MHP trooper, union leader reinstated after wrongful termination tied to internal survey

A Montana Highway Patrol trooper and union president will be reinstated and issued back pay after she was wrongly terminated for raising the alarm about an internal survey that was critical of leadership, a third-party labor arbitrator has found.

The Montana Federation of Public Employees, the state employee’s union, alleged in April 2024 the highway patrol violated labor laws by terminating Alicia Bragg for sharing the survey with her union despite being told by her supervisor not to.

In a 48-page decision issued last week, Jeffrey Jacobs, an independent arbitrator from Minnesota, sustained that labor grievance following a December hearing on Bragg’s case, writing that the “inescapable conclusion is that the grievant was acting in her capacity as the Union President when she sent the document to the Union.”

“While the survey may have been somewhat embarrassing to the MHP, that alone did not render her action terminable,” Jacobs wrote.

Jacobs ordered MHP reinstate Bragg to her former position within 10 days of the April 4 order and that she receive back pay and the benefits under the patrol’s contract with MFPE.

Montana Highway Patrol in turmoil under Attorney General Austin Knudsen, officers say

“I was terminated nearly a year ago for doing my job, as a trooper who loves serving my state and as a union president who’s fiercely loyal to my fellow law enforcement officers,” Bragg said in a statement through her union on Tuesday. “Senior leaders at MHP and the (Montana Department of Justice) tried to sanitize and slow roll a public workplace climate survey that reflected poorly on their leadership, and I stood up for troopers.”

A spokesperson for the Montana Department of Justice called Jacobs’ decision binding and said the department would comply with it, but offered no further comment.

Jacobs found that Bragg sharing the survey with her union qualified as insubordination, but that her union duties outweighed the infraction.

Bragg received the survey because she was on a “strategy improvement committee” to review the highway patrol’s internal climate, a committee she was assigned to specifically because of her status as union president. Communicating with her union and other troopers about morale of the workforce and perceptions of management and the future of the organization falls “squarely within the union’s purview,” Jacobs found.

“She acted within her scope as the union president,” he wrote.

Union: Justice dept. fired trooper for sharing survey on work conditions

That survey ultimately became public, broadcasting that nearly half of the survey respondents were not optimistic about leadership and direction of the agency, which is overseen by Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen.

The Department of Justice subsequently sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Daily Montanan, the online news outlet that broke the story and first published the survey, but never pursued any legal action against the outlet.

Shortly before the survey became public, the Attorney General’s Office announced then-Col. Steve Lavin was retiring, although the announcement made no mention of the document. Six months later, Lavin sued Knudsen, alleging he was wrongfully discharged from his post over the survey. That case remains ongoing, and on Friday, attorneys for both parties submitted an agreement to not disclose any personnel or otherwise confidential information.

Knudsen, meanwhile, has been at the Capitol this legislative session advocating for, among other things, pay increases for state troopers in House Bill 2, the state budget. Lawmakers have so far approved an 8.5% increase in trooper pay. They also included another $2 million for litigation expenses.