San Lorenzo Education Assn. v. Wilson

• Decision Date: 06 December 1982
• Docket Number: S.F. 24409
• Citation: 32 Cal.3d 841,187 Cal.Rptr. 432,654 P.2d 202
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: , 654 P.2d 202, 115 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2347, 7 Ed. Law Rep. 1049 SAN LORENZO EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Larry A. WILSON et al., Defendants and Appellants.

Page 432

187 Cal.Rptr. 432

32 Cal.3d 841, 654 P.2d 202, 115 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2347,

7 Ed. Law Rep. 1049

SAN LORENZO EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Larry A. WILSON et al., Defendants and Appellants.

S.F. 24409.

Supreme Court of California In Bank.

Dec. 6, 1982.

As Modified on Denial of Rehearing Feb. 3, 1983.

A. Roger Jeanson, Haas & Najarian, San Francisco, and Robert F. Gore, Springfield, Va., for defendants and appellants.

Ronald A. Zumbrun, John H. Findley and Anthony T. Caso, Sacramento, as amici curiae on behalf of defendants and appellants.

Diane Ross, San Francisco, Raymond L. Hansen, Los Angeles, Kirsten L. Zerger, Salinas, and Penn Foote, Burlingame, for plaintiff and respondent.

Van Bourg, Allen, Weinberg & Roger, Stewart Weinberg, Peter A. Janiak, San Francisco, Madalyn J. Frazzini, E. Luis Saenz, San Jose, Maureen C. Whelan, Chico, Siona D. Windsor, San Jose, Dennis M. Sullivan, Gen. Counsel, Jeffrey Sloan, Asst. Gen. Counsel, Sacramento, and Elaine B. Feingold, San Francisco, as amici curiae on behalf of plaintiff and respondent.

BROUSSARD, Justice.

Plaintiff San Lorenzo Education Association CTA/NEA (Association) was the exclusive bargaining representative of the certificated employees of the San Lorenzo Unified School District (District) for the 1977-1978 academic year. The collective bargaining agreement in force contained an "organizational security" or "agency shop" provision that required employees to either join the union or to pay it a service fee. ¹ Under this agreement, enforcement of this provision was the responsibility of the Association and not that of the District. ² The agreement did not specify that union membership or payment of the service fee functioned as a condition of continued employment, nor did it provide for termination of employment as a remedy for noncompliance. ³

Defendants, certificated employees of the District, refused to either join the union or pay the service fee. The Association then sought and obtained judgments against them in several small claims court cases in the San Leandro-Hayward Municipal Court. Defendants appealed to the Alameda County Superior Court, where the court consolidated the cases for trial de novo on stipulated facts and granted judgment in favor of the Association.

In this appeal, defendants contend that section 3540.1, subdivision (i)(2) mandates dismissal as the sole remedy for failure to pay the service fee. We conclude, however, that because section 3540.1, subdivision (i)(2) does not prescribe any particular remedy for failure to pay a service fee to an exclusive bargaining representative, the organizational security provision in the agreement was proper despite its failure to make payment a condition of continued employment, and that civil suit is a proper and often preferred method of enforcing such a provision. We therefore affirm the judgment of the superior court.

I.

It has long been held that agency shop clauses properly promote the payment of union dues and fees. "Thus Congress recognized the validity of unions' concern about 'free riders,' i.e., employees who receive the benefits of union representation but are unwilling to contribute their share of financial support to such union ...." (Radio Officers' Union v. N.L.R.B. (1954) 347 U.S. 17, 41, 74 S.Ct. 323, 336, 98 L.Ed. 55.) The exclusive agreement also has advantages for the employer, by freeing him "from the possibility of facing conflicting demands from different unions ...." (Abood v. Detroit Board of Education (1977) 431 U.S. 209, 221, 97 S.Ct. 1782, 1792, 52 L.Ed.2d 261.) Such considerations led California to authorize organizational security agreements under the EERA. ⁴ (See, e.g., Oakland Unified School District (1978) PERB Order No. Ad-48, at pp. 11-13.)

The issue in the case at bar centers on the Legislature's use of the words "as a condition of continued employment" in defining an organizational security agreement. Section 3540.1, subdivision (i)(2) defines organizational security as "[a]n arrangement that requires an employee, as a condition of continued employment, either to join the recognized or certified employee organization, or to pay the organization a service fee ...." (Italics added.)

Defendants urge that this terminology in section 3540.1, subdivision (i)(2) provides for the remedy of termination of a noncomplying employee's employment, and therefore other remedies, such as private civil actions, should not be read into the statute. ⁵

In our opinion, however, section 3540.1, subdivision (i)(2) does not prescribe a remedy at all, let alone an exclusive one. The plain reading of the statute indicates that it is merely a definitional section, not intended as a substantive limitation on union remedies. This reading, as we will explain, is supported by an opinion of the Attorney General and by the practice of the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB).

II.

Two considerations are especially pertinent to our construction of this statute. First, we must read the act as a whole rather than, in preoccupation with a single phrase, ignore its position in the structure of the statute. Section 3540.1, titled "Definitions," functions primarily as a reference guide which accompanies us through the act. It identifies and gives meaning to various terms as we encounter them in the substantive portions of the enactment. Second, we recognize that in enacting the EERA, the Legislature did not purport to invent anew the law of labor relations. Much of the act is no more than an unremarkable application of standard collective bargaining concepts well established in other private and public sector contexts to public education employment.

The act provides a means by which an employee organization may be "recognized" or "certified" as the exclusive bargaining representative for a bargaining unit. (§§ 3543.1, 3544-3544.9.) Once an exclusive bargaining representative is so chosen, employees are prohibited from negotiating individually over terms and conditions of employment. (§ 3543.) Consistent with these features, the EERA, like other pieces of labor legislation, replaces common law contractual principles with a collective bargaining regimen. It is a fundamental principle of such a system that a member of a bargaining unit is bound by the terms of a valid collective bargaining agreement, though he is not formally a party to it and may not even belong to the union which negotiated it. (Chavez v. Sargent (1959) 52 Cal.2d 162, 197, 339 P.2d 801; Douglas Aircraft Co. v. California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board (1960) 180 Cal.App.2d 636, 646, 4 Cal.Rptr. 723; Porter v. Quillin (1981) 123 Cal.App.3d 869, 874, 177 Cal.Rptr. 45.) The courts will relax this rule only where enforcement of a collective bargaining term would contravene an extraordinarily strong and explicit state policy. Thus, Porter v. Quillin, supra, held all employees in a unit bound by an agreement requiring them to accept a portion of their wages in meal credits despite case law interpreting the Labor Code to require "specific and prior voluntary employee consent" for such arrangements. (Porter, supra, 123 Cal.App.3d 869, 872-874, 177 Cal.Rptr. 45.)

We are guided by this policy of maintaining flexibility for employers and bargaining representatives in our consideration of section 3543.2 which defines the scope of representation. ⁶ This section includes "organizational security" within the meaning of "terms and conditions of employment"; the act further provides that an organizational security term of a collective bargaining agreement shall "become effective" upon agreement by the employer and bargaining agent and, where requested by the employer, ratification by a majority of the bargaining unit. (§ 3546.)

We look to section 3540.1, subdivision (i) only as it informs our understanding of the "organizational security" phrase found in sections 3543.2 and 3546. The phrase "condition of continued employment" in section 3540.1, subdivision (i)(2) is basically a textbook recital of an agency shop authorization. (See, e.g., NLRB v. General Motors Corporation (1963) 373 U.S. 734, 83 S.Ct. 1453, 10 L.Ed.2d 670; Retail Clerks International Association v. Schermerhorn (1963) 373 U.S. 746, 747, 83 S.Ct. 1461, 10 L.Ed.2d 678.) The meaning to which the respondents would confine us--termination upon nonpayment of fees--is simply the outer limit of acceptable agency shop provisions. As amici curiae, California Federation of Teachers and California State Council Service Employees International Union, suggest, "condition of employment" as used in the collective bargaining sphere necessarily includes the concept "obligation of employment." As we have seen, every term of a collective bargaining agreement is an obligation; section 3540.1, subdivision (i) simply indicates that the parties may provide for termination for violation of this particular duty. Indeed, frequently the courts have used the terms "obligation" and "condition" of continued employment interchangeably in examining agency shop requirements. (See Bagnall v. Air Line Pilots Association International (4th Cir.1980) 626 F.2d 336, 341, cert. den. 449 U.S. 1125, 101 S.Ct. 943, 67 L.Ed.2d 112; Marden v. International Association of Machinists (5th Cir.1978) 576 F.2d 576, 579.) A provision requiring nonunion members of a unit to pay a service fee is a matter pertaining to organizational security within the scope of the union's and the employer's bargaining authority.

The function of section 3540.1 within the act is definitional only. It does not of its own force provide remedies, much less exclusive remedies, for violations of collective bargaining agreements by individual members. Legislative silence on the subject of remedies does not, however, bar the instant suit; the absence of a particular remedy is not the same as the absence of a cause of action. "An obligation arising from operation of law may be enforced in...