City of Ames v. Iowa Pub. Emp't Relations Bd.
| Citation | 986 N.W.2d 384 |
| Docket Number | 22-0468 |
| Decision Date | 24 February 2023 |
| Parties | CITY OF AMES, Appellant, v. IOWA PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS BOARD, Appellee, and International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 234, Intervenor-Appellee and AFSCME Iowa Council 61, Intervenor. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court of Iowa |
Jason M. Craig (argued) and Aaron J. Hilligas of Ahlers & Cooney, P.C., Des Moines, for appellant.
Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and David Ranscht (argued) and Benjamin J. Flickinger (until withdrawal), Assistant Attorneys General, and Diana S. Machir (until withdrawal), Iowa Public Employment Relations Board, Des Moines, for appellee.
Jay M. Smith (argued) of Smith & McElwain Law Office, Sioux City, for intervenor-appellee International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 234.
In this appeal, we must decide whether statutes that protect the pre-2017 collective bargaining rights of public transit employees extend to nontransit employees in the same bargaining unit. Federal funding is conditioned upon labor protections for transit workers. The Iowa legislature amended Iowa Code chapter 20 in 2017 to restrict the bargaining rights of public employees generally. Two provisions, Iowa Code section 20.27 and section 20.32 (2018), have been enacted to help avoid loss of federal transit funding. The City of Ames sought guidance whether section 20.32 requires broader bargaining rights for nontransit employees in the same bargaining unit, as urged by the union representing the city employees. The parties agree the City will provide its transit employees with the bargaining rights they enjoyed before the 2017 amendments by operation of Iowa Code section 20.27. The Iowa Public Employee Relations Board (PERB) ruled that broader bargaining rights must be extended under section 20.32 to the nontransit employees in a bargaining unit consisting of at least thirty percent transit employees. The district court affirmed that determination. We retained the City's appeal.
On our review, we hold that PERB and the district court misinterpreted Iowa Code section 20.32 by extending broader bargaining rights to nontransit employees. In our view, the plain meaning of section 20.32 protects only transit employees, not nontransit employees in the same bargaining unit. The parties can accommodate intraunit differences in bargaining rights. We reverse the conflicting interpretation by the district court and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
The City of Ames provides public transportation through "CyRide" bus services operated by city transit employees. The City's transit employees are represented by the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE). Their bargaining unit is mixed, including both transit and nontransit employees. Transit employees make up over thirty percent of the bargaining unit. The City receives federal funding for its public transportation.
The federal funding comes with strings attached. Congress enacted the Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964 (UMTA) to "provide funding to support public transportation" and to "promote the development of the public transportation workforce." 49 U.S.C. § 5301(b)(1), (8). Congress "was aware of the increasingly precarious financial condition of a number of private transportation companies across the country, and it feared that communities might be left without adequate mass transportation." Jackson Transit Auth. v. Loc. Div. 1285, Amalgamated Transit Union , 457 U.S. 15, 17, 102 S.Ct. 2202, 72 L.Ed.2d 639 (1982). "At the same time, however, Congress was aware that public ownership might threaten existing collective-bargaining rights of unionized transit workers employed by private companies" that are acquired by local governments in states that forbade collective bargaining by government employees. Id. "To prevent federal funds from being used to destroy the collective-bargaining rights of organized workers, Congress included § 13(c) in the Act." Id.
Section 13(c) of the UMTA requires recipients of federal transit funds to protect the collective bargaining rights of public transit employees. 49 U.S.C. § 5333(b). Termed "section 13(c) agreements," public employers must certify they provide their transit employees certain minimum rights. Failure to meet the minimum standards can result in the loss of federal funds.
At the state level, the Iowa Public Employee Relations Act (PERA), enacted in 1974 and codified in chapter 20, originally guaranteed a broad range of collective bargaining subjects for public employees. See 1974 Iowa Acts ch. 1095 (codified at Iowa Code ch. 20 (1975)). But in 2017, the General Assembly enacted House File 291, which amended PERA to restrict the collective bargaining rights of public employees generally. 2017 Iowa Acts ch. 2, §§ 1–18 (). "The amendments ended payroll deductions for union dues and narrowed the scope of mandatory collective bargaining topics for bargaining units comprised of less than thirty percent ‘public safety employees.’ "1 AFSCME Iowa Council 61 v. State , 928 N.W.2d 21, 26 (Iowa 2019). Even for units with more than thirty percent public safety employees, the 2017 amendments eliminated payroll deductions for dues and imposed a retention and recertification election to be held one year before the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement. See 2017 Iowa Acts ch. 2, §§ 9 (codified at Iowa Code § 20.15(2)(a ) (2018)), 22 (codified at Iowa Code § 70A.19 (2018)). The United States Department of Labor (DOL) relied on those provisions to determine that extending the rights of public safety employees to transit workers was insufficient to preserve federal transit funding.
Even after the 2017 amendments, when a bargaining unit is comprised of at least thirty percent public safety employees, its employees still have the right to bargain with the public employer on a wide range of matters:
wages, hours, vacations, insurance, holidays, leaves of absence, shift differentials, overtime compensation, supplemental pay, seniority, transfer procedures, job classifications, health and safety matters, evaluation procedures, procedures for staff reduction, in-service training, grievance procedures for resolving any questions arising under the agreement, and other matters mutually agreed upon.
Iowa Code § 20.9(1). When a bargaining unit is comprised of less than thirty percent public safety employees, however, the unit has a much narrower scope of collective bargaining rights. Employees in these bargaining units have the right to bargain only as to "base wages and other matters mutually agreed upon."2 Id.
The City, as a recipient of federal transit funds, is subject to both federal law and Iowa law, including the amendments of House File 291. The DOL notified the City that narrowing the bargaining rights of its transit employees could jeopardize its receipt of federal funds.
The General Assembly had anticipated this issue when it enacted PERA. It provided at that time that Iowa law would be considered inoperative to the extent it jeopardizes the receipt of federal funds. See 1974 Iowa Acts ch. 1095, § 28 (codified at Iowa Code § 20.27 (1975)). The City agreed to use this escape hatch provided by section 20.27 ; the 2017 amendments would be inoperative and its transit employees would have the full bargaining rights they enjoyed before the 2017 amendments. See Iowa Code § 20.27 (). This satisfied the DOL, which certified the City's continued receipt of federal transit funding based on the City's reliance on section 20.27.
The City and the IUOE disagreed, however, whether Iowa Code section 20.32 provides broader bargaining rights for nontransit employees in the same bargaining unit. Section 20.32 is triggered if the director of the Iowa Department of Transportation (IDOT) determines, "upon written confirmation from the [DOL]" that a public employer would otherwise "lose federal funding." See Iowa Code § 20.32. The director of the IDOT, Mark Lowe, determined that section 20.32 was inapplicable because the DOL provided no such written confirmation and the City had secured federal funding through section 20.27.
The City petitioned PERB for a declaratory order clarifying whether section 20.32 extends broader bargaining rights to nontransit employees in the same bargaining unit. PERB determined that section 20.32 required the City to provide nontransit workers with the same bargaining rights as public safety employees when the bargaining unit consists of at least thirty percent transit employees.
The City filed a petition for judicial review. See Iowa Code § 17A.19(10)(c ). It argued PERB erred in concluding Iowa Code section 20.32 applies to nontransit employees. The district court denied the City's petition, concluding PERB correctly determined the substantive bargaining rights and interpreted chapter 20 in a reasonable manner. The City appealed; we retained the case.
This appeal turns on the interpretation of Iowa Code section 20.32. We review interpretations of Iowa Code chapter 20 for correction of errors at law without deference to PERB's interpretation. See United Elec., Radio & Mach. Workers of Am. v. Iowa Pub. Emp. Rels. Bd. , 928 N.W.2d 101, 108 (Iowa 2019) ().
The fighting issue is whether statutory protections for the bargaining rights of transit workers to secure federal transit funding also extend to nontransit workers in the same bargaining unit. PERB,...
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