Board of Educ. of Town of Thomaston v. State Bd. of Labor Relations

• Citation: 217 Conn. 110,584 A.2d 1172
• Decision Date: 08 January 1991
• Docket Number: No. 14010,14010
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: , 65 Ed. Law Rep. 407 BOARD OF EDUCATION OF the TOWN OF THOMASTON v. STATE BOARD OF LABOR RELATIONS et al.

Page 1172

584 A.2d 1172

217 Conn. 110, 65 Ed. Law Rep. 407

BOARD OF EDUCATION OF the TOWN OF THOMASTON v. STATE BOARD OF LABOR RELATIONS et al.

No. 14010.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued Nov. 1, 1990.

Decided Jan. 8, 1991.

Joseph M. Celentano, with whom was Ronald Cordilico, for appellants (defendants).

Victor M. Muschell, for appellee (plaintiff).

Before SHEA, CALLAHAN, GLASS, COVELLO and BORDEN, JJ.

SHEA, Associate Justice.

This appeal arises out of an arbitrator's award ordering the plaintiff, the Thomaston board of education, to promote a teacher to the position of department head of the Thomaston high school English department. The board, instead of challenging the award in court, eliminated the department head position for the admitted purpose of preventing the teacher from holding the position. The teacher and the union filed an unfair labor practice charge with the state labor relations board (labor board), which ordered the board of education to comply with the arbitrator's award and restore the position. The board of education thereupon appealed to the Superior Court, challenging both the decision and the order. The court vacated the order of the labor board, holding that the elimination of a teaching position was in the sole discretion of the board of education and thus that the labor board was without authority to order the board to restore the position. This appeal ensued.

I

The labor board's factual findings are unchallenged. Fred Schipul taught English at Thomaston high school for eighteen years. In December, 1985, he applied for the position of English department chairperson, which was then vacant. In January, 1986, the board of education awarded the position to a less senior teacher. Schipul filed a grievance based on the provision in the teachers' collective bargaining agreement ¹ that required the board to promote the most senior teacher "where two or more applicants are equal in qualification." ² On August 10, 1986, the arbitrator upheld the grievance and ordered the board of education to promote Schipul, retroactively to January, 1986.

Meanwhile, before the arbitration award was made, the board of education voted to eliminate all department head positions from its budget. Two weeks after the award was issued, however, the board restored all department head positions--all, that is, except the position of English department head. As a result of the award, the board of education paid Schipul what he would have received as department head until the position was eliminated, but never allowed him to perform the job.

Schipul's bargaining representative, the Thomaston Education Association, duly filed an unfair labor practice charge with the labor board, claiming that the board of education's actions interfered with Schipul's statutory right to file a grievance. The board of education admitted before the labor board that its sole reason for not restoring the position of English department head was to prevent Schipul from holding that position, for which it honestly believed he was unqualified.

II

Although the trial court's memorandum of decision did not address whether the school board's conduct constituted an unfair labor practice, that issue has been presented to us on appeal by both parties. The board of education maintains that because the arbitrator's decision was "not concerned with the future elimination of the position but only with Schipul's entitlement to the position in January, 1986, when it indeed did exist," the elimination of the position in August, 1986, could not logically be a repudiation of the arbitrator's decision that Schipul was entitled to the position in January, 1986, and that, because the establishment of teaching positions is discretionary, elimination of the position could not be an unfair labor practice. The labor board contends that the board of education's action, which effectively nullified the arbitrator's award and flouted the contractually mandated grievance arbitration process, constituted a refusal to participate in good faith in mediation and arbitration, an unfair labor practice under General Statutes § 10-153e(b)(4) and (5) of the Teachers Negotiation Act (TNA). ³ We conclude that the board of education's arguments are without merit, and agree with the labor board. ⁴

A

The labor board first claims that the board of education's action was an unfair labor practice specifically prohibited by General Statutes § 10-153e(b)(5), "refusing to participate in good faith in mediation or to arbitration. " Without discussing that particular subsection of the TNA, the board of education emphasizes the absence in the TNA of language in the Municipal Employees Relations Act (MERA), General Statutes § 7-407 et seq., specifically listing failure to comply with an arbitration award as an unfair labor practice, ⁵ and argues that this absence shows that the legislature did not intend failure to comply with an arbitration award to constitute an unfair labor practice under the TNA.

Before considering the implications of the legislature's decision not to include in the TNA a provision such as § 7-470(a)(6) of MERA, we will consider the language of the TNA as it is written. Section 10-153e(b)(5) makes "refusing to participate in good faith in mediation or arbitration" an unfair labor practice. The word "arbitration" is a general term that may refer either to arbitration of individual claims that an employer has breached a collective bargaining agreement (grievance arbitration) or to arbitration of broader disputes concerning the conditions of employment in general, arising either during contract negotiations or in some cases during the term of an existing contract (interest arbitration). Section 10-153e(b)(5) does not define the term further to indicate the type or types of arbitration to which it refers.

We construe a statute as a whole and read its subsections concurrently in order to reach a reasonable overall interpretation. Ganim v. Roberts, 204 Conn. 760, 763, 529 A.2d 194 (1987). Where the same words are used in a statute two or more times, they will ordinarily be given the same meaning. State ex rel. Hyde v. Dowe, 129 Conn. 266, 271, 28 A.2d 12 (1942). In the TNA, §§ 10-153d ⁶ and 10- 153f ⁷ use the terms "mediation" and "arbitration" to refer to a specific set of procedures a school board and teachers' union must pursue if negotiations with respect to the conditions of employment of teachers in general; § 10-153f(b), (e); reach an impasse. ⁸ Thus, in §§ 10-153d and 10-153f "arbitration" means interest arbitration, not arbitration of individual grievances.

If we read § 10-153e and § 10-153f concurrently, we must conclude that General Statutes § 10-153e(b)(5) addresses only the contract mediation and interest arbitration procedures mandated by § 10-153f, not the arbitration of an individual employee's grievances. The alternative interpretation, that § 10-153e(b)(5) makes refusal to arbitrate any individual grievance an unfair labor practice, would impose a duty to arbitrate grievances upon a board of education even if its collective bargaining agreement included no such requirement. Had the legislature intended such a result, we believe it would have included in the TNA the plain language it used in § 7-470(a)(6) of the MERA. The MERA, unlike the TNA, guarantees the right to mediation or arbitration of individual grievances. See General Statutes § 7-472. ⁹

The labor board's own decisions support our interpretation, as they have repeatedly cited § 10-153e(b)(4), not (b)(5), when finding unfair labor practices in situations similar to the one now before us. See In the Matter of East Hartford Board of Education, Connecticut State Board of Labor Relations Decision No. 1911 (July 7, 1980); In the Matter of Southington Board of Education, Connecticut State Board of Labor Relations Decision No. 1788 (July 19, 1979).

B

In addition to finding that the board of education's conduct was an unfair labor practice under § 10-153e(b)(5), the labor board also concluded that the board of education's conduct was an unfair labor practice under § 10-153e(b)(4) as a "refus[al] to negotiate in good faith with the employees' bargaining agent." Our conclusion that repudiation of a grievance arbitration award is not an unfair labor practice under § 10-153e(b)(5) does not prevent the labor board from determining that the board's action in this case constituted an unfair labor practice under § 10-153e(b)(4).

In accordance with widely held principles of administrative and labor law, we traditionally have accorded deference to the labor board's interpretation of the acts it is charged with enforcing. Lieberman v. Board of Labor Relations, 216 Conn. 253, 263, 579 A.2d 505 (1990); Hartford Principals' & Supervisors' Assn. v. Shedd, supra, 202 Conn. at 503, 522 A.2d 264; Connecticut State Board of Labor Relations v. Board of Education, 177 Conn. 68, 74, 411 A.2d 28 (1979). "[R]eviewing courts should uphold reasonable and defensible constructions of an agency's enabling Act...." Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms v. Federal Labor Relations Authority, 464 U.S. 89, 97, 98 n. 8, 104 S.Ct. 439, 445 n. 8, 78 L.Ed.2d 195 (1983); NLRB v. Iron Workers, 434 U.S. 335, 350, 98 S.Ct. 651, 660, 54 L.Ed.2d 586 (1978); the agency's practical construction of the statute, if reasonable, is " ' "high evidence of what the law is." ' " Cos Cob Volunteer Fire Co. No. 1, Inc. v. Freedom of Information Commission, 212 Conn. 100, 106, 561 A.2d 429 (1989). In judging whether the labor board's interpretation was reasonable, we may look to federal labor law for guidance in construing our labor relations acts. Success Village Apartments, Inc. v. Local 376, 175 Conn. 165, 168, 397 A.2d 85 (1978) (construing state Labor Relations Act); West Hartford Education Assn., Inc. v. DeCourcy, 162 Conn. 566, 579, 295 A.2d 526 (1972) (construing TNA). In light of federal labor law precedent, we consider...