Opinion ID: 2592079
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Prohibited Bargaining Subjects

Text: We turn first to the Board's claim  concurred in by the Appellate Division  that the disclosure requirements are a prohibited subject of collective bargaining. According to the Board, Education Law § 2590-g (14) embodies a strong public policy to detect and deter corruption; to subject anticorruption measures to the give-and-take of the negotiating process would necessarily compromise, or appear to the public to compromise, the Board's ability to maintain the highest standards of integrity among its employees. Therefore, reasons the Board, implicit in the statutory scheme empowering the Board to require disclosure is prohibition of collective bargaining. In addition, the Board suggests that permitting the unions to negotiate over the disclosure requirements would significantly infringe its nondelegable responsibility for the general management, operation, control, maintenance and discipline of schools. (Education Law § 2554 [13] [b].) The obligation under the Taylor Law to bargain as to all terms and conditions of employment is a strong and sweeping policy of the State ( Matter of Cohoes City School Dist. v Cohoes Teachers Assn. , 40 N.Y.2d 774, 778; Board of Educ. v Associated Teachers , 30 N.Y.2d 122, 129). In a few instances, however, what might otherwise be negotiable terms and conditions of employment are prohibited from being collectively bargained. For example, a statute may direct that certain action be taken by the employer, leaving no room for negotiation ( see , Matter of Union Free School Dist. No. 2 v Nyquist , 38 N.Y.2d 137). Similarly, a subject that would result in school board surrender of nondelegable statutory responsibilities cannot be negotiated ( see , Matter of Cohoes City School Dist. v Cohoes Teachers Assn. , 40 N.Y.2d 774, supra ; Board of Educ. v Areman , 41 N.Y.2d 527). That certain statutory obligations of a school board are nondelegable, we have held, is an implicit expression of public policy that forecloses negotiation (see , Matter of Cohoes City School Dist. v Cohoes Teachers Assn. , 40 NY2d, at 778, supra) . We have also recognized that there may be general public policy limitations on collective bargaining that are not derived from statute ( see , Matter of Susquehanna Val. Cent. School Dist. [Susquehanna Val. Teachers' Assn.] , 37 N.Y.2d 614, 617). However, we have never actually prohibited bargaining or invalidated a collective bargaining agreement on such a non-statutory public policy ground. As we have noted, a public policy strong enough to require prohibition would almost invariably involv[e] an important constitutional or statutory duty or responsibility. ( Matter of Port Jefferson Sta. Teachers Assn. v Brookhaven-Comsewogue Union Free School Dist. , 45 N.Y.2d 898, 899.) The Legislature, if it chooses, can of course explicitly prohibit collective bargaining. Certainly, Education Law § 2590-g (14), as presently formulated, contains no such prohibition. Nor is the statute so unequivocal a directive to take certain action that it leaves no room for bargaining. The Board itself viewed its power to act under the statute as discretionary and it refrained for nine years from acting at all; the statute also explicitly gives the Board wide discretion concerning the substance of the reporting requirements. Negotiation of disclosure requirements would not amount to an impermissible restriction of the Board's responsibility to provide for the management, operation, control, maintenance and discipline of schools. It is difficult to conceive of any term and condition of employment that does not in some way impinge upon the operation or discipline of schools, but that does not mean that any agreement reached between the Board and the unions would constitute an unenforceable delegation of power ( see , Matter of Board of Educ. v Merrick Faculty Assn. , 65 AD2d 136, 141-142). Indeed, even while invalidating agreements in which a board surrendered its nondelegable responsibility for tenure decisions, we have permitted other agreements that obviously affected the tenure decision  for instance, by requiring certain procedures to be followed by the board (see , Matter of Cohoes City School Dist. v Cohoes Teachers Assn. , 40 NY2d, at 778, supra) . In cases where a stay of arbitration pursuant to a collective bargaining agreement has been sought on the ground that the remedy awarded might run afoul of a prohibition against the delegation of a duty, we have refused to stay the arbitration prematurely, unless no remedy fashioned by the arbitrator could possibly be consistent with public policy ( see , Matter of Enlarged City School Dist. [Troy Teachers Assn.] , 69 N.Y.2d 905, 906-907). Here the Board in effect asserts that there is no agreement it could reach with the unions that would not result in so severe a restriction of its power to manage the schools as to require us to set it aside on public policy grounds. Plainly, that cannot be so, and we refuse in advance to prohibit all negotiation on that broad speculation. The Board next maintains that whether or not ascribable to any specific statute, the public stake in the integrity of school board employees is so compelling that public policy requires that the measures taken by the Board not be impaired by the process of negotiating with the employees whose integrity is in question. This open-ended public policy argument is more aptly denominated a public interest argument, for it is not based on statute, Constitution or even clear common-law principles  sources in which a public policy prohibition against a collective bargaining agreement might be found ( see , Matter of Port Washington Union Free School Dist. v Port Washington Teachers Assn. , 45 N.Y.2d 411, 422-423 [Breitel, Ch. J., concurring]). Issues of public concern, while unquestionably important, are not to be confused with the strong, unmistakable public policy that would  and then only rarely  require invalidation of a collective bargaining agreement. Here, what the Board asks is not even that we invalidate a collective bargaining agreement violative of public policy, but prospectively that we declare that the entire area of disclosure requirements is off-limits for negotiation  and on the basis of no body of law whatsoever. This, we decline to do. Apart from the precedent such a ruling would create for future cases, we recognize in this case, as did PERB, that reasonable people might well disagree about what measures were appropriate to further the goal of eliminating corruption. We cannot discern a public policy that requires that employees, prospectively, be denied any voice in the matter ( see , Binghamton Civ. Serv. Forum v City of Binghamton , 44 N.Y.2d 23). Thus, it cannot be said that a prohibition against collective bargaining is found, explicitly or implicitly, in Education Law § 2590-g (14), or in public policy.