Court Opinion

ID: 9858797
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 16:41:37.779404+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:56:04.095610
License: Public Domain

CARTER, Justice
(specially concurring).
I concur in the ultimate conclusions of the court as to whether the five proposals under review are subjects of mandatory or permissive bargaining under the Public Employment Relations Act. I believe, however, that in reaching these results the court gratuitously expresses its views on many matters not necessary to the decision. One of these expressions of opinion is not only gratuitous, it is also erroneous.
The court properly disposes of proposal 9 on the basis that it relates to the establishment of a labor-management committee and thus facially falls outside any of the designated topics of mandatory bargaining. Not being content to stop at this point, the court goes on to add an entire division to its opinion, which concludes that the determination of “the number of employees within each classification and work unit that may be on vacation at any given time” is within the employer’s exclusive domain under Iowa Code section 20.7. I strongly disagree with that conclusion.
Obviously, an employer may not use the services of an employee while that employee is on vacation. As a result, almost all aspects of employee vacation impact in some manner on the employer’s ability to direct the work. That this is so is hardly a secret and had to have been within the contemplation of the legislature when it included vacation as a mandatory bargaining topic under section 20.9. The so-called “substantial interference” test that the court now employs to defeat compulsory bargaining of a particular aspect of vacation policy is merely a substitution of the court’s judgment for that of the General Assembly.
The court correctly recognizes, but then disregards, the proposition that these determinations are to be made on the basis of “whether the proposal, on its face, fits within a definitionally fixed section 20.9 mandatory bargaining subject.” Notwithstanding the fact that a “definitionally fixed” test would lead to a different result, the court has separated the topic of vacation policy into isolated categories, some of which are relegated to the public employer’s sole discretion.
In the absence of a determination of this issue in a collective bargaining agreement it is a matter that employers would logically wish to have settled in some controlling policy directive. If not included as an item of bargaining, the public employer will in all likelihood unilaterally issue such policy directives. This does not alter the fact that the topic that is being dealt with is both definitionally and functionally “vacation policy.” Under a correct application of section 20.9, all aspects of vacation policy are a topic of mandatory bargaining.