Court Opinion

ID: 9679529
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:55:02.747181+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:14.517021
License: Public Domain

J. E. Townsend, J.
(dissenting). 1 respectfully dissent. If this dispute had arisen in the context of the negotiation of an initial employment contract or in the negotiation of revised contract language for a new contract term, I would agree that appellant, City of Riverview, would have had an obligation to negotiate contract terms affecting retirement benefits.
Rather, this dispute arose during the term of an employment contract and involved the appropriate definition and interpretation of existing contract language.
Each party to an employment contract has the right to interpret and construe existing contract language during the term of a labor contract, subject to a challenge as to the correctness of such interpretation. The propriety of such action is particularly apparent when the interpretation and *164definition adopted by the city is identical to that adopted by two panels of this Court. Stover v Retirement Board of the City of St Clair Shores Firemen & Police Pension System, 78 Mich App 409; 260 NW2d 112 (1977), lv den 402 Mich 879 (1978), and Lansing Fire Fighters Ass’n Local 421 v Board of Trustees of the City of Lansing Policemen’s & Firemen’s System, 90 Mich App 441; 282 NW2d 346 (1979), lv den 407 Mich 957 (1980).
Nor is the case of Mt Clemens Fire Fighters Union, Local 838, IAFF v City of Mt Clemens, 58 Mich App 635; 228 NW2d 500 (1975), of significance in this case. The City of Riverview had no previously established policy to include accumulated vacation and sick time in the computation of pension benefits. There being no definition by estoppel as the result of a previously established policy, the city had the right to adopt reasonable definitions of the terms "final average earnings” and "final earnings”.
I would submit that the adoption of a reasonable definition of existing contract language should not constitute an unfair labor practice. To rule otherwise means that parties to employment contracts are subject to a continuing obligation to negotiate the definition and interpretation of existing contract language during the term of the contract. I would suggest that such a rule effectively eliminates any rule of finality with respect to contract language and would impose an unwarranted, never-ending obligation to bargain revisions of existing contract language.