor relations boards, and laws against so-called "unfair labor practices." As mayor, you should know it would be very difficult to discipline a union representative for anything he or she might say in such a meeting, especially for something as trivial as calling the mayor "ma'am" instead of "madam."
As mayor you cannot threaten union representatives, coerce them by threatening to discipline their supervisor for their actions, or try to have them removed from an area that is not your office. (The jury room is under the Court's jurisdiction.) A judge could considered these actions to be creating a hostile environment, as the fire fighters representative stated. Judges don't like hostile working environments.
2. You told the Times; “It doesn’t matter to them if I don’t have the money to address our declining neighborhoods’ housing stock and clean the city up. It doesn’t matter to them that we have sewage backing up in people’s homes, and we have a long-term control plan that we have to start implementing.”
It's really not the Fire Department's or Police Department's problem if there is sewage backing up in people's homes. If there are sewer problems or water problems, then water and sewer rates need to be raised accordingly or grant funding must be acquired or both. Fire and police are paid for from the general fund and the protection of the citizens shouldn't suffer because you don't have the guts to raise rates as required. (Jane, maybe when you and your financial advisor win your multi-million dollar lawsuits against the sewer system, you can both chip in some cash to fix those problems.)
3. Finally, Mayor, according to the folks at the meeting, you seemed to get especially angry when a police officer referred to you as "ma'am" rather than Madam Mayor. (We think he is just probably in the a habit of using that word when dealing with hysterical women.)
Madam Mayor, we suggest you get a dictionary. (Make sure you order it from Bihl's office supply.)
Any dictionary will tell you that "ma'am" is just a contraction of the word "madam." That means they are basically the same word. You aren't going to start telling employees they can say "do not" but they can't say "don't," are you? Are you going to outlaw contractions AND oxycontin?
"Madam Mayor" sounds a bit pretentious anyway. You don't want that. Let it go. You're not in Lexington anymore.
In fact, the Random House Dictionary says that "ma'am" is the proper term to use in addressing the Queen of England! You don't think you are more important than the Queen of England, do you?
