Court Opinion

ID: 9534251
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:37:54.394624+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:29:53.282782
License: Public Domain

R. M. Maher, J.
Defendant board of education appeals from an order below granting summary judgment in favor of plaintiff union. We affirm.
Plaintiff union represents teachers employed by defendant board. In 1972, plaintiff and defendant entered into a collective bargaining agreement. In the agreement, the board agreed that "it and its representatives will not take any action affecting other working conditions of teachers without prior adequate negotiations with the union”.
At the beginning of the 1973-1974 school year, in September of 1973, the board unilaterally ordered its kindergarten teachers to increase their daily student contact time from 2-1/2 hours in the morning and in the afternoon to 2-3/4 hours in each session. The union, viewing this increase of 1/2 hour daily in student contact time as a change in working conditions, contended that the board breached the collective bargaining agreement by ordering the increase "without prior adequate negotiations with the union”. The union filed a grievance, which the board denied. As provided in the collective bargaining agreement, the grievance was submitted to advisory arbitration. The arbitrator’s *478award found a violation of the agreement and ordered negotiation between the board and the union on the change in student contact time.
The board chose to disregard the nonbinding arbitration award. The union then began this action in circuit court. The court found a breach of the collective bargaining agreement and ordered the board to negotiate the increase in student contact time with the union. This appeal requires us to decide whether the court below erred in holding that student contact time was a working condition subject to negotiation.1
We note that it is not necessary to decide here whether student contact time is a term or condition of employment that would be a mandatory subject of bargaining under § 15 of the public employment relations act, MCLA 423.215; MSA 17.455(15). Detroit Police Officers Association v Detroit, 391 Mich 44; 214 NW2d 803 (1974). Were this question facing us, we could look to the numerous Federal and state decisions that have given meaning to the phrase "terms and conditions of employment”.
There are some opinions that have dealt with the meaning of the phrase "working conditions”. In Independent Oil Workers Union, Local 117 v American Oil Co, 296 F Supp 650 (D Kan, 1969), the issue was whether reduction of the size of the crew operating a catalytic converter was a change in a practice relative to working conditions and thus subject to arbitration under a collective bargaining agreement. The court wrote:
" 'Working conditions’, a term somewhat peculiar and prevalent in the labor-management area, means the *479panoply of the incidents of the employment relationship. * * * It is obviods that the employment of a particular number of men on a particular unit to do regular and particular services is a practice relating to working conditions.” 296 F Supp at 658.
In Employment Security Commission v Amalgamated Meat Cutters & Butcher Workmen of North America, Local 448, 22 Ariz App 54; 523 P2d 105 (1974), the Arizona Court of Appeals had to decide whether an increase in the rate of production in a meat packing plant was a change in working conditions subject to negotiation under a collective bargaining agreement. The Court concluded that "the speed or rate at which a workman is required to perform his duties falls within the concept of his 'working conditions’ 523 P2d at 110.
There is no doubt in our minds that the time a teacher is required to spend with his students is a working condition. It directly affects the energy he must expend at his job, and prevents him from either resting or performing other tasks essential to his teaching function. By ordering a unilateral increase in student contact time, the board breached the contract provision that required negotiation of changes in working conditions.
Affirmed. Costs to plaintiff.
J. H. Gillis, J., concurred.

 We have attempted, unsuccessfully, to discover the factual dispute that the board claims made summary judgment inappropriate.