Court Opinion

ID: 9631193
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:31:21.817017+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:49.954081
License: Public Domain

Webster, J.
(dissenting)—I respectfully dissent. While I agree that the preemption language of RCW 9.41.290 is broad, I do not believe the Legislature intended to prohibit *169municipal corporations from executing an agreement with an employees' union which contains a provision limiting use and possession of weapons on the job.
The no-weapons policy that is the center of this dispute is a subsection of a contract between the transit operators' union and Metro. The policy is contained in a section entitled "operator security." This section contains several parts aimed at protecting transit operators from assault and theft by the public. For example, the section creates a task force made up of labor and management representatives to address the problem of assaults and threatening situations; specific procedures were developed to handle those situations where confrontations could occur. Unquestionably, the result of the collective bargaining process between Metro and the union was to deal with the issue of operator security not by arming individual employees, but by other methods.
The preemption language of RCW 9.41.290 refers to "laws and ordinances relating to firearms", not terms of collective bargaining agreements. Admittedly, a municipality cannot achieve something through an employment regulation that it could not accomplish directly through an ordinance. Nevertheless, I cannot believe that the Legislature intended RCW 9.41 to prevent reasonable regulation of and policymaking in the workplace. RCW 9.41.290 does not purport to address this sort of workplace regulation where parties to a collective bargaining agreement presumably consider various methods of addressing a specific problem and choose one that does not involve bus drivers carrying guns. Moreover, if the union, which was undoubtedly represented by counsel when negotiating the agreement, felt that bus drivers had a right to carry guns on the job the union should have asserted that right then. The mere presence of the term in the agreement suggests that the union knowingly waived the right in return for concessions from Metro—e.g., alternative measures to prevent employee assaults—when it agreed that union members would not carry guns on duty. Metro's concessions estop *170the union and its individual members from asserting this right at a later stage.
I would affirm.
Reconsideration denied March 29, 1990.
Review granted at 114 Wn.2d 1026 (1990).