EDGERTON — After a five-year court battle, three fired Edgerton firefighters and the International Association of Firefighters have settled an unfair labor practice suit against the Edgerton Fire Protection District.
Mark Backes, Ken Crandall and Arnie Lund will receive almost $600,000 in back pay from a 2004 ruling from the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission that ordered the men reinstated.
“We have righted a very serious wrong,” said union representative Patrick Kilbane in a news release Saturday. “This is a significant win for these three firefighters.”
Backes, Crandall and Lund were the only full-time, paid firefighters in the otherwise volunteer fire department when they were fired in June 2003.
The fire district said they were let go for budgetary reasons, but the men said they were fired for joining a union.
The firefighters and their union filed suit with the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission, which in July 2004 ordered the men reinstated with back pay. The ruling was upheld through several appeals, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to hear the case in November.
The fire district voted Nov. 14 to reinstate the men and they returned to work Dec. 2.
Kilbane said in the news release that the settlement “demonstrates what an effective union can do to enforce legal protections and secure justice for (its) members.”
Neither Kilbane nor the three firefighters could be reached for comment Saturday.