Opinion ID: 1134674
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Right to Strike Under the EERA

Text: As indicated above, the prior cases have held that despite the illegality of public employee strikes at common law, the Legislature may, if it so chooses, act to grant the right to strike to some or all public employees. For example, we held in Los Angeles Met. Transit Authority v. Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, supra, 54 Cal.2d 684, 687-689, that legislation which confers on a particular class of employee the right to engage in concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or mutual aid or protection (see, e.g., Lab. Code, § 923, as to private employees), would confer the right to strike peacefully to enforce union demands. Conversely, it also has been held that legislation which purports to deprive a particular class of employee of the right to engage in concerted activities, or which withholds the applicability of the provisions of Labor Code section 923, demonstrates a legislative intent to withhold the right to strike. ( Pasadena Unified Sch. Dist. v. Pasadena Federation of Teachers, supra, 72 Cal. App.3d 100, 106; Almond v. County of Sacramento (1969) 276 Cal. App.2d 32, 37-38 [80 Cal. Rptr. 518].) The majority acknowledges that the EERA, under section 3549 of the Government Code, expressly provides that The enactment of this chapter [regarding meeting and negotiating in public educational employment] shall not be construed as making the provisions of Section 923 of the Labor Code applicable to public school employees. ... (Italics added.) Because section 923 declares as a public policy the right of a private worker to engage in other concerted activities, judicially defined as including the right to strike ( Los Angeles Met. Transit Authority, supra, at p. 689), it seems to me inescapable that the foregoing language of section 3549 conclusively establishes the Legislature's intent to deny this weapon to public school employees. Indeed, this very language was held in Pasadena to constitute a legislative affirmance of an intent to withhold the right to strike from public educational employees. (72 Cal. App.3d 100, 106-107; see Almond v. County of Sacramento, supra, 276 Cal. App.2d 32, 37-38.) The majority's disposition of section 3549 is wholly unsatisfactory in its insistence that ... section 3549 does not prohibit strikes but simply excludes the applicability of Labor Code section 923's protection of concerted activities. ( Ante, p. 12.) In my view, the argument is manifestly wrong, as the above quoted Pasadena holding indicates. To the contrary, by withholding the protection of section 923 the Legislature necessarily retained the preexisting prohibition against all public employee strikes. Therefore, in examining those sections of EERA relied on by the majority, we should bear in mind that, under EERA's own provisions, public school strikes remain unlawful.