Category: PERB Decision

Service Employees International Union Local 721 (Oliver) (2015) PERB Decision No. 2462-C (Issued on 11/24/15) This decision was issued back in November but still worth noting. The decision involved an unfair practice charge alleging a violation of the duty of fair representation. Normally, this decision would have been designated non-precedential. However, the Board designated this case precedential because it was the first one recognizing a duty of fair representation under the Trial Court Act. Although nothing in the Trial Court Act imposes a duty of fair representation on the exclusive representative, PERB noted that under the MMBA, such a duty…

Hartnell Community College District (2015) PERB Decision No. 2452-E (Issued on 09/04/15)

Have you ever had an employee designate a Weingarten representative who is not from the employee’s recognized union? I’ve had this happen a couple of times. Usually it occurs in the context of an organizational campaign. For example, one situation I dealt with involved an employee who wanted to use a Weingarten representative from a union trying to decertify the existing exclusive representative.

City & County of San Francisco (2015) PERB Decision No. A429-M (Issued on 10/15/15)

In this case, the City and County of San Francisco (City) filed an appeal over an order by the Office of the General Counsel to proceed to factfinding on a single-issue dispute. The City urged PERB to reconsider its decision in County of Contra Costa (2014) PERB Order No. Ad-410-M (Contra Costa), in which it held that MMBA factfinding applies to any dispute, even a single-issue dispute that arises outside of contract negotiations. The Board held that, “None of [the City’s] arguments persuade us to abandon our previous determination that both the plain language of the statute and its legislative history indicate that the Legislature intended to make MMBA factfinding available for any “differences” over any matter within the scope of representation, so long as the employee organization’s request is timely and the dispute is not subject to one of the statutory exceptions set forth in MMBA …”

Orange County Water District (2015) PERB Decision No. 2454-M (Issued on 09/23/15)

With the Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association (Friedrichs) case before the Supreme Court, the issue of public sector agency fees is a topic on everyone’s mind. This case was spawned, in part, by worry over the potential consequences of Friedrichs. The issue here involved a Modified Agency Shop (MAS) agreement proposed by the Orange County Water District Employees Association (Union). The “modification” was that only new employees would be required to pay agency fees; current employees would be exempt.

City of Inglewood (2015) PERB Decision No. 2424-M (Issued on 6/1/15) This was a procedurally odd case. But for purposes of discussion, the only necessary fact is this: At a hearing involving an employee in pro per, the administrative law judge amended the complaint sua sponte (Latin for “of one's own will”) to allege that the employer did not follow its own local rules. The employer objected. In addressing this issue, the Board affirmed the general “unalleged violations doctrine” which allows an ALJ to amend a complaint to include unalleged violations under the following circumstances: (1) adequate notice and opportunity…