Civil Service Commission for Wayne County v. Wayne County Bd. of Sup'rs
| Decision Date | 01 March 1971 |
| Docket Number | No. 27,27 |
| Citation | 384 Mich. 363,184 N.W.2d 201 |
| Parties | , 77 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2034, 65 Lab.Cas. P 52,572 CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION FOR the COUNTY OF WAYNE, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. WAYNE COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS and Wayne County Labor Relations Board, Defendants and Appellants, and Wayne County Board of Road Commissioners, Defendant and Appellee-Appellant. |
| Court | Michigan Supreme Court |
Thomas V. Lo Cicero, Detroit, for the Civil Service Commission for the County of Wayne; Fred Hustad, Detroit, of counsel.
William L. Cahalan, Pros. Atty., County of Wayne, Aloysius J. Suchy and David R. Kaplan, Asst. Pros. Attys., County of Wayne, Detroit, for Wayne County Bd. of Supervisors and Wayne County Labor Relations Bd.
John P. Cushman, Daniel Horgan, Jr., Clayton M. Foor and Robert Murphy, and
Rothe, Marston, Mazey, Sachs, O'Connell, Nunn & Freid, Detroit, by Theodore Sachs, Detroit, of counsel, for Wayne County Bd. of Road Commissioners.
Before T. M. KAVANAGH, C.J., and BLACK, ADAMS, BRENNAN, T. G. KAVANAGH, SWAINSON and WILLIAMS, JJ.
Two admittedly conflicting statutes compete in litigious depth for jurisdiction over the process of collective bargaining by Wayne county employees with their employer (or employers). As two courts already have come to know in painful and dissentient succession (see Wayne County Civil Service Comm. v. Wayne County Bd. of Supervisors, 22 Mich.App. 287, 177 N.W.2d 449), the competition presents that most difficult of all appellate problems; the ascertainment of legislative intent when there is no evidentiary or other reasonably authoritative guide to pertinent meaning or purpose of the legislators. For such difficulty Cardozo has provided our first and most dependable range light (The Nature of the Judicial Process, pp. 14, 15, published 1921):
'Interpretation is often spoken of as if it were nothing but the search and the discovery of a meaning which, however obscure and latent, had none the less a real and ascertainable pre-existence in the legislator's mind. The process is, indeed, that at times, but it is often something more. The ascertainment of intention may be the least of a judge's troubles in ascribing meaning to a statute. 'The fact is,' says Gray in his lectures on the 'Nature and Sources of the Law,' 'that the difficulties of so-called interpretation arise when the legislature has had no meaning at all; when the question which is raised on the statute never occurred to it; when what the judges have to do is not to determine what the legislature did mean on a point which was present to its mind, But to guess what it would have intended on a point not present to its mind, if the point had been present'.' 1 (emphasis presently supplied).
The first of these competing statutes (1941 P.A. 370; M.C.L.A. 38.401 et seq.; 1948 C.L. 38.401 et seq.; M.S.A. 5.1191(1)), stated and now states expressly its purpose. Section 1 thereof reads, in full:
The second of these statutes (1965 P.A. 379; M.C.L.A. 423.201 et seq.; M.S.A. 17.455(1)), correspondingly stated and now states the legislative purpose; this time by a redesigned title of that which previously was known as the Hutchinson Act of 1947 (No. 336). The new title:
'An act to prohibit strikes by certain public employees; to provide review from disciplinary action with respect thereto; to provide for the mediation of grievances and the holding of elections; to declare and protect the rights and privileges of public employees; and to prescribe means of enforcement and penalties for the violation of the provisions of this act.'
(We insert here a significant farse. It is that there is no hint in this new title or A majority of 3 judges of the circuit court concluded that 'the employer of all county employees is the county of Wayne and that the board of supervisors is the legally constituted body authorized to act for and on behalf of the county as the public employer.' As for the status of the defendant Wayne County Board of Road Commissioners and its employees, the same majority ruled 'that the Wayne county road commission is Not an employer separate and distinct from the county of Wayne, And that the public employer is the county of Wayne, acting through and by the board of supervisors.'
for that matter, in any of the sections of the act of 1965, of legislative thought that the prohibition of strikes by public employees, effected by legislatively authorized collective bargaining and administratively enforced mediation, might conflict in whole or in part with the authority vested, by the act of 1941, in an established county civil service commission. Thus the issue of 1965 legislative intent, vis-a-vis the act of 1941, was deposited in Wayne county as a first class vexer.)
On application for rehearing the majority stood by its first ruling after having noted that, as against the 'complex and apparently contradictory statutes that have been adopted,' it would be better to hurry on its way the inevitable appeal 'in the public interest.' The opinion on rehearing concluded, appropriately by this bullet pass of the male deer:
On appeal a majority of the assigned panel of the Court of Appeals ruled that plaintiff Wayne County Civil Service Commission is possessed of statutory power to classify positions in the county employment service and to submit uniform pay plans for the standardization of salaries; but does not have exclusive control over such classification and standardization, since all such must be approved by the county board of supervisors. To its reasoning the panel, having finally made a judgment, added this declaration of heartfelt relief (p. 299, 177 N.W.2d p. 453):
'While this is not the simplest solution to the difficult problem with which we are faced, and though it may even tend to confuse and complicate the area of collective bargaining within Wayne County, it is the only plausible solution under the confines of the present statutory law.'
This Court granted leave (383 Mich. 782) to settle if possible what was regularly termed below a 'chaos of legislation.'
The plaintiff Civil Service Commission contends that act 370 has made it the exclusive bargaining agent for all employees of the county of Wayne, subject only 'to concurrence of the board of supervisors on salaries and wages,' and that it is entitled to a judicial declaration that 'collective bargaining shall be conducted by the Civil Service Commission for all county employees and in accordance with the requirements of act 370.'
The defendant County Board of Supervisors, searching the involved statutes in somewhat greater depth, contends that:
Finally, the defendant Wayne County Board of Road Commissioners, depending in part upon a separate constitutional provision and statute, contends that it is the Having arrayed these contentions for scrutiny, our ensuing views doubtless will be understood better by an outset declaration of specific decision. We disagree with the stated position of the plaintiff Civil Service Commission. We agree with what in our view is the generally dispositive contention of the defendant Wayne County Board of Supervisors, and we agree finally with the stated position of the defendant Wayne County Board of Road Commissioners.
'public employer' of its own employees for the purposes of act 379.
First: To read the act of 1941, carefully in conjunction with the act of 1965, is to understand the judicial difficulty. The earlier act was conceived and enacted immediately after the people had adopted the civil service amendment of 1940, effective January 1, 1941 for State employment (Const.1908, art. 6, § 22). Designed as that act was for adoption by counties having a Population of 300,000 or more, the measure strove in applicable terms to provide the same rights for employee of such counties, and the same betterment of public service in such counties, as the people had just approved hopefully with respect to the State service. In neither instance could collective bargaining by public employees have been in the minds of the people, or of the legislators. The thought of strikes by public employees was unheard of. The right of collective bargaining, applicable at the time to private employment, was then in comparative infancy and portended no suggestion that it ever might enter the realm of Public employment. 2
However, the act of 1941 brought within its purposefully inclusive as well as exclusive purview 'all positions not specifically included by this act in the unclassified service.' (§ 10(b)). Then, by section 27, headed 'Scope,' it provided that All of its declared aims should apply to the employees of All boards, commissions and departments of each statute-adopting county. So, upon adoption of the act by Wayne county, there came into being a Wayne county civil service commission, the authority of which in important if not exclusive part extended to...
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