Court Opinion

ID: 9745292
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 22:47:20.973054+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:25:49.276296
License: Public Domain

CHIEF JUSTICE MILLER, concurring in part and dissenting in part: Unlike the majority, I do not believe that the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board failed, in either of these consolidated actions, to apply an appropriate test for determining the scope of the parties’ duty to bargain. Accordingly, the present matters do not need to be remanded to the Labor Board for further consideration, and I would reach the merits of these cases at this time. The Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1989, ch. 48, pars. 1701 through 1721) provides a comprehensive framework for collective bargaining at all levels of public education. Toward that end, the Act imposes on educational employers and employees a number of duties in the negotiation of collective-bargaining agreements. (See Board of Education of Community School District No. 1 v. Compton (1988), 123 Ill. 2d 216, 219-21.) Section 10(a) of the Act requires that employers bargain with employees over “wages, hours and other terms and conditions of employment.” (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1989, ch. 48, par. 1710(a).) The bargaining requirement imposed by section 10(a), however, must be read in conjunction with the employer rights provision of the Act. Section 4 provides, in pertinent part: “Employers shall not be required to bargain over matters of inherent managerial policy, which shall include such areas of discretion or policy as the functions of the employer, standards of services, its overall budget, the organizational structure and selection of new employees and direction of employees. Employers, however, shall be required to bargain collectively with regard to policy matters directly affecting wages, hours and terms and conditions of employment as well as the impact thereon upon request by employee representatives.” (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1989, ch. 48, par. 1704.) As section 4 states, policy matters directly affecting employee wages, hours, or other terms or conditions of employment are mandatory subjects of bargaining under the Act. The boundary line between policy matters that must be submitted to bargaining and policy matters that may remain managerial prerogatives is not drawn with perfect clarity, however. In determining in the present cases whether the policy matters at issue were mandatory subjects of bargaining, the Labor Board applied the balancing test it had previously formulated in its earlier opinion in Decatur School District No. 61, 4 Pub. Employee Rep. (Ill.) par. 1076, No. 86—CA—0042—S (IELRB May 17, 1988), aff’d sub nom. Decatur Board of Education, District No. 61 v. Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board (1989), 180 Ill. App. 3d 770. The majority purports to adopt a somewhat different standard and thus remands the matters to the Board for further proceedings. The court does not make clear, however, in wíiat respect its test differs from the Labor Board’s. The majority considers at length case law from other jurisdictions, as well as the legislative history of the Act and its companion law, the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1989, ch. 48, pars. 1601 through 1627), ground the Labor Board has already covered in earlier decisions (see, e.g., Berkeley School District No. 87, 2 Pub. Employee Rep. (Ill.) par. 1066, No. 84—CA—0057—C (IELRB May 30, 1986)). Notwithstanding its detailed review of these authorities, the majority offers only the following explanation of its test: “At this point in the analysis, the IELRB should balance the benefits that bargaining will have on the decisionmaking process with the burdens that bargaining imposes on the employer’s authority. Which issues are mandatory, and which are not, will be very fact-specific questions, which the IELRB is eminently qualified to resolve.” 149 Ill. 2d at 523. I fail to see any meaningful distinction between the balancing test proposed by the majority and the balancing test already being used by the Labor Board. To the extent that the two tests differ, the Labor Board’s formulation provides a more comprehensive description of the relevant criteria. I would note too that courts generally defer to an agency’s interpretation of ambiguous statutory language it is charged with administering. See Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. (1984), 467 U.S. 837, 842-45, 81 L. Ed. 2d 694, 702-04, 104 S. Ct. 2778, 2781-83; Airey v. Department of Revenue (1987), 116 Ill. 2d 528, 536. The majority’s formulation simply calls for a weighing of the burdens and benefits of bargaining, without specifying what they , might be. The Labor Board, however, has provided greater detail about the matters it considers when it determines whether a matter of managerial policy must be submitted to bargaining. In Central City, the Labor Board explained: “ ‘To determine the answer to this third and final step of the analysis, we devised a test which balances the educational employer’s “need and right to establish and implement educational policy” and the interests of the employees, expressed by their exclusive representative. If the interests of the employer are greater, there is no obligation to bargain. If, however, the interests of the employees are greater, then the subject directly affects wages, hours and terms and conditions of employment, and the employer must bargain.’ [Citation.]” (Emphasis in original.) Central City, 5 Pub. Employee Rep. (Ill.) par. 1056, at IX—120. I do not believe that the use of the burdens/benefits test now mandated by the majority will materially alter the analysis previously undertaken by the Labor Board in its resolution of this question. The burdens of bargaining would relate to the impact that bargaining the particular issue would have on the employer’s interest in maintaining its exclusive control over the matter. Conversely, the benefits of bargaining would relate to the employees’ interest in subjecting those policy matters to the give-and-take of the collective-bargaining process. In the present cases, the Labor Board examined these same considerations in determining whether the matters at issue were mandatory subjects of bargaining under sections 4 and 10(a) of the Act. Discussing the application of its own balancing test, the Board in Central City stated: “Having determined that the decision to [make a reduction in force] is both a term and condition of employment, as well as a managerial prerogative, we must now balance the competing interests at stake to determine whether it is a ‘policy matter directly affecting wages, hours and terms and conditions of employment’ within the meaning of the second sentence of Section 4. In so doing, we must balance the employees’ interest in bargaining that decision against management’s need to ‘maintain unencumbered control over managerial policy.’ Decatur Board of Education, District 61, ***.” (Central City, 5 Pub. Employee Rep. (Ill.) par. 1056, at IX—121.) The Labor Board went on to consider these aspects, and concluded that the school district’s decision to reduce its personnel was not a mandatory subject of bargaining. The Labor Board’s analysis in LeRoy was less detailed, but there the Board was simply following two earlier decisions in which it had already determined that teacher evaluation plans are mandatory subjects of bargaining. One of the cases preceded the Board’s adoption of the Decatur balancing test. The second decision was issued after Decatur, however, and there the Board explicitly stated that the same result would obtain through application of a balancing test. See Mattoon Community Unit School District No. 2, 5 Pub. Employee.Rep. (Ill.) par. 1199, No. 87-CA-0014-S (IELRB Nov. 14, 1988), at IX—542. In sum, I believe that the Labor Board has already been examining the criteria the majority now mandates, and that remanding these cases to the Board for further proceedings is thus unnecessary. Significantly, the Board itself does not believe that denominating the balancing test a “burdens/benefits” analysis will work any material change in its own treatment of these issues. Like the majority opinion, the appellate court in Central City also phrased the balancing test in terms of burdens and benefits. Significantly, the Labor Board has expressly approved the language used by the First District in Central City as an accurate description of its test. Discussing the First District and Fourth District opinions in these cases, the Labor Board, in its brief filed ■with this court in LeRoy, states: “The Central City court has accurately stated the IELRB’s balancing test, while the Fourth District opinions in Decatur and in [LeRoy] do not. * * * *** In the cases at bar, this Court is urged to adopt the Board’s balancing test, as described in Central City, as a means of evaluating actions that may implicate both employees’ rights and employers’ prerogatives under the IELRB.” Thus, the Labor Board itself has endorsed the burdens/ benefits formulation without discerning in that phraseology a material change in the analysis it will be required to undertake. As a final matter, I note that the nomenclature adopted by the majority to describe its balancing test is derived from case law concerning private sector bargaining. (See First National Maintenance Corp. v. NLRB (1981), 452 U.S. 666, 677-79, 69 L. Ed. 2d 318, 330-31, 101 S. Ct. 2573, 2580-81.) I do not interpret the majority’s use of those terms, however, as signifying an intention to find in private sector labor law an answer to every public sector problem. Many differences exist between private sector and public sector collective bargaining, and not every concept used'in private labor law is readily transferred to the arena of public sector bargaining. (See Abood v. Detroit Board of Education (1977), 431 U.S. 209, 227-28, 52 L. Ed. 2d 261, 279-80, 97 S. Ct. 1782, 1795-96.) As this court has recognized, public bodies and private corporations are subject to vastly different systems of management, funding, and control, and many aspects of public sector labor relations will not find an exact analogue in the private world. (See Orenic v. Illinois State Labor Relations Board (1989), 127 Ill. 2d 453, 478-79.) Elected officials are not in all respects like senior management, and taxpayers are not in all respects like stockholders. Because the Labor Board in these cases examined the relevant criteria now endorsed by the majority, I see no reason to remand the matters to the Board for further proceedings. To the extent that the majority’s test actually deviates from the Labor Board’s, however, I would adhere to the Board’s own formulation. We have before us the Labor Board’s considered views regarding these issues, and I would therefore reach the merits of these decisions. Although I disagree with the majority’s discussion of the principal question, I join the remaining portions of the court’s opinion.