Opinion ID: 2077498
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Chief Judges and Counties as Joint Employers

Text: We now turn to the principal question in the case, the joint-employer issue. As labor law has developed, largely in a Federal and private-sector context, the test for existence of joint employers has come to be defined as whether two or more employers exert significant control over the same employees  where from the evidence it can be shown that they share or co-determine those matters governing essential terms and conditions of employment. ( National Labor Relations Board v. Browning-Ferris Industries of Pennsylvania, Inc. (3d Cir.1982), 691 F.2d 1117, 1124.) Relevant factors include the putative joint employer's role in hiring and firing; promotions and demotions; setting wages, work hours, and other terms and conditions of employment; discipline; and actual day-to-day supervision and direction of employees on the job. Jansonius, Use and Misuse of Employee Leasing, Lab. L.J. 35, 36 (Jan. 1, 1985) (citing cases). See generally Annot., 73 A.L.R. Fed. 609 (1985). The issues of the present case were foreshadowed in County of Kane v. Carlson (1987), 116 Ill.2d 186. In that case, we observed that application of the Act to the judicial branch does not per se intrude unconstitutionally on judicial authority, because separation of powers does not require, nor could it realistically demand, complete independence among the branches of government. (116 Ill.2d at 206.) However, we distinguished between Board orders directly impairing the administrative and supervisory authority of the judiciary and orders that have merely an indirect or collateral effect, if any. (116 Ill.2d at 209.) We noted that judicial review of Board or arbitral orders can enable courts to provide a necessary check on intrusions into those powers reserved to the judicial branch. (116 Ill.2d at 209.) We emphasized that our decision was based simply on the posture of the proceedings before us (116 Ill.2d at 210) and that many other possible constitutional questions, not then presented, might arise as the broad provisions of the Act are applied to the unique workings of the judicial branch (116 Ill.2d at 210). We held in Drury v. County of McLean (1982), 89 Ill.2d 417, that, under section 18(b) of article VI of the Illinois Constitution (Ill. Const. 1970, art. VI, § 18(b)), clerks of circuit courts are nonjudicial members of the judicial branch of State government and are not county officers ( Drury, 89 Ill.2d at 424), even though county boards are required to pay and, subject to statutory limits, to fix their salaries. The requirement that county boards provide circuit court clerks' salaries was imposed by the General Assembly. (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1987, ch. 25, par. 27.3.) In turn, the General Assembly's power to prescribe the manner of funding the clerks' salaries is derived from section 18(c) of article VI of the Illinois Constitution (Ill. Const. 1970, art. VI, § 18(c)), which states, The salaries of clerks and other non-judicial officers shall be as provided by law. (Emphasis added.) It is within the legislature's constitutional powers to require that counties pay the salary and expenses of the circuit court clerk. The fact that counties pay the salaries and expenses of circuit court clerks does not make the office of circuit court clerk a county office. ( Drury, 89 Ill.2d at 425.) Similarly, the fact that a county pays the salaries of other nonjudicial employees in the judicial branch, or even administers personnel policies covering them by agreement with the judicial branch, does not in constitutional or statutory terms make the county their employer. Rather, the State, personified by the chief judge of each circuit, is their employer. The constitutional tripartite separation of powers strengthens our conclusion that the State, not a county, is the sole employer of all court employees. Traditional principles of labor law, developed mostly in a Federal context that has been largely limited to private-sector employment relations, might arguably suggest that, upon viewing the totality of their economic relationships (see, e.g., Secretary of Labor v. Lauritzen (7th Cir.1987), 835 F.2d 1529, 1534-35; Beliz v. W.H. McLeod & Sons Packing Co. (5th Cir.1985), 765 F.2d 1317, 1327), the counties and the State are to be considered joint employers of court employees whose salaries the counties pay. However, given our responsibility to reconcile Illinois public-sector labor law with Illinois constitutional principles whenever possible, we must construe the labor law term employer in a way that comports with the legal authority and responsibility of counties and courts respectively as well as with our constitution's separation of powers and unified court system. In this connection, we must say that Vermilion and Will Counties' constitutional arguments altogether miss the mark. The Illinois Constitution's article VII intergovernmental-cooperation provisions (Ill. Const. 1970, art. VII, §§ 10(a), (c)) deal only with otherwise constitutional compacts, even if imposition of joint-employer status on an unwilling chief judge or county could be considered a compact. Therefore, article VII cannot validate any compact that is contrary to separation of powers (Ill. Const. 1970, art. II, § 1) or the inherent powers of a unified court system (Ill. Const. 1970, art. VI, § 1). As to the joint-employer question posed by the present action, the fact that legislation is expressly authorized for instituting county-provided supplements to judicial salaries (Ill. Const. 1970, art. VI, § 14) adds nothing to the weight of authorization for legislation establishing county funding of courts' nonjudicial employees (Ill. Const. 1970, art. VI, § 18(c)). Neither authorizing clause of the constitution necessarily implies ultimate county control of the number, salary, or employment conditions of court personnel, as becomes obvious at once when the case of judges (Ill. Const. 1970, art. VI, § 14) is considered. Thus, to the extent that a county's joint-employer status at the bargaining table effects such control, it lacks any authority in the cited sections of article VI. When the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), ch. 372, 49 Stat. 449 (1935) (codified as amended at 29 U.S.C. §§ 151 through 169 (1982 & Supp. IV 1986)), was adopted in 1935, it exempted governments from mandatory collective bargaining. (See NLRA § 2(2), 29 U.S.C. § 152(2) (1982).) The next five decades of labor law therefore focused almost entirely on the private economic sector's employment relations. As late as 1984, it was possible to write that [l]abor law casebooks and treatises often omit the subject of public employment entirely and that [t]here has been no scholarly treatment integrating the three major bodies of law that shape public employment  civil service law, collective bargaining law, and constitutional law. Note, Developments in the Law  Public Employment, 97 Harv. L. Rev. 1611, 1614 (1984). As at least one commentator points out, the appropriations process has become a major factor in public sector employee relations (Allshouse, The Role of the Appropriations Process in Public Sector Bargaining, 17 Urb. Law. 165, 165 (1985)), and [o]ne of the basic differences between private and public sector collective bargaining is the involvement of the legislative branch (17 Urb. Law. at 197, citing Abood v. Detroit Board of Education (1977), 431 U.S. 209, 228, 52 L.Ed.2d 261, 279-80, 97 S.Ct. 1782, 1796). Yet, despite recognition of this and numerous other differences between public- and private-sector collective bargaining, the statutes enacted for public sector bargaining, and the administrative rules and decisions    are modeled on the    private sector, yielding a cognitive dissonance that often impedes fruitful analysis. (Summers, Bargaining in the Government's Business: Principles and Politics, 18 U. Tol. L. Rev. 265, 265, 281 (1987).) Difficulties have been noted in attempting to institutionalize private-sector labor relations practices in the Federal government's collective-bargaining system, which prohibits strikes and greatly limits negotiations on matters of wages and hours. (Thornton, Policies and Practices of the Federal Labor Relations Authority, Gov't Union Rev., Spring 1987, at 1.) With good reason, it has been said that [s]imply to import the private sector bargaining regime into the public sector would be to neglect the special role of the public employer as representative of the public interest. 97 Harv. L. Rev. at 1681 (citing cases). Reflecting on the differences between public and private sectors' orientations to labor law, but striving not to overstate those differences, we have examined the limits of county involvement with funding the court system in order to determine whether, given those limits, the Board is allowed by Illinois labor and constitutional law to consider counties as joint employers of court employees. We conclude that it is not. Although membership in public-sector labor unions quadrupled nationally from 1956 to 1978 (Wilson & Elder, Collective Bargaining: The Unionization and Decentralization of Illinois Counties, Gov't Union Rev., Spring 1988, at 23, 23, citing Seroka, The Determinants of Public Employee Union Growth, 5 Rev. Pub. Personnel Admin. 5, 5 (1985)), Illinois counties are just beginning to feel the impact of the state's collective bargaining law (Gov't Union Rev., Spring 1988, at 37). See also McCollum, The 1983 Ohio and Illinois Public Employee Bargaining Laws, Gov't Union Rev., Winter 1986, at 46; McCollum & Wolters, Public Sector Bargaining Legislation in Illinois and Ohio, 1983, 14 J. Collective Negotiations Pub. Sector 161 (1985). Counties have the power and duty to set and pay salaries of circuit courts' nonjudicial employees (see People ex rel. Bier v. Scholz (1979), 77 Ill.2d 12, 17-18), but this authority is tempered by the courts' responsibility to administer justice and their retention of inherent power to protect themselves and the public they serve against default of their constitutional obligations so that they may perform their judicial functions with efficiency, independence and dignity ( Scholz, 77 Ill.2d at 19). The retained power of the courts includes power to require production of the facilities, personnel and resources reasonably necessary to the courts' operations. Knuepfer v. Fawell (1983), 96 Ill.2d 284, 293. Thus, not only are nonjudicial employees of a court the employees of a State agency rather than of a county, but even the counties' salary-setting and facilities-providing function is subject to the courts' own ultimate power to ensure reasonable adequacy. Except for setting and paying salaries and providing facilities subject to ultimate court power, the counties are entitled to no other role in regard to the courts' nonjudicial employees that might arguably be considered the role of a joint employer. And, as we have previously stated, the Illinois Constitution contemplates [o]nly one unified court system operating statewide and does not contemplate nor does it authorize the exercise of any control over or permit the imposition of a burden on the judicial system by any local entity. Ampersand, Inc. v. Finley (1975), 61 Ill.2d 537, 542; accord Drury v. County of McLean (1982), 89 Ill.2d 417, 423-24; County of Kane v. Carlson (1987), 116 Ill.2d 186, 207-08. In addition, although separation of powers does not mean a complete divorce among the branches of government ( People ex rel. Sheppard v. Money (1988), 124 Ill.2d 265, 283-84) and legislation may permissibly have a peripheral effect on judicial administration ( People v. Williams (1988), 124 Ill.2d 300, 307), separation does mean that the whole power of two or more    departments shall not be lodged in the same hands ( Field v. People ex rel. McClernand (1839), 3 Ill. (2 Scam.) 79, 84). If the Board were allowed to compel chief judges to share their collective-bargaining authority with counties, and if counties' assertion of funding authority then impeded or frustrated the chief judges' efforts to bargain, the whole power of the chief judges in the vital administrative area of employment relations would be effectively lodged in the counties' hands. This would be far more than a peripheral effect on judicial administration; it would be an evisceration of the courts as free and independent employers of their own employees, since authority over compensation is central to employer status. At the collective-bargaining table, salary and other incidents of employment are intertwined. No party can be expected to consider the one independently of the other. Concessions regarding salary will often be linked with some favorable modification of other employment terms, and vice versa. If a county were intransigent on a salary issue, it might prevent agreement between employees and a chief judge as to other working conditions. It thus becomes obvious that the counties and the courts could not practicably bifurcate employer authority so that the counties might bargain salaries and the courts might separately bargain other terms of employment. Labor representatives at the bargaining table know that any agreement reached will be affected by the county boards' salary-setting and appropriations authority, but similar knowledge prevails when labor representatives bargain with agencies of the executive branch for agreements that will be affected by the General Assembly's budgetary authority. (See Henkel & Wood, Collective Bargaining by State Workers: Legislatures Have the Final Voice in the Appropriation of Funds, 11 J. Collective Negotiations Pub. Sector 215, 217 (1982).) The General Assembly's budgetary authority with regard to the executive branch certainly surpasses that of county boards with regard to the judicial branch. Just as the General Assembly's appropriations role fails to make that body the joint employer of executive-branch employees (see Allshouse, The Role of the Appropriations Process in Public Sector Bargaining, 17 Urb. Law. 165, 167-68), the counties' appropriations role fails all the more to make counties the joint employers of the circuit courts' nonjudicial employees. Cook County's citation of Scholz to the contrary is unavailing. In Scholz, this court directed expungement of portions of a chief judge's administrative order that had set nonjudicial employees' salaries at levels somewhat higher than those set by a county board. However, the basis for expungement was merely our conclusion from the record that the county board had not acted so unreasonably as to warrant the chief judge's invocation of his inherent powers ( Scholz, 77 Ill.2d at 18), and we went on to affirm at length the existence of those powers ( Scholz, 77 Ill.2d at 19-22; see Knuepfer, 96 Ill.2d at 292-93). See generally Annot., 59 A.L.R.3d 569 (1974). For this reason, it is disingenuous for Cook County to argue in its brief that no precedent supports courts' authority to appropriate funds. Though Cook County contends that such an appropriation authority would contravene the separation of powers, the fact is rather that a county board's effective veto of the courts' employment of needed personnel would violate not only the separation of powers but also the inherent authority of the courts. (See Ampersand, Inc. v. Finley (1975), 61 Ill.2d 537, 542.) Moreover, the four chief judges contend for no appropriation power on the part of the courts, nor do we hold that such power exists as such; rather, the courts have the power in truly needful cases to order that an appropriation be made by those officials entitled to make it. In turn, those officials can review their entire budgetary scheme and its supporting revenue base so as to make any needed adjustments to accommodate such an appropriation, which courts would not be in position to do if they were to essay a direct appropriation themselves. Nevertheless, without suffering an invasion of their rightful authority, the courts cannot allow counties to control or interfere with their employment and collective-bargaining decisions by assuming a joint-employer role in labor negotiations. We are also mindful that Scholz was decided before passage of the Act. Therefore, even to the extent that Scholz might be read by some to support a county's limited power to set nonjudicial employees' salaries independently of the court (but see Scholz, 77 Ill.2d at 19 (the public interest requires that the three branches of government work in harmony); accord Knuepfer, 96 Ill.2d at 293), and even though the judicial branch must give proper deference to the county boards as the governmental branch having initial responsibility for setting salaries (see Knuepfer, 96 Ill.2d at 293, 295), Scholz cannot be viewed as decisive authority for construing the Act so as to define a county as a joint employer of circuit court employees for collective-bargaining purposes. On the contrary, a narrow interpretation of a statute granting powers to an administrative agency may be necessary to sustain its constitutionality. 3 N. Singer, Sutherland on Statutory Construction § 65.02, at 222 (Sands 4th ed. 1986). Cook County's citation of City of Rockford v. Illinois State Labor Relations Board (1987), 158 Ill. App.3d 166, is likewise insufficient. Whether or not that case correctly applied the traditional labor law test for joint-employer status, it involved two units of local government, one of which created the other by ordinance. The present cause, involving a local government unit and the independent judicial branch of State government, is easily distinguished. We are aware that the Washington Supreme Court has reached a different conclusion on a similar question ( Zylstra v. Piva (1975), 85 Wash.2d 743, 539 P.2d 823), but we decline to follow its reasoning. In Zylstra, the court's conclusion rested in large part on the fact that the Public Employees' Collective Bargaining Act (Wash. Rev. Code §§ 41.56.010 through 41.56.950 (1972)) applied to county but not State employees ( Zylstra, 85 Wash.2d at 748, 539 P.2d at 826). The court expressed its desire to preserve for the affected employees as large a sphere of collective bargaining as possible ( Zylstra, 85 Wash.2d at 748, 539 P.2d at 826) by holding that, for purposes of wage bargaining, employees of a juvenile court were employees of the county, even though they were employees of the State for purposes of bargaining over hiring, working conditions, and other matters. Moreover, unlike Illinois courts, the juvenile court in Washington was a creature of the legislature rather than of the constitution. Zylstra, 85 Wash.2d at 749, 539 P.2d at 827. Rather than subscribe to the Washington Supreme Court's analysis in Zylstra, we find persuasive part of the Michigan Supreme Court's opinion in Judges of the 74th Judicial District v. Bay County (1971), 385 Mich. 710, 190 N.W.2d 219. In Bay County, the Michigan court decided that State district court employees are not employees of the county, city or other district control unit, even though they are paid by the district control unit. ( Bay County, 385 Mich. at 723, 190 N.W.2d at 224.) Therefore, a collective-bargaining agreement executed by a county board as employer was held not to bind the judicial district that embraced the county. ( Bay County, 385 Mich. at 724, 190 N.W.2d at 224.) This conclusion was reached even though each county board had appropriations authority over the court's budget. Bay County, 385 Mich. at 725-26, 190 N.W.2d at 225-26; Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. § 600.8271(1) (West 1968). The parties to collective bargaining  that is, chief judges and labor representatives  as well as county boards must, of course, be aware that chief judges and county boards have the practical task of working together in an attempt to effectuate any collective-bargaining agreements reached. (See County of Kane v. Carlson (1987), 116 Ill.2d 186, 208 (some blurring of interdependent branches' roles necessary to smooth functioning); Knuepfer v. Fawell (1983), 96 Ill.2d 284, 297 (Simon, J., dissenting) (Good government requires accommodation between its branches); People ex rel. Bier v. Scholz (1979), 77 Ill.2d 12, 19 (public interest requires branches to work in harmony); accord Kotche v. County Board (1980), 87 Ill. App.3d 1127, 1132.) However, this fact does not require the counties to be seated at the bargaining table as joint employers. Any conflict between traditional labor law principles and constitutional principles must be resolved in favor of the latter; and treating county boards as joint employers with chief judges in respect of the courts' nonjudicial employees would unduly trench on the judicial branch's separate and equal status (see Scholz, 77 Ill.2d at 19). The mere need for county board approval in order to effectuate judicial-branch salaries negotiated at the bargaining table does not logically mandate inclusion of the counties in the bargaining. Constitutional considerations furnish the remaining rationale for their exclusion. Accordingly, a writ of prohibition will issue, prohibiting the Board (1) from certifying or maintaining in effect the certification of any bargaining unit in which a county is listed as a joint employer of judicial-branch employees, and (2) from basing any finding of unfair labor practices on a chief judge's refusal to bargain, together with a county, in a role as joint employer of judicial-branch employees. We therefore need not reach additional questions raised by some of the parties as to defining the substantive areas of bargaining in which chief judges and counties might each play a joint-employer role. Writ awarded. WARD and CALVO, JJ., took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.