M.S.A.D. No. 43 Teachers' Ass'n v. M.S.A.D. No. 43 Bd. of Directors

• Decision Date: 15 July 1981
• Citation: 432 A.2d 395
• Parties: M. S. A. D. NO. 43 TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION v. M. S. A. D. NO. 43 BOARD OF DIRECTORS and Maine Labor Relations Board.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 395

432 A.2d 395

M. S. A. D. NO. 43 TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION v. M. S. A. D. NO. 43 BOARD OF DIRECTORS and Maine Labor Relations Board.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued March 5, 1981.

Decided July 15, 1981.

Sunenblick, Fontaine & Reben, Stephen P. Sunenblick (orally), Portland, for plaintiff.

David W. Austin (orally), Rumford, for M. S. A. D.

Wayne W. Whitney, Jr. (orally), Augusta, for Maine Labor Relations Board.

Before McKUSICK, C. J., and WERNICK, GODFREY, GLASSMAN ^* and CARTER, JJ.

CARTER, Justice.

M.S.A.D. No. 43 Teachers' Association (the Union) appeals from a judgment of the Superior Court, Kennebec County, affirming an order of the Maine Labor Relations Board (the Board) that the M.S.A.D. No. 43 Board of Directors (the Employer) cease and desist from paying newly hired teachers a higher salary than that paid returning teachers with the same experience. ¹ The Board found that the discrepancy in payment interfered with the returning teachers' bargaining rights, violating 26 M.R.S.A. § 964(1)(A). ² The Union contends that the Board's cease and desist order is an inadequate remedy. To erase the effects of the unfair labor practice, the Union suggests, the Employer should be required to reimburse the returning teachers for the difference in salaries. We affirm the judgment of the Superior Court.

In April 1978, the Union and the Employer began negotiating over a collective bargaining agreement to succeed the agreement then in force. By August 31, 1978, the day the 1977-78 agreement expired, no new agreement had been reached. Negotiations continued into the new school year.

Between November 1978 and January 1978, the Union and the Employer filed with the Board four prohibited practice complaints. In one of them, the Union alleged, inter alia, that at the beginning of the new school year, August 28, 1978, the Employer paid newly hired teachers as though the 1977-78 collective bargaining agreement was still in effect, whereas it paid returning teachers as though the agreement had expired. That is, in setting the salaries of the newly hired teachers, the Employer translated prior years of experience and education into monetary values according to the salary step schedule set forth in the 1977-78 agreement; to the returning teachers, however, the Employer paid the same salary for the new school year that had been paid in the school year just past, disregarding the additional "salary step" of one year's teaching experience gained in 1977-78.

The Board consolidated the Union's and the Employer's complaints, held a hearing on May 21, 1979, and thereafter concluded that both sides had committed prohibited practices in the course of their stormy bargaining relationship. Concerning the salary issue, the Board declared:

The Directors ((Employer)) ... acted properly in paying the returning teachers at the same step which the teachers occupied during the 1977-78 school year. In Easton Teachers Association v. Easton School Committee, M.L.R.B. No. 79-14 at 7 (1979), we held that during the interim period between expiration of a contract and execution of a successor contract, "the status quo should be maintained as if the existing conditions were frozen rather than to give effect to a built-in wage escalator." ³ In the present case the 1977-78 agreement expired on September 1, 1978, and a successor agreement had not been executed by the commencement of the 1978-79 school year. However, the Directors ran afoul of the Act by not paying the same salary to newly hired teachers as was payed to returning teachers with the same experience.

Thus, according to the Board, the Employer's violation of section 964(1)(A) lay not in paying returning teachers too little, but rather in paying newly hired teachers too much. The Board ordered that the latter practice stop, reasoning that, regardless of the Employer's motivation or the ultimate effect of the discrepancy in salaries,

returning teachers could reasonably view the salary differential as a "message" that the Directors were displeased at having to bargain with the teachers, or as an attempt to pressure the teachers at the bargaining table.

The Union contends, as it contended before the Superior Court, that (1) the Board erred in concluding returning teachers were paid at a proper scale because, under the terms of the 1977-78 collective bargaining agreement, the salary step increments were to be applied to the 1978-79 school year, and (2) the public policy underlying our labor relations law required the Board to devise an affirmative remedy to eliminate any possible harmful effects of the differential in pay scales.

In support of its first argument, the Union relies upon Article IX of the expired collective bargaining agreement, which provided, "Each returning teacher, at the beginning of each school year, shall be placed on the proper salary level as outlined in Article X." Because the beginning of the 1978-79 school year fell on August 28, the Union asserts, and because the collective bargaining agreement was not due to expire until three days later, August 31, the Employer was bound by the agreement itself to advance returning teachers one salary step on the schedule contained in Article X.

The Board points out that Article X, by its own terms, applied to "salary increases for 1977-78." The schedule is introduced by the statement: "The salary to be paid to teachers for their training and experience in 1977-78 is as follows: ..." Article XXIX, entitled "Duration of Agreement," declares: "This Agreement shall take effect September 1, 1977, and shall expire August 31, 1978;" a survivorship clause nowhere appears.

Confronted with a collective bargaining agreement thus framed, the Maine Labor Relations Board, as in Easton Teachers Association v. Easton School Committee, M.L.R.B. No. 79-14 (March 13, 1979), properly could, and implicitly did, find that nothing in that agreement was meant to extend the scheduled rate increases beyond the 1977-78 school year. Notwithstanding the three day interval between the beginning of the new school year and the expiration of the old agreement, therefore, the Union's assertion that the Board erred in failing to enforce the sold agreement is meritless.

The Union's second argument that the policies of our labor relations law obligated the Board to grant an affirmative remedy designed to undo the speculative impact of the Employer's prohibited practice on future collective bargaining is equally unpersuasive. ⁴ Once the Board finds a challenged practice to be prohibited, the determination of what affirmative relief, if any, will effectuate the policies of our labor relations law is, in the first instance, committed to the informed discretion of the Board. 26 M.R.S.A. § 968(5)(C). ⁵ It is not for us to interfere with the remedy chosen by the Board where the reasons articulated for it in the Board's decision clearly show it to be within the statutory powers of the Board. Cf. Caribou...