Opinion ID: 2611911
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Meyers-Milias-Brown Act

Text: The MMBA is intended to promote full communication between public employers and their employees by providing a reasonable method of resolving disputes regarding wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment between public employers and public employee organizations. (§ 3500.) The centerpiece of the MMBA is section 3505, which requires the governing body of a local public agency, or its designated representative, to meet and confer in good faith regarding wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment with representatives of such recognized employee organizations. As we recounted in the Glendale City Employees' Assn., Inc. v. City of Glendale (1975) 15 Cal.3d 328, 335 [124 Cal. Rptr. 513, 540 P.2d 609]), the MMBA represented an evolution from the earlier George Brown Act, which provided only that management representatives should listen to and discuss the demands of the unions. In its present form, the MMBA mandates that the governing body undertake negotiations with employee representatives not merely to listen to their grievances, but also with the objective of reaching `agreement on matters within the scope of representation prior to the adoption by the public agency of its final budget for the ensuing year.' ( Id. at p. 336, quoting § 3505, italics omitted.) The culmination of this meet and confer process is set forth in section 3505.1: If agreement is reached by the representatives of the public agency and a recognized employee organization or recognized employee organizations, they shall jointly prepare a written memorandum of such understanding, which shall not be binding, and present it to the governing body or its statutory representative for determination. Once the governing body approves the memorandum of understanding, it then becomes binding on both parties. ( Glendale City Employees' Assn., Inc. v. City of Glendale, supra, 15 Cal.3d at p. 336.) It is indisputable that the procedures set forth in the MMBA are a matter of statewide concern, and are preemptive of contradictory local labor-management procedures. ( International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers v. City of Gridley (1983) 34 Cal.3d 191, 202 [193 Cal. Rptr. 518, 666 P.2d 960].) As we further clarified in People ex rel. Seal Beach Police Officers Assn. v. City of Seal Beach (1984) 36 Cal.3d 591, 600-601, footnote 11 [205 Cal. Rptr. 794, 685 P.2d 1145], there is a clear distinction between the substance of a public employee labor issue and the procedure by which it is resolved. Thus there is no question that `salaries of local employees of a charter city constitute municipal affairs and are not subject to general laws.' [Citation.] Nevertheless, the process by which salaries are fixed is obviously a matter of statewide concern.... We have had no occasion to consider how a referendum might fit into the collective bargaining regime contemplated by the MMBA. The one court to do so held that a charter provision requiring that all increases in employee benefits be subject to voter approval was compatible with the MMBA. ( United Public Employees v. City and County of San Francisco (1987) 190 Cal. App.3d 419, 426 [235 Cal. Rptr. 477] [hereafter United Public Employees ].) The court rejected the argument that voter approval requirements could render the negotiating process mandated by the MMBA meaningless and unproductive. The court reasoned that since the purpose of the MMBA is to `promote full communication between public employers and their employees' (190 Cal. App.3d at p. 425, quoting § 3500), the purposes of the statute is served even though the governing body participating in the meet and confer process does not have the final authority to approve the agreement resulting from that process. ( United Public Employees, supra, 190 Cal. App.3d at pp. 425-426.) While we do not determine whether the result in United Public Employees was correct, [4] we observe that the decision understated the problematic nature of the relationship between the MMBA and the local referendum power. As we have noted, the purpose of the MMBA is more than promoting communication between employees and employers. Its aim is also to resolve disputes regarding wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment between public employers and public employee organizations (§ 3500) through the negotiation of binding agreements. If the bargaining process and ultimate ratification of the fruits of this dispute resolution procedure by the governing agency is to have its purpose fulfilled, then the decision of the governing body to approve the MOU must be binding and not subject to the uncertainty of referendum. The question posed by Justice Tobriner in Glendale City Employees' Assn., Inc. v. City of Glendale, supra, 15 Cal.3d 328, 336, is equally relevant to whether a MOU to which a governing body has agreed may be subjected to referendum: Why negotiate an agreement if either party can disregard its provisions? ... Why submit the agreement to the governing body for determination, if its approval were without significance? ... The procedure established by the [MMBA] would be meaningless if the end-product, a labor-management agreement ratified by the governing body of the agency, were a document that was itself meaningless. Stated differently, the effectiveness of the collective bargaining process under the MMBA rests in large part upon the fact that the public body that approves the MOU under section 3505.1  i.e., the governing body  is the same entity that, under section 3505, is mandated to conduct or supervise the negotiations from which the MOU emerges. If the referendum were interjected into this process, then the power to negotiate an agreement and the ultimate power to approve an agreement would be wholly divorced from each other, with the result that the bargaining process established by the MMBA could be undermined. This kind of bifurcation of authority between negotiators and decisionmakers would not be considered lawful were it to occur in the realm of private sector labor relations. ( N.L.R.B. v. Alterman Transport Lines, Inc. (5th Cir.1979) 587 F.2d 212, 226-227.) As that case held, a company had engaged in bad faith bargaining when the president of the company  who had reserved to himself the right to bind the company to the agreement  failed to at least brief his negotiators respecting his position and maintain some supervision over the proposals made and agreements reached. ( Id. at p. 227; see also Vainio dba Professional Eye Care (1988) 289 NLRB 1376, 1391-1392; Penntech Papers (1982) 263 NLRB 264, 275, enforced 706 F.2d 18, cert. den. 464 U.S. 892 [78 L.Ed.2d 228, 104 S.Ct. 237].) Similarly, section 3505.1 provides, in the language of private sector bargaining, a reservation of rights to the governing body to approve or disapprove any agreement emerging from the meet and confer process. On the other hand section 3505 mandates that the same governing body conduct or supervise the meet and confer process leading up to the agreement. [5] If the power of referendum existed, then the Legislature would in effect be sanctioning a kind of bad faith bargaining process in which those who possess the ultimate reservation of rights to approve the collective bargaining agreement  i.e., the electorate  are completely absent from the negotiating table. We presume that the Legislature did not intend to compel local governmental entities to engage in a bargaining process that, unless the voters agreed, could not lead to a binding agreement even if the employer and employees desired to do so. Section 25123, subdivision (e)'s restriction of the local referendum right for ordinances adopting or implementing employer-employee MOU's is therefore wholly consistent with the overall purpose of the MMBA in promoting definitive resolution of labor-management disputes through the collective bargaining process. For purposes of resolving this case, we need not decide whether section 25123, subdivision (e) itself originates the restriction of the referendum power for the applicable ordinances in order to advance the statewide legislative purposes of the MMBA discussed above, or merely embodies the legislative recognition that the MMBA already implicitly contains such a restriction. (See fn. 3, ante. ) In either case, the Legislature has made explicit its intent to restrict the referendum right for these ordinances, and such restriction is constitutionally justified: the Legislature's exercise of its preemptive power to prescribe labor relations procedures in public employment includes the power to exclusively delegate negotiating authority to the boards of supervisors, and therefore the power to curtail the local right of referendum. [6]