By Ken Snyder
It comes with a bit of irony that the date for a meeting with the Department of Labor investigator, his supervisor, and myself would take place on 7 January 2011 -- this would be one day less than six months since this whole mess got started, and two weeks shy of what would have been my one-year anniversary with BPU.
I walked in to the building where the meeting would take place with the hope I would have a sense of where things were going by the time I left. However, I had hoped for better news. Once the meeting got underway, I was told about the interviews and their explanations regarding what happened. While remarks were made about how my work was "good" and how I had worked on items in the shop and out in the field, everyone told them I was "not coming up to speed." Wow. Talk about being stabbed in the back -- wonder if that was what Clark had to "explain" to DeGraeve after he walked me out?
They tried to explain that the responses they got did not appear to be "coached" and they thought the answers were genuine. Later I would find out that the interviews were held the day before, this means that they had nearly six months to get their stories straight -- and as I will show later, some were "straighter" than others.
I left the building feeling about like I did on 8 July, this time with no further opportunity to dispute my termination with DOL. In a matter of days, they would close the case with a determination of No Merit. That means the Attorney General's Office wouldn't give it a second thought if I was to ask them to take the case. Since I'd been out of a full-time job and we'd "made do" with my wife's income, a part-time job and savings there's no way I could afford to retain private counsel and fight past the "closed society" of BPU.
It was rather ironic that when I got back home the first thing I see in my mailbox was some "touchy-feeley" publication from BPU intended to make us all feel grateful to have them running the electric and water in this city, and how much they care. Bullshit.
So now what? BPU 1, Snyder 0 -- they win. This time.
Next: End Game?
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