Opinion ID: 1298503
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: payments to affiliated organizations

Text: The service fees withheld from Cumero's salary during the year 1977-1978, pursuant to the organizational security arrangement set out in footnote 3, ante, totaled $152, all of which the district paid directly to the CTA, the association's state affiliate. The CTA in turn retained $107 and transmitted $15 to the local association and $30 to the NEA, the national affiliate. (12) Cumero contends his service fees must be confined to amounts received and expended by the local association itself and should not include sums paid to the state or national affiliates. He points out that section 3540.1, subdivision (i)(2), limits the service fee to the standard initiation fee, periodic dues, and general assessments of the recognized or certified employee organization. He argues that the only such organization representing his bargaining unit is the local association, citing a PERB decision holding that the CTA, as affiliate of a local association exclusively representing a school district's employees, had no obligation to negotiate with the District ( Fresno Unified School District v. Fresno Teachers Association, CTA/NEA (1982) PERB Dec. No. 208 [6 PERC ¶ 13110 at p. 428]). PERB rejected Cumero's contention on the ground that payment to affiliates ultimately inures to the benefit of the service fee payor in his employment relationship (PERB Dec. No. 197, supra, at p. 19 [6 PERC ¶ 13065 at p. 232]), and the Court of Appeal rejected the contention on the ground that its acceptance would seriously undermine the practice of affiliation[;] [n]othing in the EERA suggests that the Legislature intended such a dramatic effect from ... section 3540.1, subdivision (i)(2). The PERB hearing officer, however, rejected the contention on grounds more soundly based on the EERA itself. Section 3540.1, subdivision (d), in defining the statutory phrase employee organization, declares that the phrase shall also include any person such an organization authorizes to act on its behalf. The hearing officer concluded that the CTA and NEA, therefore, can be understood to be authorized by the teachers in the District to be their exclusive representative as surely and as fully as is the local Association. (PERB Proposed Dec., supra, at p. 67 [4 PERC ¶ 11156 at p. 680].) In oral argument before PERB on exceptions to the hearing officer's decision, Cumero's counsel did not dispute the hearing officer's interpretation of section 3540.1, subdivision (d), but argued that the hearing officer's implicit conclusions that the local association or its members had in fact authorized the CTA and NEA to act on the association's behalf were mere assumptions, supported by not one shred of evidence. To the contrary, the association's constitution declared the association to be an affiliate of the CTA and the NEA. The 1977-1978 agreement covering the bargaining unit that included Cumero was between the district and King City Joint Union High School Teachers Association, CTA/NEA and provided for payment of unified membership dues. There was evidence that the CTA supported the local association's representational functions with a variety of administrative and legal assistance, training programs, research, communications, and other services. That this close organizational relationship was widely understood is demonstrated by Cumero's own references to the local association as the CTA in his opening testimony before the hearing officer. The stipulation confining evidence at the PERB hearing to the activities of the CTA as typical of those of the local association was predicated on the assumed propriety of transmitting nonmember service fees to the CTA, to be used for activities in furtherance of the local association's representational obligations. In entering into this stipulation, Cumero's counsel apparently did not intend to waive the alternative contention that section 3540.1, subdivision (i)(2), allows service fees to be received and used only by the particular employee organization recognized or certified as the exclusive bargaining representative. We conclude, however, that section 3540.1, subdivision (d), by expanding the definition of an employee organization to include persons authorized to act on the organization's behalf, was intended to permit a local union to act through an affiliate in discharging the union's representational obligations under the EERA. Accordingly, for purposes of determining nonmembers' rights to object to uses of their service fees under an organizational security arrangement, service fee funds spent by an authorized affiliate in support of the union's representational obligations must be treated as if spent by the union itself.