Court Opinion

ID: 9678982
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:37:47.657899+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:09.336969
License: Public Domain

Soltéis, J.
(concurring in reversal). I agree that the temporary injunction should be vacated, but for reasons other than those stated by my Brethren.
It is my judgment that the individual defendants had not become employees of the plaintiff school district when the complaint was filed. None had entered into the contracts of employment with the school district our legislature saw fit to require “be in writing and signed by a majority of the board in behalf of the district, or by the president and secretary, or by the superintendent of schools * * * when so directed at a meeting of the board.” Section 569, school code of 1955, as amended (CLS 1961, § 340.569, as amended by PA 1965, No 14 [Stat Ann 1968 Rev § 15.3569]).1 Absent such written con*328tracts of employment, tbe teachers were not yet employees of the school district subject to the “no-strike” provisions of the Hutchinson act.2 The act’s definition of “strike”3 clearly supports my conclusion that the individual defendants, not yet employees of the school district, did not “strike” in violation of the act. Until written contracts of employment were executed, they were under no obligation to report for duty; they could not absent themselves from their positions, for they had none; they could not stop work, for they had not begun yet to work, nor had they agreed even to work; and, finally, they could not abstain from performing the duties of employment for any purpose, for they had not assumed yet any such'duties.
It has been suggested that Garden City School District v. Labor Mediation Board (1959), 358 Mich 258, supports my Brethren’s conclusion that, even without the written contracts of employment required by the school code, the individual defendants were employees and their actions constituted a “strike” prohibited by the Hutchinson act. In the Garden City School District Case (p 263) we held that the labor mediation board had jurisdiction to mediate “salary disputes in advance of the determination of the salary provisions of individual teacher contracts.” The board acquired jurisdiction in that case upon the teachers’ filing of a petition for such mediation on June 13, 1955, during the preceding contract year and apparently while they still were under contracts of employment. I do not mean to suggest by this *329that jurisdiction would not have attached had the petition been filed after completion of their existing contracts (that issue is not before us, nor was it in the Garden City Case), hut only that the Garden City Case is not authority for the proposition that schoolteachers can he considered employees, even absent written contracts. It stands properly only for the proposition that schoolteacher employees may invoke the jurisdiction of the labor mediation board to mediate “salary disputes in advance of the determination of the salary provisions of [the following academic year’s] individual teacher contracts.”
No employment relationship yet having arisen between the individual defendants and the plaintiff school district when this action was filed, it follows that the injunctive order enjoining defendants from concerted abstention from employment violated the involuntary servitude provisions of the Thirteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and article 1, § 9 of our State Constitution.
I note my agreement with the latter part of Mr. Justice O’Hara’s opinion regarding the judicial inadequacy of the record to support the injunction issued. In other words, even were these defendants employees, I would agree with Justice O’Hara that the chancellor, on the record then before him, should not have granted injunctive relief.
The injunction should be vacated. Defendants should be allowed to tax their costs.
T. M. Kavanagh, J., concurred with Souris, J.

 Of the 209 teachers of the district, 33 new teachers had signed written contracts with the district, hut those contracts, as the district admits, are “subject to whatever master contract might ultimately be negotiated” between the school district and the defendant union.

 CL 1948, § 423.202 (Stat Ann 1960 Rev § 17.455[2]).

 “As used in this act the word ‘strike’ shall mean the concerted failure to report for duty, the wilful absence from one’s position, the stoppage of work, or the abstinence in whole or in part from the full, faithful and proper performance of the duties of employment, for the purpose of inducing, influencing or coereing a change in the conditions, or compensation, or the rights, privileges or obligations of employment.” CL 1948, § 423.201, as amended by PA 1965, No 379 (Stat Ann 1968 Rev § 17.455 [1]).