Court Opinion

ID: 9697020
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:04:07.300512+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:28.605260
License: Public Domain

NIX, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
Judge Craig, in a Memorandum Opinion, ably sets forth the reasons for the grant of the preliminary injunction (See Exhibit "A”). I find the arguments to the contrary, offered by the majority opinion, unpersuasive. I, therefore, dissent.
*198EXHIBIT A
August 21, 1986
MEMORANDUM OPINION BY JUDGE CRAIG
Pursuant to evidentiary hearing held on petitioners’ motion for preliminary injunction, the chancellor finds as follows:
1. Petitioners consist of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 13, AFL-CIO, by its trustee ad litem (union), and nine individuals, each of whom is employed as a District Lottery Representative (DLR) of the Pennsylvania State Lottery, Pennsylvania Department of Revenue.
2. The respondents consist of the Commonwealth itself, the Governor, his Secretary of Administration, the Secretary of Revenue and pertinent officials of the Department of Revenue.
3. According to official job description, each DLR performs a variety of duties in implementing the marketing program for the promotion and sale of lottery tickets. DLRs coordinate advertising, distribution and control of lottery materials, evaluate license applications, evaluate performance of sales agents, make recommendations on the same and insure compliance with departmental regulations and policies. DLRs also make delivery of tickets and pick up returns from banks. DLRs participate in marketing studies and prepare reports. They answer questions and supply information to sales agents. They conduct delinquency investigations of retailers and informally audit or review the records of retailers or agents.
4. The Secretary of Revenue’s letter advising DLRs of their appointment states, among other matters, that:
Your official headquarters for travel expense purposes will be your home.
5. As an established past practice for fourteen years since 1972, the Department of Revenue has paid and continues to pay DLRs under a “portal-to-portal pay system” (p-t-p), under which they are on hourly pay from the time *199they leave their homes each workday until the time they return to their homes, on the basis of a 7½-hour day, i.e., from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., less a one-hour unpaid lunch period.
6. In the 1981 collective bargaining negotiations with the union, the department proposed to eliminate p-t-p; no agreement was achieved to do so.
7. The department did not resubmit the proposal in the collective bargaining negotiations ending in June, 1985, pursuant to which the parties developed a new agreement remaining effective until June 30, 1988.
8. In connection with the same union, analogous p-t-p pay system issues have been affirmed by arbitration awards, with respect to certain weights and measures employees in 1977 and parole board employees in 1981, issued pursuant to grievances filed following state efforts to eliminate the system. PetExh.R, S.
9. Beginning in August of 1985, at a labor management meeting between union representatives and lottery representatives, the secretary of the department and other management representatives have proposed to eliminate the p-t-p pay system for DLRs. Department management representatives have renewed the elimination proposal on a number of occasions from August 1985 into July of 1986, and union representatives have each time rejected the elimination proposal.
10. Initially, by discussions and then, in July of 1986, by memoranda from the department’s director of personnel, the department has proposed to reorganize the work of the DLRs by eliminating DLRs in field operations as at present, replacing their delivery and marketing display functions by contractors and creating a smaller number of new positions in the Harrisburg area to deal with retailers primarily by telephone. The department proposal involves furloughing the home-based DLRs working in the respective six areas of the state, proceeding one area at a time, beginning with the thirteen DLRs now remaining in the Pittsburgh area.
*20011. Departmental oral and written communications have regularly described the elimination of the p-t-p pay system as desirable for the achievement of productivity goals. However, department management has in fact not presented the proposed reorganization as a definite administrative action desirable for its own sake, but has consistently presented it only as an alternative which the department would undertake if the union declines to accept elimination of the p-t-p pay plan. Accordingly, the department’s position, as communicated to the union representatives and DLRs in the six areas of the state, has essentially been that, if the p-t-p pay plan of DLRs is not eliminated, the present DLRs will be furloughed from their jobs.
12. In fact, by written notification of July 25, 1986, the department’s director of personnel informed the union and the respective Pittsburgh DLRs that all DLR positions in the Pittsburgh area will be eliminated and all DLRs will be furloughed effective August 28, 1986.
13. Department management officials, after the announcement of the Pittsburgh furloughs, have continued to communicate the prospect of such furloughs being invoked in other areas if the p-t-p pay system is not eliminated.
14. No evidence appears in the record to explain why, if the “telemarketing” mode of operation proposed in the reorganization is desirable as an administrative end in itself, it must be immediately initiated from Harrisburg rather than being conducted out of the department’s Pittsburgh office as an alternative to the home-based operation of the DLRs. That is, no valid reason appears to explain the initial transfer of all DLR functions (except those given to outside contractors) from Pittsburgh to Harrisburg, rather than having them conducted — albeit by a smaller number of employees — from the Pittsburgh office. Although the department could avoid furloughing 100% of the Pittsburgh DLRs and still revise the mode of operation, the department has not done so. The evidence indicates that the reorganization proposal is primarily a means of coercion rather than a genuine plan for administrative improvement.
*20115. The thirteen furloughed Pittsburgh DLRs are qualified to fill the proposed new DLR positions in Harrisburg. Because only seven new positions are presently proposed, selection of DLRs willing to move to Harrisburg would be achieved in accordance with seniority provisions of the collective bargaining agreement.
16. Furloughed DLRs and the union have instituted, with respect to the furlough actions, (1) unfair labor practice proceedings before the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board (PLRB) on the ground that the department is using the furloughs unlawfully to coerce the employees with respect to their bargaining rights and (2) grievances on the ground that the furloughs are being employed to coerce the employees into giving up a pay system based upon established past practice.
17. During the period required for the final resolution of the unfair labor practice and grievance proceedings, which may be as short as several months or as long as two years or more, furloughed DLRs face hardship and losses which would not be remedied by dispositions of those proceedings in their favor. Pittsburgh DLRs who elect and obtain placement in the new Harrisburg positions would face the necessity of relocating their homes twice, if the proceedings determine the alleged reorganization to be invalid as a coercive device, by reason of leaving or selling their homes and disrupting family roots to move to central Pennsylvania, and then doing the same in order to return to western Pennsylvania. Such dislocations include, in addition to the sale and purchase or lease of two residences, disruption of spouse employment, disruption of children’s schooling and social patterns, and disruption of medical care arrangements. Even if arbitrators or the PLRB awarded back-pay — which is not assured even in the event of decisions in favor of the employees — compensation for relocation expenses and family losses is not available. With respect to DLRs not eligible to be placed in the new Harrisburg positions, their loss of employment could later be compensated if backpay awards are made, but consequent losses— *202such as those ensuing from mortgage foreclosures — would involve noncompensable economic, personal and social hardships.
18. Although the evidence indicates that DLRs who obtain placement in the new central Pennsylvania positions conceivably face greater irreparable harm during the determination proceedings than those who decline placement, remain in western Pennsylvania and are fortunate enough to find other employment temporarily, the furloughed DLRs cannot be reasonably expected to forego the placement opportunities in the face of their need for gainful employment. The department’s insistence on establishing the new positions remotely has an effect similar to a forced transfer as to those DLRs — up to seven in number — who could obtain the new positions.
19. If relief is not afforded in the form of enjoining the furloughs pending determination of the labor proceedings, no future remedy is available to offset the coercive effect of the department’s threat of reorganization, as an alternative to foregoing the p-t-p system, upon the past-practice labor rights of the remaining five groups of DLRs elsewhere in the state.
20. Refusal of a preliminary injunction will subject the furloughed DLRs to greater injury than would result to the interests of the Commonwealth by reason of postponing the change in method and location of operation of the DLR functions. First, the revised mode of operation does not appear to be desired by the department on its own merits solely, but rather as an alternative to the p-t-p pay system which the department opposes. Second, the fact that, according to the secretary, the department has already deferred the matter for fifteen months indicates that the department sees no great urgency in effectuating a change. Third, the department — which views the initial Pittsburgh change as a pilot test of its approach — could test the approach by instituting some of the new methods from the Pittsburgh office without insisting upon a wholesale transfer of functions to central Pennsylvania.

*203
Discussion

The factual elements required as a basis for the issuance of a preliminary injunction in a case like this are well established. Mazzie v. Commonwealth, 495 Pa. 128, 432 A.2d 985 (1981). This opinion deals with them in the foregoing Findings Nos. 17-20, and in the following conclusions of law.
Although this court should avoid indicating a conclusive disposition on the merits — recognizing that such is initially within the jurisdiction of the PLRB and the arbitrator — the petitioners, from the evidence, appear to have a clear legal right to a favorable decision on the merits in the grievance and PLRB proceedings because the record strongly indicates that the reorganization plan is not a genuine one.
The pivotal question here is the irreparability of the harm. Although the situation here is not as clearcut as that in Mazzie, the evidence here strongly indicates that the departmental “reorganization” — particularly as it involves a transfer of functions unnecessarily, at this time, to central Pennsylvania — constitutes a device designed to coerce agreement as to the elimination of the p-t-p pay plan. Therefore, in addition to those elements of the individual employees’ losses which are not compensable, it appears that allowing the department to invoke job furloughs, as a coercive device, would constitute the allowance of imposition of irreparable harm upon the union as a party by subjecting the collective bargaining process to an unjustified constraint.

Conclusions of Law

A. This court has jurisdiction.
B. The petitioners have a clear legal right to ultimate relief, and the likelihood is great that they will prevail on the merits.
C. The petitioners, in the absence of a preliminary injunction to preserve the status quo, face irreparable harm as individuals and as a union.
*204D. Greater injury would be suffered by the petitioners if preliminary injunction relief is withheld than would be suffered by the Commonwealth if it is granted.
E. The petitioners are entitled to preliminary relief, essentially as requested.