Court and Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) decisions, commentary on California public sector labor relations

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PERB Issues 2015-16 Annual Report

PERB has released its annual report for fiscal year 2015-2016. (The report is available here.)  Here is my annual summary of the statistics in the report: Unfair Practice Charges 652 unfair practice charges (UPCs) were filed in fiscal year 2015-16. In fiscal year 2014-2015, there were 695 UPCs. This means fiscal year 2015-16 saw a 6.2% decrease in UPCs compared to the prior year. The largest decrease was under the Dills Act which saw a 26.4% decrease in UPCs (53 versus 72 in 2014-15). EERA saw a 13.2% decrease in UPCs (236 versus 272 in 2014-15). In contrast, HEERA saw a slight increase…

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PERB: Permissive Subjects Ok if No Objections

Anaheim Union High School District (2016) PERB Decision No. 2504-E (Issued on 10/14/16) In 2012, the Anaheim Union High School District (District) and AFSCME were engaged in negotiations for a successor agreement. Facing a multi-million dollar budget deficit, the District asked AFSCME for significant economic concessions, including furlough days for employees. The District also informed AFSCME that even with concessions, some layoffs would still be required. In terms of the number of layoffs, the District told AFSCME that if agreement was reached on the concessions by July 1, 2012, a “short list” of six employees would be laid off; but…

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The State of Factfinding under the MMBA

County of Riverside v. PERB (2016) 246 Cal.App.4th 20, review denied (July 13, 2016) and San Diego Housing Commission v. PERB (2016) 246 Cal.App.4th 1, review denied (July 13, 2016) For those of you who haven’t heard, the fight over whether the MMBA requires factfinding over single issues is over (at least for now). In a prior post, I discussed the two court of appeal decisions that issued on March 30, 2016 and ruled in PERB’s favor. Both employers filed petitions for review with the California Supreme Court. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court denied review in both cases on July 13,…

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PERB Legislative Update

The 2015-2016 legislative session is over. The Governor had until September 30th to act on any pending bills.  Here's recap of legislation affecting PERB: Senate Bill 950 (Baker) — This bill would have enacted the Excluded Employee Arbitration Act to permit excluded employees with the State of California to seek arbitration of certain grievances.  Vetoed by Governor on 9/25/16.  Veto message: “This bill adds arbitration to the existing four step grievance process for state supervisors. Expanding the grievance process for the state's managers to include legally binding arbitration will reduce departments' ability to effectively manage state operations and will result in…

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Judicial Review of “Special Importance” Cases

California Virtual Academies (2016) PERB Decision No. J027-E (Issued on 9/30/16)

This cases involves a request for “judicial review” of a unit determination decision arising under the Educational Employment Relations Act (EERA). Under EERA, with a very limited exception, there can be no judicial review of a unit determination decision unless that Board joins in the request for judicial review. By law, the Board can only join in such a request when the case is one of “special importance.” The same rules apply under HEERA and the Dills Act.  Judicial review cases are rare.  According to my records, the last judicial review case decided by the Board was in October 2011.  So this is a good time to review what constitutes a case of “special importance.”

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