Opinion ID: 2086381
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Critical-Service Status of Both the Interested Department Employer and the Complaining Employee

Text: As we have just discussed, it is only when both the complaining employee and the interested department/employer enjoy critical-service status that invocation of Act 312 will effectuate its purpose and policy, i.e., to resolve a public police    department employee's dispute where it is requisite to the high morale of such employees and the efficient operation of such departments for averting critical-service work stoppages. Under this dual, whole-act interpretation, two premises must be satisfied. First, the particular complainant employee must be subject to the hazards of police work; it is not enough that the interested department/employer merely employ at least two persons engaged in that capacity who are not complainants. Second, the interested department/employer must be a critical-service county department engaging such complainant employees and having as its principal function the promotion of the public safety, order and welfare so that a work stoppage in that department would threaten community safety; again, it is not enough that the interested department/employer merely employ at least two persons who fulfill the first premise whether or not complainants. Only when both premises are fulfilled may the benefits of Act 312's alternate, expeditious, effective and binding procedure for the resolution of [a public police    department employee's dispute] be initiated by the critical-service complainant, because it is requisite to the high morale of such employees and the efficient operation of such departments. Unlike its distinct interpretive counterparts, this third mode of interpretive analysis employs both the literal  2(1) scope provision and the  1 purpose provision in determining whether the dispute is embraced by the act's intended coverage. We are persuaded that the third mode of dual analysis is the appropriate one for ascertaining whether the instant prosecutor's investigators may initiate Act 312 proceedings to resolve their dispute as critical-service public police    department employees. Applying that dual third mode of interpretive analysis to the facts of this case, it emerges that although these investigators are subject to the hazards of police work and although the Oakland County Prosecutor's Department is literally a county department engaging such employees, we are unpersuaded that the Oakland County Prosecutor's Department constitutes an intended public police department such that allowing either itself or its investigators to resolve their dispute pursuant to Act 312 will effectuate the whole act's intent as either (1) requisite to the high morale of [the Oakland County Prosecutor's Department] employees or (2) requisite to the efficient operation of [the Oakland County Prosecutor's Department] or (3) necessary for averting critical-service strikes which would likely impede the public safety, order and welfare. While the prosecutor's investigators as well as the Oakland County Prosecutor's Department each literally satisfy the requirements of the  2(1) scope provision, invocation of the act to resolve their dispute is not embraced by the act's paramount intent expressed in  1 and discerned from case law since the Oakland County Prosecutor's Department does not constitute an intended critical-service public police department.