Court Opinion

ID: 9695163
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:10:17.129344+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:09.406655
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Judge Craig.-
A dissenting opinion, by this member of the court, in Jersey Shore Education Association v. Jersey Shore Area School District, 99 Pa. Commonwealth Ct. 163, 512 A.2d 805 (1986), petition for allowance of appeal granted, 514 Pa. 650, 524 A.2d 496 (1987), expressed disagreement with the conclusion that the prospect of *579state subsidy loss, alone, could constitute sufficient ground for enjoining a strike of the sort involved in this case. However, on that point, the premise of the majority opinion in this case now constitutes the law of this court, unless and until it might be overturned on appeal. Therefore, each member of this court must recognize that premise as the interpretation of the law which governs this case with respect to the grounds for enjoining a strike.
However, if one takes the injunction sending the teachers back to work to be legally well founded, this court should uphold the trial courts concomitant mandate requiring bargaining to continue. The power ■ to issue an injunction necessarily involves the power and duty to mold that injunction as may be appropriate to mitigate injury to the party subjected to the injunction. 15 Standard Pa. Practice 2d §83:190.
If this court interprets the law as authorizing an injunction requiring teachers to work but, at the same time, as prohibiting judicial assurance that bargaining shall continue, this court goes contrary to the Public Employe Relations Acts interrelated goals—requiring public employers to bargain, as well as resolving injurious disputes. Section 101 of that Act, the Act of July 23, 1970, P.L. 563, 43 PS. §1101.101.
If the members of the bargaining unit must continue working as a consequence of a back-to-work injunction, that nullification of the strike as a bargaining element properly should be balanced by assurance that bargaining shall continue.
Although the remedy of pursuing an unfair labor practice charge with the Pennsylvania Labor Relations-Board is admittedly available, it is necessarily temporally remote in its availability. The trial judge, acting as equity chancellor, possesses immediate and full knowledge of the situation as a consequence of the injunction proceedings and the hearing within those proceedings.
*580This court would do no violence to the jurisdiction of the PLRB by recognizing that the trial judge has a responsibility to insure that the period during which the injunction is needed shall be as brief as possible, and the only way that the trial judge can effectuate that goal is by balancing the injunction with the requirement that bargaining continue.
Otherwise, the issuance of the injunction carries with it a temptation to cease bargaining for the time being, or at least to slow its pace.
In upholding a labor injunction in a case of the present kind, this court should permit the injunction to remain within a bargaining context by affirming the entire order, not just one side of it.
Judge Colins joins this dissent.