Town of North Kingstown v. North Kingstown Teachers Ass'n, No. 1704-A

• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Rhode Island
• Writing for the Court: JOSLIN
• Citation: 110 R.I. 698,297 A.2d 342
• Docket Number: No. 1704-A
• Decision Date: 30 November 1972
• Parties: , 82 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2010, 69 Lab.Cas. P 52,952 TOWN OF NORTH KINGSTOWN et al. v. The NORTH KINGSTOWN TEACHERS ASSOCIATION. ppeal.

Page 342

297 A.2d 342 110 R.I. 698, 82 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2010, 69 Lab.Cas. P 52,952 TOWN OF NORTH KINGSTOWN et al.
v.
The NORTH KINGSTOWN TEACHERS ASSOCIATION. No. 1704-Appeal. Supreme Court of Rhode Island. Nov. 30, 1972.

[110 R.I. 708] Coffey, Ward, McGovern & Novogroski, Arthur Novogroski, John G. Coffey, Jr., Providence, for plaintiffs.

Natale L. Urso, Westerly, for defendant.

OPINION

JOSLIN, Justice.

This dispute arose under the School Teachers' Arbitration Act (G.L.1956 (1968 Reenactment) ch. 9.3 of title 28). A Superior Court justice certified it to this court [110 R.I. 700] for hearing and determination on an agreed statement of facts.

Page 343

It appears that the School Committee of the Town of North Kingstown and the North Kingstown Teachers Association, bargaining agent for the certified teachers in that town's public school system, met for the purpose of determining what terms and conditions of employment for the school year 1971-72 ¹ should be included in a proposed collective bargaining agreement.

When an impasse in negotiations developed, the unresolved issues were submitted to arbitration pursuant to § 28-9.3-9. Included in the submission were association proposals for an agency shop, course reimbursement and longviety pay. Plaintiffs, being dissatisfied with the arbitrators' decision thereon, sought judicial review. Initially they filed a complaint in the Superior Court; ² they then moved that the case be certified to this court for hearing and determination on an agreed statement of facts. The case arrived here under a consent order which certifies three stated questions for our determination.

At the outset we are constrained to comment on the method employed to bring the case to this court. In Nunes v. Town of Bristol, 102 R.I. 729, 731, 232 A.2d 775, 777 (1967), we described similar procedures as 'hybrid' and 'unorthodox.' They evidenced there, as they do here, a lack of appreciation for the differences between certifying [110 R.I. 701] an action for hearing and determination on an agreed statement of facts, as provided for in G.L.1956 (1969 Reenactment) § 9-24-25, and certifying questions of doubt and importance pursuant to § 9-24-27. Commenting on those differences, Professor Kent observes '* * * that certification under this section ( § 9-24-25) is of the entire action for determination by the Supreme Court, as contrasted with certification of a question of importance by the Superior Court pursuant to G.L.1956, § 9-24-27, wherein only the question certified is answered, leaving decision of the action to the trial court.' 1 Kent, R.I.Civ.Prac. § 72.3 at 502-03.

Those who ignore these legislatively prescribed procedures run the risk that the certification may go unanswered. It is only because the issue in controversy here, as in Nunes, is of 'extreme public interest' that we are persuaded to act otherwise. Our failure to reject the certification should not, however, be deemed precedential.

We consider the case, then, as if it were properly certified on an agreed statement of fact. In that frame of reference, the issue is whether the arbitrators acted in excess of their jurisdiction with respect to three of the unresolved issues submitted to them.

The first of those issues relates to the arbitrators' authority to order execution of a collective bargaining agreement embodying a provision for what is known in the field of labor relations as an 'agency shop.' In general, such a provision requires a charge or fee to be paid to a certified labor organization by those employees who, although not members of that organization, are nonetheless part of the collective bargaining unit for which it, as bargaining agent, speaks. In this case, the arbitrators directed the parties 'to write' language into their agreement which would

Page 344

give 'full effect' to that portion of their award which states:

[110 R.I. 702] '* * * prior to the first payday in October, all teachers as a condition of employment, would have to have paid to the Association dues or a sum equal to dues in the united profession. Such an arrangement does not require membership in the Association, it only requires that dues or an amount equal to dues be paid by all teachers in order to hold employment in the North Kingstown School System.'

That directive's legality becomes suspect because of possible conflict between it and the right-to-work provision of the School Teachers' Arbitration Act ( § 28-9.3-7) which guarantees public school teachers the freedom '* * * to join or to decline to join any association or organization regardless of whether it has been certified as the exclusive representative of certified public school teachers.' (emphasis added)

The plaintiffs argue that the two provisions are completely at odds. They rely upon the judgment of the Supreme Court that an agency shop conditions employment 'upon the practical equivalent of union 'membership. " ³ NLRB v. General Motors Corp., 373 U.S. 734, 743, 83 S.Ct. 1453, 1459, 10 L.Ed.2d 670, 676 (1963). It is unthinkable to them that our Legislature would grant teachers freedom to choose whether or not to affiliate with a labor organization, and simultaneously compel those who opt against joining to pay that organization a 'sum equal to (union) dues' in order to obtain or hold employment.

The defendant, on the other hand, sees nothing incongruous between the two. It argues that the legislators who enacted[110 R.I. 703] the School Teachers' Arbitration Act in 1966 must certainly have been aware that several states had by then enacted 'right-to-work laws'; that while some of those laws were silent on whether nonunion members of a bargaining unit could be compelled to contribute to the union, most were restrictive and specifically prohibited the exaction of union dues or other fees from those nonmembers; and that the failure of our Legislature to pattern our act upon the more restrictive models clearly evidences its intention to allow, rather than to ban, the agency shop as a permissible form of union security arrangement. ⁴

This approach finds support in Meade Elec. Co. v. Hagberg, 129 Ind.App. 631, 159 N.E.2d 408 (1959) where it was employed as a rationale for...