Category: PERB Decision

San Bernardino County Superior Court (2014) PERB Decision No. A416-E (Issued on 8/26/14)

This case provides a good refresher on PERB’s regulations for serving documents.  Here, charging party’s exceptions were served by facsimile and regular mail.  After respondent informed charging party that the facsimile was illegible, charging party sent a version via email.  The issue before the Board was whether respondent was entitled to additional time to file its response.  Respondent argued that charging party’s service by facsimile was defective because it was illegible.  Further, respondent argued that it never agreed to accept service by email, so the copy it received via email was simply a courtesy copy.  Therefore, respondent asserted that the only proper service was by regular mail, which entitled respondent to another five days to file its response.  Based on the proof of service, the Board agreed with respondent’s argument that it was only properly served by mail and therefore its response was timely.  But here are some tips for practitioners:

Trustees of the California State University (East Bay) (2014) PERB Decision No. 2391-H (Issued on 9/02/14)

The facts in this 50-page decision are voluminous and complex.  But here’s what you need to know.  An employee filed a grievance alleging that his termination was without “just cause” and other contractual violations.  The grievance advanced to arbitration.  The employee also filed an unfair practice charge alleging that his termination was in retaliation for protected activity under HEERA.  The University moved to defer the unfair practice charge to arbitration.  The Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) granted the deferral motion.  With respect to the employee’s termination, the ALJ reasoned that consideration of “just cause” necessarily requires consideration of the employee’s retaliation claims.  Therefore, the ALJ ruled, the Collyer standards for deferral were satisfied.

Monterey Peninsula Unified School District (2014) PERB Decision No. 2381-E  (Issued on 6/27/14)

Here are the relevant facts:  The employee receives a termination notice on February 9, 2010.  On March 29, 2010, the employee files an unfair practice charge with PERB alleging that the proposed termination is retaliatory.  The employee requests a hearing before the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH), which concludes that the termination is warranted.  On September 7, 2010, the district adopts the OAH decision sustaining the termination.  On March 14, 2011, the employee files a first amended unfair practice charge with PERB to include allegations regarding his actual termination on September 7, 2010.  The Board agent rejects the allegations regarding the termination as untimely since the first amended charge was filed more than six months after the date of termination.

Bellflower Unified School District (2014) PERB Decision No. 2385-E (Issued on 6/30/14)

This case involved a school closure and related layoffs.  In February 2010, the school district notified the union that it is was considering a school closure which would result in layoffs. The union responded that it wanted to bargain over the potential effects. The district did not respond.  In May 2010, the school board voted to abolish 20 positions at the affected school.  The union again requested to bargain over the effects.  While the parties attempted to schedule a bargaining session, one never occurred (it’s not clear from the decision why).

County of Contra Costa (2014) PERB Decision No. A410-M (Issued on 4/16/14)

I wrote an alert on this case for CalPELRA last month.  CalPELRA alerts are usually available to the general public after a few weeks, so if you’re interested it should soon be available to read here.

In this decision, PERB held that factfinding under the MMBA is available for any bargaining dispute, not just disputes over a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).