Opinion ID: 1215859
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The District's Duty to Negotiate in Good Faith

Text: (3a) Section 3543.5, subdivision (c) requires the school district to negotiate in good faith. In the proper exercise of its discretion, PERB again found no evidence on which to base a finding that by entering into the parity agreement here the District contravened this statute. The Teachers Association argues that a parity agreement with the first unit is a unilateral action as to the second unit, disapproved by PERB in San Mateo Community College District (1979) PERB Dec. No. 94 [3 PERC ¶ 10080]. (4) In determining whether an employer practice is per se an illegal unilateral action, the question is whether [u]nilateral action by an employer ... amount[s] to a refusal to negotiate about the affected conditions of employment under negotiation, and must of necessity obstruct bargaining. ( Labor Board v. Katz (1962) 369 U.S. 736, 747 [8 L.Ed.2d 230, 238, 82 S.Ct. 1107]; San Mateo Community College District, supra, PERB Dec. No. 94 [3 PERC ¶ 10080] [applying Katz, supra, to EERA]; see also Ruline Nursery Co. v. Agricultural Labor Relations Bd. (1985) 169 Cal. App.3d 247, 264 [216 Cal. Rptr. 162] [applying Katz, supra, to Agr. Lab. Relations Act].) (3b) The Court of Appeal held that parity clauses alter and restrict per se the duty to negotiate in good faith under section 3543.5, subdivision (c), since they limit a district's ability to bargain and to obstruct bargaining by creating unilateral change in a condition or term of employment as to the second bargaining unit. ( Labor Board v. Katz, supra, 369 U.S. 736, 747; see also San Mateo Community College District, supra, PERB Dec. No. 94 [3 PERC ¶ 10080].) Absent the parity agreement, noted the Court of Appeal, the Teachers Association might have negotiated an offer greater than 8 percent. The Court of Appeal's concern with the obstruction of bargaining is unfounded. Parity agreements no more restrict the District's bargaining position than do the confines of a limited budget which exist absent such agreement. Each employee bargaining unit necessarily has an impact on the negotiations of every other unit, regardless of the order in which contracts are negotiated or whether the District enters into parity agreements. Referring to Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (1978) 9 PPER 9084, the Court of Appeal implied that a distinction exists between the numerous economic facts of life during collective bargaining, which are beyond the control of the employer, and parity agreements, which impermissibly bring another party to the bargaining table, thereby interfer[ing] with good faith negotiations between the employer and the union not protected by the parity agreement. The distinction is artificial. The effect of the two situations is equiparant: an employer brings to the bargaining table all of its budgetary concerns, one of which is salary increases to be paid to other bargaining units. We find equally insubstantial the Court of Appeal's attempt to distinguish parity agreements from the normal bargaining process. The court concluded that a parity agreement provides a direct disincentive to bargaining, while the economic facts of life have only a remote effect. A parity agreement, which is a contractual budgetary restriction, is no more a disincentive to bargain than is a finite budget absent such agreement. It merely memorializes what is already a fiscal fact of life. A number of jurisdictions have ruled on the practice of parity agreements. Parity agreements are lawful in the private sector, under National Labor Relations Board jurisdiction (see Teamsters, Local 126 (Inland Steel) (1969) 176 NLRB 417) and have been upheld by courts or labor relations agencies in Michigan ( City of Detroit v. Killingsworth (Mich. Cir. Ct. 1972) 80 LRRM 2752); New York ( City of Schenectady v. City Fire, etc. (1982) 85 App.Div.2d 116 [448 N.Y.S.2d 806]); and Pennsylvania ( City of Scranton (1984) 16 PPER ¶ 16016). Parity agreements have been struck down by courts or labor relations agencies in Connecticut ( Loc. 1219, Intern., Fire Fighters v. Ct. L.R.B., supra, 370 A.2d 952); Maine ( Lewiston Fire Ass'n. v. City of Lewiston (Me. 1976) 354 A.2d 154); Massachusetts ( Medford School Committee (1977) 3 MLC 1413); and New Jersey ( City of Plainfield (1978) 4 NJPER ¶ 4130 [PERC No. 78-87]). The Court of Appeal referred to City of Plainfield, supra, 4 NJPER ¶ 4130 [PERC No. 78-87], which held that parity agreements constitute a per se violation of the statutory duty to negotiate in good faith: The parity clause has an inherently unavoidable coercive effect. When considering the proposals of one employee organization, the public employer must inevitably reconcile such a proposal with the ultimatum of providing similar economic proposals to any other organization which has the protection of a parity clause.... The mere existence of the clause is sufficient to chill the free exchange between the public employer and an employee organization by permitting a third employee organization not a party to the negotiations, to have impact on those negotiations. ( Ibid. ) As previously stated, such reasoning is unsound. The better reasoned cases, in our view, are those which defer to administrative agencies to decide on a case-by-case basis whether a given parity agreement violates statutory provisions of labor laws.