Court Opinion

ID: 9700220
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:16:32.45461+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:05.536544
License: Public Domain

ZAPPALA, Justice,
dissenting.
Because I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that the Borough of Palo Alto had a duty to engage in collective bargaining with its single-member police department, I dissent.
I agree that an employee in a one person department, like Appellant, is entitled to designate a representative to act for him in negotiating his employment contract. As set forth by the majority, the Ninth Circuit, in discussing the National Labor Relations Act, has noted that the right of a single employee to designate a representative to act for him is in no way limited since this right existed prior to the NLRA’s enactment. Operating Engineers Pension Trust v. Beck Engineering & Surveying Co., 746 F.2d 557, 565 (9th Cir.1984). The right to designate a representative to negotiate a contract, however, is not the same as the right to collective bargaining.
Act 111 grants employees “the right to bargain collectively with their public employers.” Act of June 24, 1968, P.L. 237, No. Ill, as amended, 43 P.S. § 217.1. While the term “collective bargaining” is not defined in Act 111, as held by the Commonwealth Court below, the terms “collective” and “collective bargaining,” by definition, require more than one person in order for collective bargaining to take place. See Alca/raz v. Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board, 678 A.2d 1234, 1239 (Pa.Cmwlth.1996) (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 444 (1986) defines “collective” as indicating a number of persons or things considered as constituting one group or aggregate. Webster’s defines “collective bargaining” as “negotiation for the settlement of the terms of a collective agreement between an employer or group of employers on one side and a union or number of unions on the other; broadly: any union-management negotiation.” Webster’s Third New Dictionary 445 (1986)).
*618Moreover, this Court, in Philadelphia Fire Officers Association v. Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board, 470 Pa. 550, 369 A.2d 259 (1977), and Borough of Nazareth v. Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board, 534 Pa. 11, 626 A.2d 493 (1993), has recognized that Act 111 and the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Act, Act of June 1, 1937, P.L. 1168, as amended, 43 P.S. § 211.1 et seq., are both collective bargaining statutes that are to be read in pari materia. The PLRA requires employers to bargain with collective bargaining units. Nothing in either Act 111 or the PLRA reference a right to individual bargaining. To the contrary, Section 1 of Act 111, 43 P.S. § 217.1, provides that “policemen and firemen... shall, through labor organizations or other representatives designated by fifty percent or more of such policemen or firemen, have the right to bargain collectively with their public employers....” (Emphasis added). Accordingly, the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board has consistently, and, in my view, correctly concluded that a unit which consists of a single person is not an appropriate collective bargaining unit. Accordingly, the PLRB has not found it to be an unfair labor practice for an employer to refuse to bargain collectively with a unit permanently consisting of a single employee.
As I find the PLRB’s reasoning to be proper, I would affirm the Commonwealth Court’s decision and order affirming the PLRB in this regard.
FLAHERTY, C.J., joins in this dissenting opinion.