Category: California PERB Blog

Fontana Unified School District (2010) PERB Decision No. 2147-E (Issued on 12/10/10)This case is a run-of-the-mill appeal of a Board agent’s dismissal. What caught my attention was what the Board put in a footnote:“The Board does not adopt the references to Campbell Municipal Employees Assn. v. City of Campbell (1982) 131 Cal.App.3d 416 and San Leandro Police Officers Assn. v. City of San Leandro (1976) 55 Cal.App.3d 553 at p.3 dismissal letter and pp. 3-4 warning letter, as support for the well-established discrimination test set forth in Novato Unified School District (1982) PERB Decision No. 210 (Novato).”The footnote was in…

Castaic Union School District (2010) PERB Decision No. J025-M (Issued on 12/7/10)PERB has granted a request for judicial review by the California School Employees Association (CSEA) over the Board’s decision in Castaic Union School District (2010) PERB Decision No. A384E (“Castaic”).  In Castaic, the Board overturned longstanding precedent by holding that school district employees in part-time playground positions, also referred to as "noon-duty aides," who do not otherwise hold a position in the classified service, are not covered by the Educational Employment Relations Act (EERA). Under EERA, PERB decisions on unit determination issues are not reviewable by the courts unless PERB…

County of Los Angeles v. Los Angeles County Employee Relations Commission (Court of Appeal Case No. B217668) (Issued on 12/14/10)Facts:The Service Employees International Union, Local 721 (SEIU) represents several bargaining units in the County of Los Angeles (County). The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the County and SEIU contains an agency-shop agreement. In order to collect its agency fees, SEIU sends an annual Hudson notice to all employees. Historically, the union prepares the Hudson notice, the County prepares the mailing labels, and the County’s Employee Relations Commission (Commission) mails the notices. Using this process the union does not have access…

City of Lodi (2010) PERB Decision No. 2142-M (Issued on 11/16/10)I recently participated in a seminar sponsored by the California Public Employee Relations Program on local rules under the MMBA. One piece of advice I gave to the audieence was that every local entity in California should have its own local rules. Surprisingly, there many local jurisdictions that have not adopted local rules under the MMBA. By not adopting local rules, the PERB model rules (2 Cal. Code of Regs., §61000 et. seq.) apply to the local jurisdiction by default.One important point to remember is that if you are a…

PERB recently released its annual report for fiscal year 2009-2010. (The report is available here.) Here are the highlights for the 200-2010 fiscal year:Unfair Practice Charges 802 unfair practice charges (UPCs) were filed in fiscal year 2009-10. This represents a 7.6% decrease from fiscal year 2008-09 in which 868 UPCs filed. It’s also the lowest number of UPCs filed since 2002, when 802 UPCs were also filed. The decrease in UPCs can be attributed to the Dills Act (82 UPCs versus 167 in 2008-09) and MMBA (267 UPCs versus 310 in 2008-09). UPCs under EERA stayed roughly the same (308…