Town of Wakefield v. Labor Relations Commission

In the spring of 1989, after the man who held the position of “master mechanic/selectmen” retired, Wakefield officials debated whether they should appoint his part-time assistant, David Gaw, to that position or transfer the duties to the public works department’s mechanics. The advantage of the latter course, according to the master mechanic who headed that department, was that the work could be performed at a lower cost (by substituting an ordinary mechanic, supervised by a master mechanic, for the higher-paid master mechanic/ selectmen) with an improvement in quality (such as…