Cayuga-Onondaga Counties Bd. of Co-op. Educational Services v. Sweeney, CAYUGA-ONONDAGA

• Decision Date: 20 December 1996
• Docket Number: CAYUGA-ONONDAGA
• Citation: 676 N.E.2d 854,654 N.Y.S.2d 92,89 N.Y.2d 395
• Parties: , 676 N.E.2d 854, 116 Ed. Law Rep. 749, 3 Wage & Hour Cas.2d (BNA) 1185 In the Matter ofCOUNTIES BOARD OF COOPERATIVE EDUCATIONAL SERVICES, Appellant, v. John E. SWEENEY, as Commissioner of Labor of State of New York, et al., Respondents.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Page 92

654 N.Y.S.2d 92

89 N.Y.2d 395, 676 N.E.2d 854, 116

Ed. Law Rep. 749,

3 Wage & Hour Cas.2d (BNA) 1185

In the Matter of CAYUGA-ONONDAGA COUNTIES BOARD OF COOPERATIVE EDUCATIONAL SERVICES, Appellant, v. John E. SWEENEY, as Commissioner of Labor of State of New York, et al., Respondents.

Court of Appeals of New York.

Dec. 20, 1996.

Bond, Schoeneck & King, L.L.P., Syracuse (Thomas J. Grooms and Sharon M. Sulimowicz, of counsel), for appellant.

Dennis C. Vacco, Attorney-General, New York City (Jennifer S. Brand, Barbara G. Billet, Peter H. Schiff, Daniel F. De Vita and M. Patricia Smith, of counsel), for respondents.

Donna M.C. Giliberto, Albany, for New York State Conference of Mayors and Municipal Officials, amici curiae.

Jay Worona, Albany, and Cheryl Randall for New York State School Boards Association, Inc., amicus curiae.

OPINION OF THE COURT

LEVINE, Judge.

The facts of this controversy are essentially undisputed. In 1992, petitioner Cayuga-Onondaga Counties Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) entered into an agreement with one of its member school districts, the Auburn City School District, to provide the labor for a lighting improvement project consisting of changing the ballasts in the fluorescent lighting to more energy efficient ballasts at all school buildings throughout the district. BOCES hired 41 full-time employees of the Auburn school district to work after hours in performing the installation. BOCES applied to the Cayuga County Civil Service Commission and obtained a civil service classification of these workers as temporary, seasonal laborers of BOCES. Their BOCES pay rates were the same as they received from the Auburn school district, but they were not compensated at overtime rates, which they would have received had they performed the work directly for the school district. The Auburn City School District reimbursed BOCES for its payments to the workers on the ballast replacement project.

After receiving informal complaints from workers in the ballast replacement project, an official of the area's electrical workers union (which did not represent the workers involved) filed a formal complaint with the State Department of Labor averring that BOCES was required to pay the prevailing wage rate for electricians to its employees on the project. Following a Department field investigation, the Commissioner of Labor issued a notice of hearing to BOCES in March 1994 on allegations that BOCES failed to pay the prevailing wages and supplements to 41 of its employees on the Auburn school district lighting project, in violation of Labor Law § 220.

At the conclusion of the hearing, the Hearing Officer issued a report and recommendation. The Hearing Officer found that the arrangement between the Auburn City School District and BOCES was made to avoid the school district's liability for payment of overtime wages to its employees working on the project; that BOCES was acting in the capacity of a general contractor for the school district on the project; and that the type of work performed by the 41 BOCES employees was generally performed by electricians. The Hearing Officer determined that the ballast replacements constituted a public work project and that BOCES violated Labor Law § 220 in failing to pay its workers prevailing electricians' wage rates. She further ruled that BOCES was not exempt from the requirements of Labor Law § 220 by reason of its employees' civil service classifications as temporary seasonal laborers.

The Commissioner of Labor adopted the Hearing Officer's report in all respects and ordered a further hearing for the purpose of determining the amount of underpayment, any civil penalty and willfulness. The Appellate Division confirmed the determination and dismissed the petition (224 A.D.2d 989, 637 N.Y.S.2d 834). We granted BOCES permission to appeal.

BOCES' primary grounds for reversal are that the Commissioner of Labor lacked jurisdiction to make the determination herein because a timely notice of claim against BOCES in compliance with Education Law § 3813(1) was never filed by the Department of Labor and because the Commissioner failed to commence formal proceedings against it through the service of notice of hearing until after the one-year Statute of Limitations of Education Law § 3813(2-b) had expired. We find these arguments unpersuasive.

In determining the applicability of the three-month notice of claim requirement of Education Law § 3813(1) to statutory or nonjudicial proceedings involving school districts, school boards and boards of cooperative educational services, as well as parallel notice of claim requirements when such proceedings involve other municipal units of government, our Court has distinguished between proceedings "which on the one hand seek only enforcement of private rights and duties and those on the other in which it is sought to vindicate a public interest; the provisions of subdivision 1 of section 3813 are applicable as to the former but not as to the latter" (Union Free School Dist. No. 6 v. New York State Human Rights Appeal Bd., 35 N.Y.2d 371, 380, 362 N.Y.S.2d 139, 320 N.E.2d 859, rearg. denied 36 N.Y.2d 807, 369 N.Y.S.2d 1026, 330 N.E.2d 657).

Thus, in Union Free School Dist. No. 6 (supra), the issue was the validity of a provision of a collective bargaining agreement mandating inferior treatment of pregnancy and child birth absences from absences based on other physical or medical disabilities, challenged as illegal sex discrimination. We held that although the "proceeding was triggered by the complaint of this one teacher", and the monetary relief granted would benefit the complainant and teachers similarly situated, those "advantages * * * flow[ed] as an appropriate and intended consequence of the vindication by the division, acting on behalf of the public, of the public's interest in the elimination of discrimination based upon sex--a public interest duly declared by legislative enactment" (35 N.Y.2d at 380, 362 N.Y.S.2d 139, 320 N.E.2d 859).

Contrastingly, in Mills v. County of Monroe (59 N.Y.2d 307, 312, 464 N.Y.S.2d 709, 451 N.E.2d 456, cert denied 464 U.S. 1018, 104 S.Ct. 551, 78 L.Ed.2d 725) a plenary civil damage action authorized under State and Federal antidiscrimination statutes seeking only personal redress for "allegations of actionable conduct on the part of the county refer[able] only to conduct that relates to [the plaintiff]," the filing of a notice of claim, as generally required under County Law § 52(1), was held to be a condition precedent to the suit.

The instant proceeding initiated by the Commissioner of Labor to enforce prevailing wage payment requirements for public work projects under section 220 of article 8 of the Labor Law falls well within the vindication of a public interest category, for which statutory notice of claim requirements are inapposite.

First, the mandate that laborers, workers and mechanics employed in public work projects be paid the wages "prevailing" in their trade or occupation in the locality is not merely of statutory derivation but has its underlying basis in article I, § 17 of the State Constitution. The prevailing wage requirement was first enacted in legislative form in 1894 (L. 1894, ch. 622; see, Report of Temp St Commn on Constitutional Convention of 1967, Housing, Labor and Natural Resources, at 80). In response to this Court's decision in People ex rel. Rodgers v. Coler, 166 N.Y. 1, 59 N.E. 716, which partly invalidated the 1894 law, the State Constitution was amended in 1905 to authorize prevailing wage legislation (Report of Temp St Commn on Constitutional Convention of 1967, op. cit., at 80).

The prevailing wage/public work requirement was retained as a constitutional imperative in its present form in the 1938 State Constitution. Constitutional Convention Delegate (and State Senator) Dunnigan, a proposer of its retention, argued that inclusion of the prevailing wage mandate in the Constitution was necessary because "it has become a fixed principle in our society, which should be embodied in our organic law so as to insure its continuance [and] * * * because it should assume constitutional proportions so that this policy of state may be manifest to labor and industry as a principle of state" (3 Revised Record, 1938 Constitutional Convention, at 2204).

Labor Law § 220, in content, structure and purpose confirms that a proceeding such as this, brought by the Commissioner of Labor to enforce the statutory and constitutional mandate, has as its overriding goal the vindication of a public interest rather than just to provide a forum in a particular case for the adjudication of a claimed personal statutory right, as in Mills v. County of Monroe (supra) (see also, Board of Educ. v. New York State Div. of Human Rights [Arluck], 44 N.Y.2d 902, 904, 407 N.Y.S.2d 636, 379 N.E.2d 163, rearg. denied 45 N.Y.2d 838, 409 N.Y.S.2d 1031, 381 N.E.2d 630; Matter of Board of Educ. [v. Wager Constr. Corp.], 37 N.Y.2d 283, 372 N.Y.S.2d 45, 333 N.E.2d 353). Section 220 has been characterized as "an attempt by the State to hold its territorial subdivisions to a standard of social justice in their dealings with laborers, workmen, and mechanics" (Austin v. City of New York, 258 N.Y. 113, 117, 179 N.E. 313 [Cardozo, Ch. J.] [emphasis supplied] ).

The statutory procedures, powers and duties of the Commissioner and available remedies and sanctions under section 220 and the other provisions of article 8 of the Labor Law all have the earmark of a powerful administrative mechanism for the enforcement of a strong public policy, over which a private complainant has no control. Except for New York City's public work projects, the Commissioner of Labor is required to ascertain prevailing wage rates on all public work performed in the State, irrespective of whether affected workers have complained of a violation of the statute (Labor Law § 220[3] ). The Commissioner is not limited...