Court Opinion

ID: 9640442
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:06:06.404155+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:29.784713
License: Public Domain

Justice CASTILLE,
concurring and dissenting.
I agree with the Majority Opinion that Act 205 precludes this Court from affirming the arbitration award because, in the realm in which the Act applies, the Act clearly controls over any contrary provision in a collective bargaining agreement (CBA). I respectfully dissent, however, from the Court’s mandate, which simply affirms the Commonwealth Court’s reversal of the trial court and vacatur of the arbitration award. In my view, there is a middle ground, adverted to *369by the Majority, Slip op. at 12, which should inform our mandate. I would hold that, where a party to a CBA invokes a pre-existing statute to avoid the consequences of a provision included in the CBA, and where the issue involves a core employment term such as wages, hours, pensions, or conditions of employment, then the CBA should be rescinded and the bargaining status quo ante restored. Accordingly, I would mold our mandate to direct the parties to return to the bargaining table to effect a knowing agreement that accounts for the commands and consequences of Act 205.
I come to this view because, while I agree that a grievance arbitration award that conflicts with Act 205 cannot be upheld, I also believe that the salutary principles animating cases such as Grottenthaler v. Pennsylvania State Police, 488 Pa. 19, 410 A.2d 806 (1980) and Pittsburgh Joint Collective Bargaining Comm. v. City of Pittsburgh, 481 Pa. 66, 391 A.2d 1318 (1978) should be applicable to this Court’s analysis of the consequences arising from a conflict between the Act and a CBA. I believe it is fundamentally unfair to permit an employer, or a bargaining unit for that matter, to gain a retroactive advantage when an existing statute is later found by the courts to operate to alter a fundamental term of a labor agreement reached after arms’ length bargaining. As this Court noted in Pittsburgh Joint Collective Bargaining Comm., and as the Majority echoes here:
We have already stressed the importance of grievance arbitration in facilitating the development and maintenance of harmonious relationships between the public employer and employee. It is even more supportive of a favorable employment climate where this dispute resolution mechanism arises from the good faith bargaining of the parties rather than being required by statute. To permit an employer to enter into agreements and include terms such as grievance arbitration which raise the expectations of those concerned, and then to subsequently refuse to abide by those provisions on the basis of its lack of capacity would invite discord and distrust and create an atmosphere where*370in a harmonious relationship would virtually be impossible to maintain.
Good faith bargaining would require that questions as to the legality of the proposed terms of a collective bargaining agreement should be resolved by the parties to the agreement at the bargaining stage.
391 A.2d at 1322-23. Accord Grottenthaler, 410 A.2d at 809 (“To permit the Commonwealth to ignore its mandate with impunity in two successive bargaining contracts following the promulgation of [the statute at issue], and then to assert it as a bar to a claim for recovery under the bargaining agreement would be manifestly unfair. The demoralizing effect of such a result on the relationship between employer and employee in the public sector is readily apparent.”) (footnote omitted). These observations are as instructive today as they were when uttered by this Court a quarter of a century ago, and I believe they should still play a role in our analysis.
This is not to say that I would embrace the other extreme in Act 205 cases and hold that the employer here should be deemed estopped from invoking the Act as a basis to avoid the consequences of a bargained-for term, as occurred in the Pittsburgh Joint Collective Bargaining Comm, case, or that the employer should be deemed to have waived the statutory argument, as occurred in the Grottenthaler case. In addition to ignoring the very plain statutory command here, such a course would ignore the fact that not all of these disputes involve circumstances where a party could be fairly accused of overreaching or bad faith. It may well be that the parties did not perceive, or did not fully perceive, the complication which arose; or the area in issue was unsettled; or the parties had conflicting but reasonable interpretations of their bargaining authority over a particular question. Indeed, in this very case, the employer has forwarded a cogent argument based upon the plain language of Act 205, while the bargaining unit has forwarded a logical argument based upon the essentially equitable analysis that controlled cases like Pittsburgh Joint Collective Bargaining Comm, and Grottenthaler. Thus, I do not view the issue as a simple matter of identifying good and *371bad faith in the bargaining process: our task may also involve an obligation to protect the parties from the consequences of a material, apparent mutual mistake in the bargaining process concerning a core employment matter.
Accordingly, although I would not estop employer from invoking Act 205, neither would I suggest that employer is entitled to have Act 205 essentially amend to the employer’s advantage an otherwise controlling CBA. Instead of permitting the employer to unilaterally reap the unintended benefit of a perhaps unforeseen and certainly unaccounted-for circumstance in a situation such as this, I would return the parties to the bargaining table to negotiate a new CBA which may account for that circumstance. Thus, although I concur in most of the Majority’s analysis, including its conclusion that Act 205 precludes approval of the arbitration award as entered, I would remand the matter to permit the parties to return to the bargaining table.