Court Opinion

ID: 9697022
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:04:07.308664+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:28.608288
License: Public Domain

ZAPPALA, Justice,
dissenting.
Despite the majority’s articulation of the proper scope of review of the grant or denial of a preliminary injunction, it has failed to limit its inquiry as required to whether the lower court’s action was supported by reasonable grounds. In determining that the Commonwealth Court’s issuance of the injunction was unsupportable, the majority has disregarded the specific findings of fact made by the lower court.
The court found that the department management representatives have been unsuccessful to-date in their attempts to eliminate the portal-to-portal pay system during collective bargaining negotiations with the union. The department did not resubmit the elimination proposal during the collective bargaining negotiations ending in June, 1985, resulting in an agreement which remains effective until June 30, 1988. Having been rebuffed in prior negotiations and having failed to resolve the portal-to-portal issue in 1985, the department has resorted to coercive tactics to achieve its desired result. The department’s position, which had been communicated to the union representatives and district lottery representatives, was that elimination of the existing pay system must be forthcoming or that furloughs would result.
Having abandoned its efforts to suspend the pay system during the most recent negotiations, the department cannot now extort such a concession by threat of furloughs. Although no per se right to governmental employment may exist in itself, contractual rights under the collective bargaining agreement entered into by the parties in this case do exist. The majority’s analysis disregards the existence *208of the agreement. It would emasculate the collective bargaining process to permit the department to accomplish the pay system’s demise under the guise of efficient operation of services. While achieving efficiency in governmental operations is a laudatory managerial prerogative, subverting the collective bargaining process is not. I would note also that the department would not be precluded from employing the possibility of furloughs as a tactic during future negotiations for a new agreement after the existing one expires in 1988. What the department failed to do directly in 1985, however, cannot be done surreptitiously today in contravention of the agreement.
The majority also overlooks the specific findings of fact which were made in concluding that the harms which the Commonwealth Court sought to prevent by issuance of the injunction are speculative in nature. The court found that the thirteen furloughed district lottery representatives from Pittsburgh would be qualified to fill the seven proposed positions in Harrisburg and that the seniority provisions of the collective agreement would control the placement of the displaced representatives in the new positions. The relocation of Pittsburgh representatives to the eastern part of the state and the reduction in the number of positions are not illusory economic consequences, as the majority would have one believe. These economic consequences are matters of record as distinguished from the case of Berkowitz v. Wilbar, 416 Pa. 369, 206 A.2d 280 (1965) which is cited by the majority. The majority ignores its limited standard of review by quarreling with the Commonwealth Court’s conclusion from facts undeniably supported by the record. The issue before this Court is not whether wé might arrive at a different conclusion than the lower court upon hearing the evidence, rather, whether the lower court’s action was properly supported. I believe that the grant of the injunction was reasonably based upon the grounds set forth in the findings of fact of the Commonwealth Court. For these reasons, I dissent.