Clevelandurbannews.com, CLEVELAND, Ohio-The City of Cleveland has sued Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge Nancy Margaret Russo in the Ohio Supreme Court, seeking a writ of prohibition that compels or orders the judge to refrain from exercising jurisdiction or authority over a dispute between the Association of Cleveland Fire Fighters Local 93 I.A.F.F and the city over the action of fire chief Angelo Calvillo in changing the reporting times of select firefighters from 8:30 am to to 7 am without negotiating the action under the collective bargaining agreement.

The city says it wants the case before Russo dismissed claiming the common pleas court general division judges cannot substitute for the State Employment Relations Board (SERB) and has asked the state Supreme Court to preclude her from taking any further action in the case.

The city, which employs almost 8,100 regular full-time and part-time, approximately

900 seasonal employees, and a firefighters bargaining unit comprised of approximately 800 employees holding the ranks of firefighter through assistant chief, argues that the SERB has sole jurisdiction over the dispute per state collective bargaining law and that the common pleas court cannot exercise jurisdiction unless an administrative appeal from an order by SERB is filed.

In short, the city says the union's remedy relative to its position that the city did not negotiate the matter is at best, an unfair labor practice claim, which the union filed in January with SERB, one that is still pending.

The firefighters union, which filed the complaint before Russo in February and after the unfair labor practice claim was filed with SERB, is led by its president, Francis Lally, and the city are parties to a collective bargaining agreement which was to expire on March 31, 2019.

Russo has issued a temporary restraining order that prevents the city from implementing the work time changes slated to originally take effect Feb 11, 2019 until further review and the city is livid, particularly after the outspoken Russo, a common pleas judge of 22 years, said at a pretrial hearing that if the city's attorneys did not like her decision to "file a writ."

The judge is represented in the Ohio Supreme Court matter by the office of County Prosecutor Mike O'Malley, since Ohio common judges, per state law, are represented in such proceedings, whether a writ or an pretrial appeal, by associated county prosecutors, and regardless of any perceived conflict of interest.

Hence, the county prosecutor's office prosecutes defendants, a disproportionate number of whom are Black, and the judges that preside over their cases are represented by such prosecutors if they are sued by such defendants at the pretrial stages of the cases.

The vast majority of the city’s firefighters are assigned to 24-hour shifts where their schedules generally entail one day worked followed by two days off.

These fire suppression personnel start their shifts at 8:30 a.m.and end their shifts at

8:30 a.m. the following day.

The slated change in reporting to work from 8:30 am to 7 am, determined by management in isolation of union input, is absurd, and illegal under collective bargaining law, says the union and its attorneys.

But Chief Calvillo, based on what he claims is a professed goal to enhance safety and to provide services in a more efficient and cost-effective manner, decided to independently change the starting times of its fire-suppression personnel from 8:30 a.m. to 7 a.m., such that the employees would start their shifts at 7 a.m. and end their shift at 7 a.m. the following day.

In addition to seeking the temporary restraining order the trial court complaint before Russo also seeks a declaratory judgment, preliminary injunction and a permanent injunction.

Lawyers for the parties finished briefing the issue relative to the writ on April 4 and the Ohio Supreme Court could issue a ruling at anytime on whether Russo has jurisdiction to hear the case before her brought by the union, such writs of which typically take up to three months for a court ruling, and in complicated cases, even longer.