Court Opinion

ID: 9695853
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:30:26.157832+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:16.046008
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice
(dissenting).
I cannot agree that the interns, residents and clinical-fellows of Temple University Hospital (appellants) are not “employees” within the meaning of section 301 of the Public Employee Relations Act (PERA).1
In my view, the majority makes at least three errors: (1) it misperceives the role of appellate courts in reviewing actions of the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board (PLRB); (2) it inaccurately characterizes the role of interns, residents and clinical-fellows in the operation of the hospital; and (3) it subverts the legislative purpose embodied in the PERA. I dissent and would reverse the order of the Commonwealth Court and reinstate the order of the PLRB.
I
The Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board, in its order and notice of election dated April 28, 1972, found that in*580terns, residents and clinical-fellows are employees within the meaning of the PERA. This conclusion of law was affirmed on May 12, 1972, by, the Board in its Nisi Order of Certification. The Board’s findings of fact and conclusions of law were entered after hearings pursuant to the PERA, a statute whose administration is entrusted to the Board.2 The court of common pleas, after hearing, dismissed the appeal from the order of the Board.
A further appeal was taken to the Commonwealth Court which, by a divided court, reversed the order of the court of common pleas and the Board. The four judge majority (Blatt, Mencer, and Rodgers, JJ., dissenting) there stated: “[Wjhen the record is read and viewed in its entirety, it is abundantly clear that PAIR [Philadelphia Association of Interns and Residents] members cannot be considered employees under PERA. The student aspect of the affiliation is paramount.” The majority here, in affirming that determination by the Commonwealth Court, has misperceived the role of the appellate courts in reviewing actions of the PLRB.
In Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board v. Kaufmann Department Stores, Inc., 345 Pa. 398, 400, 29 A.2d 90, 92 (1942), this Court held:
“[I]t is the function of the board not only to appraise conflicting evidence, to determine the credibility of witnesses, and to resolve primary issues of fact, but also to draw inferences from the established facts and circumstances. . . . Upon judicial review it is the duty of the court to determine whether the findings of the board are supported by the substantial and legally credible evidence required by the statutes and whether the conclusions deduced therefrom are reasonable and not capricious.” (citations omitted).
*581This limited scope of appellate review correctly acknowledges the expertise of the Board which deals continuously with these matters. It also recognizes the ability of the Board to weigh the particular facts in the context of the language and intent of our labor relations statutes. Because of the singular nature of the problems presented in this area of the law, courts ought to give great weight to the Board’s finding and conclusions. This, the majority here, and the Commonwealth Court, have failed to do. Both have fallen into the same error of viewing their appellate function as fact finding. It is not the reviewing court’s function to substitute its judgment, as the Commonwealth Court and the majority here have done, for that of the Board in making findings of fact.
In this regard, it is useful to look to the decisions of the United States Supreme Court construing analogous provisions of the federal labor laws.3 In National Labor Relations Board v. Hearst Publications, 322 U.S. 111, 131, 64 S.Ct. 851, 860, 88 L.Ed. 1170 (1944), a case deciding that newspaperboys were employees under the National Labor Relations Act, the Court gave great deference to the NLRB’s determination:
“Everyday experience in the administration of the statute gives it familiarity with the circumstances and backgrounds of employment relationships in various industries, with the abilities and needs of the workers for self organization and collective action, and with the adaptability of collective bargaining for the peaceful settlement of their disputes with their employers. The experience thus acquired must be brought fre*582quently to bear on the question who is an employee under the Act.
“Hence in reviewing the Board’s ultimate conclusions, it is not the court's function to substitute its own inferences of fact for the Board’s, when the latter have support in the record. Undoubtedly questions of statutory interpretation, especially when arising in the first instance in judicial proceedings, are for the courts to resolve, giving appropriate weight to the judgment of those whose special duty is to administer the questioned statute. But where the question is one of specific application of a broad statutory term in a proceeding in which the agency administering the statute must determine it initially, the reviewing court’s function is limited. . . . [T]he Board’s determination that specified persons are ‘employees’ under this Act is to be accepted if it has ‘warrant in the record’ and a reasonable basis in law.” (citations omitted).
Surely there is no reason for the majority to approach these matters in a manner different than our federal counterparts. This Court’s decision in Kaufman’s parallels the sound federal policy, and the rule there announced should be followed here. Since the Board’s determination that appellants are employees under the Act has support in the record, that determination heré, as in Kaufman’s and Hearst Publishing, is to be accepted. In light of the reviewing court’s limited function there is no adequate ground for the majority’s interference with the Board’s order.
II
Even if this Court were free — which it is not — to ignore the role of the Board and make an independent evaluation of the evidence, I would nevertheless conclude that the interns, residents and clinical-fellows of Temple *583University Hospital are employees within the meaning of section 301 of the PERA. I base this conclusion on the nature of their salaried affiliation with the hospital and on the purpose of the Act.
The record indicates that appellants spend at least 80% of their sixty or seventy hour work weeks caring for patients. They receive salaries, based on length of past service, of between $10,000 and $20,000. They receive all benefits other hospital employees receive. The Board found that only 10-15% of appellants’ work weeks were spent in formal educational activities. This evidence was adequate for the Board to conclude that appellants are employees.
The majority performs a curious equivocation. The findings of fact of the Board are accepted, as indeed they must be, yet the majority concludes, “while appellants herein are clothed with the indicia of employee status, the true nature of their reason for being at Temple University negates their employee status.” (emphasis added). Plainly, the governing issue here is whether they are employees not their reasons for obtaining such employment. Their reason for obtaining employment is an irrelevant consideration. Our task is not to create exceptions to the broad statutory definition of an “employee” based on what are urged to be distinctions in employment motivation.
The majority accepts the findings of fact of the Board. Having done so, this controversy is decided. It is clear that the statutory definition “any individual employed by a public employer” contains no exclusion for this category of employees. Neither the Commonwealth Court nor this Court is justified in creating one. The interns, residents and clinical-fellows receive remuneration, pay wage-related taxes and receive typical employee benefits. Moreover, the hospital, regardless of whether it characterizes itself as a teaching hospital or a treating hospital, operates a health facility which renders a service to the *584public and receives payment from the recipients of its services. The service it renders is administered, in significant part, through appellants who are paid in excess of $10,000 for their services by the hospital, just as all other hospital employees receive wages or salaries from the hospital.
The requirement that appellants must fulfill a period of such employment before being licensed by the state or qualifying as specialists may perhaps be relevant in collective bargaining between the employer and the employee representative and may affect the administration of a collective bargaining- agreement. However, it does not contravene their employee status. Furthermore, that the individuals here may sometimes be referred to as students does not alter their status as salaried employees. It is also of little consequence that the duration of appellants’ employment may be for periods of one to five years.
Our role is to consider the statutory language and the purpose of the Act in light of the established facts. This process unmistakably leads to the conclusion that interns, residents and clinical-fellows are employees. To hold otherwise in the face of the conceded and established facts, which include almost every traditional indicia of employment status, would be to judicially create exceptions which the Legislature did not. The only exceptions to the definition of employee in the PERA are for elected officials, certain appointees of the Governor, management level employees, confidential employees, firemen and police.4
The conclusion that appellants are employees under the PERA finds strong support in other jurisdictions. In two states the question has been decided by the courts, Regents of the University of Michigan v. Michigan Employment Relations Commission, 389 Mich. 96, 204 N.W. *5852d 218 (1973); Long Island College Hospital, 33 S.L.R.B. 32 (N.Y.1970); Brooklyn Eye and Ear Hospital, 32 S.L.R.B. 21 (N.Y.1968). Five other states extend collective bargaining rights to hospital professionals by statute: Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon, Connecticut and New Jersey. Moreover, insofar as the National Labor Relations Act applies to private non-profit hospitals it appears that there is recognition of the employee status of residents, interns and clinical-fellows. Cf. Senate Report No. 93-766,93d Cong.2d Sess., at 6.
In my view the facts presented to the Board clearly justify, and may perhaps mandate, the conclusion that this class of salaried professionals is within the statutory definition of employees.
III
That appellants are employees finds additional strong support when considered in the context of the entirety of the Public Employee Relations Act. Although it is necessary to consider the meaning of employee in terms of the usual indicia of that status, it is especially relevant to consider the statutory term in light of the purpose of this particular Act. Indeed, as Judge Learned Hand said in NLRB v. Federbush Co., Inc., 121 F.2d 954, 957 (2d Cir. 1941):
“Words are not pebbles in alien juxtaposition; they have only a communal existence; and not only does the meaning of each interpenetrate the other, but all in their aggregate take their purport from the setting in which they are used . . . .”
For this reason I do not find it helpful to consider the precise meaning of employee under various other statutes which were directed to different objectives.5 We are *586only concerned with whether appellants are “employees” within the meaning of the PERA. Helpful in that determination is the Act’s purpose.
Section 101 of the PERA provides, in part:
“The General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania declares that it is the public policy of this Commonwealth and the purpose of this act to promote orderly and constructive relationships between all public employers and their employes subject, however, to the paramount right of the citizens of this Commonwealth to keep inviolate the guarantees for their health, safety and welfare. Unresolved disputes between the public employer and its employes are injurious to the public and the General Assembly is therefore aware that adequate means must be established for minimizing them and providing for their resolution. . . . the General Assembly has determined that the overall policy may best be accomplished by (1) granting to public employes the right to organize and choose freely their representatives; (2) requiring public employérs to negotiate and bargain with employe organizations representing public employes and to enter into written agreements evidencing the result of such bargaining; and (3) establishing procedures to provide for the protection of the rights of the public employe, the public employer and the public at large.”
This statement of policy is the reiteration of the lessons of recent history. Though the relationship between those who manage a public enterprise and those who labor in its behalf is fraught with potential for conflict, *587yet it is a relationship which affects the rest of society so directly that a continuing means of conflict avoidance and resolution must be devised. Collective bargaining in public employment, as set forth in the PERA, is the method chosen by the Legislature, “to make appropriate collective action of employees an instrument of peace rather than of strife.” NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1, 34, 57 S.Ct. 615, 622, 81 L.Ed. 893 (1937).
It cannot be doubted that the citizens of this Commonwealth have a legitimate interest in the smooth operation of health care institutions. Nor can it be doubted, based on this record, that the interns, residents and clinical-fellows of Temple University Hospital provide services necessary to the normal treatment of patients in the hospital. It is clear to me that the relationship of these young professionals to the hospital administration can spawn problems of the type embraced in the public policy objectives of this Act. It is equally clear that the Legislature has provided, by the terms of the PERA, a means for the resolution of these differences, and has created only limited, specific exceptions to this definition of employee. The Legislature has not excluded this class of employees. It is difficult indeed to understand on what basis the majority ignores the Board’s findings and independently concludes that this class of people, vested with the usual and typical employee status, should be excluded from the provisions of the PERA based on an unarticulated policy judgment that an employee with some student status should not be able to deal with his employer in the manner which the Legislature has deemed most desirable.
I would reverse the order of the Commonwealth Court, reinstate the order of the Board that interns, residents and clinical-fellows are employees under the Act, and remand for determination of the proper bargaining unit.

. Act of July 23, 1970, P.L. 563, No. 195, 43 P.S. §§ 1101.101 et seq. (Supp.1975). Section 301(2) provides:
“ ‘Public employe’ or ‘employe’ means any individual employed by a public employer but shall not include elected officials, appointees of the Governor with the advice and consent of the Senate as required by law, management level employes, confidential employes, clergymen or other persons in a religious profession, employes or personnel at church offices or facilities when utilized primarily for religious purposes and those employes covered under the act of June 24, 1968 (Act No. Ill), entitled ‘An act specifically authorizing collective bargaining between policemen and firemen and their public employers; providing for arbitration in order to settle disputes, and requiring compliance with collective bargaining agreements and findings of arbitrators.’ ”

. Act of July 23, 1970, P.L. 563, No. 195, art. V, § 501, 43 P.S. § 1101.501 (Supp.1975).

. See, e. g., Costigan v. Philadelphia Finance Dept. 462 Pa. 425, 432 n. 7, 341 A.2d 456, 460 n. 7 (1975); Board of Education of the School District of Philadelphia v. Pennsylvania Fed. of Teachers, 458 Pa. 342, 327 A.2d 47 (1974); cf. PLRB v. State College Area School Dist., 461 Pa. 494, 337 A.2d 262 (1975).

. See n. 1, supra.

. The Commonwealth Court, in its analysis, considered the definitions of “employee” as determined in cases arising under the Veterans’ Education Assistance Act of 1966, the Fair Labor Stan*586dards Act, the Pennsylvania Workmen’s Compensation Act, and federal tax laws.
The precise meaning of a term used in a particular act is related to the purpose of the Act. Compare, for example, the different meanings of “bankruptcy” under the Federal Bankruptcy Act and in the traditional equity sense. It is fruitless to consider a word’s meaning in a vacuum. Cf. Costigan v. Philadelphia Finance Dept., supra n. 3.