West Hartford Bd. of Educ. v. Connecticut State Bd. of Labor Relations

• Decision Date: 31 May 1983
• Citation: 460 A.2d 1255,190 Conn. 235
• Parties: , 116 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2996, 11 Ed. Law Rep. 918 WEST HARTFORD BOARD OF EDUCATION v. CONNECTICUT STATE BOARD OF LABOR RELATIONS et al.
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court

Page 1255

460 A.2d 1255

190 Conn. 235, 116 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2996,

11 Ed. Law Rep. 918

WEST HARTFORD BOARD OF EDUCATION v. CONNECTICUT STATE BOARD OF LABOR RELATIONS et al.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued Dec. 2, 1982.

Decided May 31, 1983.

Russell L. Post, Jr., Hartford, with whom, on the brief, was Jewel A. Gutman, Avon, for appellant (plaintiff).

J. Larry Foy, General Counsel, Weathersfield, for appellee (named defendant).

William J. Dolan, Hartford, with whom, on the brief, was Ronald Cordilico, Meriden, for appellee (defendant West Hartford Educ. Ass'n).

Before SPEZIALE, C.J., and PETERS, PARKSEY, SHEA and PICKETT, JJ.

PICKETT, Associate Justice.

This is an appeal by the West Hartford Board of Education (school board) from a Superior Court judgment dismissing the school board's appeal from a decision and orders of the defendant Connecticut State Board of Labor Relations (labor board). The labor board concluded that the school board did not bargain in good faith thereby violating § 10-153e(d) of the Teacher Negotiation Act (act); ¹ General Statutes §§ 10-153a through 10-153n; when it failed to provide information requested by the defendant West Hartford Education Association (WHEA), (the exclusive statutory bargaining representative for the bargaining unit comprised of certified teachers employed by the school board).

Elementary school teachers in the West Hartford school system (system) are eligible for the position of coordinating teacher. The coordinator position ordinarily entails curriculum development and does not interfere with the coordinator's teaching assignment. The West Hartford school administration (administration), (composed of the school board's director of instruction, associate superintendent and superintendent), annually selects the coordinating teachers, who receive additional compensation for the appointment. The system had twenty-seven coordinating teachers during the 1977-78 school year. Since student enrollment had decreased, the school board decided to reduce the number to seventeen for the 1978-79 school year. Twenty-two teachers, all of whom had been coordinators during 1977-78, sought reappointment that year.

Dr. James Moore, the school board's director of personnel services, gathered and appraised information on each applicant to assist in selecting the seventeen coordinators. The evaluative data included (1) performance ratings prepared by each applicant's principal; (2) performance ratings prepared by members of the school board's central office staff; (3) results from the application of a weighing scale to those performance ratings (intended to reflect the degree of familiarity with the applicant's performance by the individual submitting the rating); (4) information obtained from interviews with the applicants; and (5) the annual evaluations of the applicants. Moore reported his evaluation of the prospective coordinators to the administration which thereafter, in June, 1978, appointed the successful applicants. A few days later, Moore destroyed the information compiled during the appraisal process.

On June 30, 1978, Victor Terek, president of the WHEA, filed a grievance on behalf of the five unsuccessful applicants. The grievance charged that the administration did not adhere to a contractual clause in the collective bargaining agreement (contract) between the WHEA and the school board. Article 18.6 of the contract ² established that length of service and relative performance are the prime factors to be considered equally in making staff reductions. The grievants claimed that the administration had considered performance, but ignored seniority in selecting the 1978-79 coordinators. A grievance meeting was held on August 1, 1978; but, the school board denied the grievance on the grounds that article 18.6 applied only to teachers laid off from their regular duties and that decisions concerning annual assignments of additional duty did not entail staff reductions.

The WHEA believed that it needed information about the factors employed in the coordinator selection process in order to evaluate and process the grievance properly. It sought that data, moreover, so that a determination could be made whether to bring additional grievances under the contract's article 6.1(a) provision requiring that the contract be fairly administered. The WHEA requested the information at the grievance meeting and again by memo. The school board responded to the memo stating that the data which had been the basis for the reappointment decisions had been destroyed pursuant to a teacher-approved policy. ³ It did forward (1) the blank rating form employed by the principals and central office staff; (2) the system of weighing; and (3) data on age distribution of elementary school coordinators. The school board also agreed that the permanent annual teacher evaluations of the applicants were obtainable. The WHEA, nonetheless, still sought the performance ratings completed by the principals and the school board's central office staff specifically for Moore's evaluation system. To that end, it filed a complaint with the labor board ⁴ on October 5, 1978, alleging that refusal to provide such information was a practice prohibited by § 10-153e(d) of the act. ⁵

The labor board, charged by statute with the duty to determine whether a local board of education has bargained in good faith with the teachers' bargaining representative, issued its decision on November 6, 1979, finding that the school board had violated the act. It declined to consider the school board's contention that the WHEA grievance was not meritorious on the ground that the contract's grievance-arbitration procedure was the method to test such an assertion. The controlling issue in the labor board's decision was whether the information sought by the WHEA was relevant to its grievance. The labor board believed that in order to determine whether the administration considered performance and seniority equally the WHEA must discover the emphasis placed on performance. Since the ratings sought in the complaint would indicate the consideration given performance, the labor board found them to be relevant to the contractual issue raised in the grievance. It further found that the performance data were therefore necessary so that the WHEA could perform its duty imposed by the act to represent its bargaining unit members intelligently. In light of those findings, the labor board concluded that the school board's statutory duty to bargain in good faith required it to furnish the information. Accordingly, it ordered the school board (1) to provide the requested information in the best possible manner (including recollections by those familiar with the contents of the destroyed documents); and (2) to cease and desist in the future from destroying documents or other evidence related to decisions subject to grievance under the contract (a) during the time within which such a grievance may be filed and/or (b) during the pendency of the grievance.

The school board filed an appeal in the Superior Court pursuant to § 10-153e(g) of the act seeking to vacate the labor board's orders. The trial court dismissed the appeal and upheld the labor board's decision in its entirety. From that judgment the school board has appealed assigning three errors in the court's conclusion. The school board initially contends that the court erred in upholding the labor board's discovery order because it required disclosure of information irrelevant to the WHEA's grievance. Even assuming arguendo that the requested performance ratings were relevant, the school board claims a second error in the court's failure to recognize that individual and governmental rights to privacy prevail here over the union's interest in the ratings. Its final claim is that the orders, if sustained, constitute an unwarranted burden on the school board to preserve and disclose all predecisional material, no matter how remote, ever compiled in a selection process.

The act is essentially patterned on the National Labor Relations Act so that federal judicial interpretations of the federal act are of great assistance and persuasive force in the interpretations of it. West Hartford Education Ass'n v. DeCourcy, Inc. 162 Conn. 566, 578-79, 295 A.2d 526 (1972). Since the act is a labor relations statute, it is a remedial enactment and as such should be liberally construed to accomplish its objectives. Connecticut State Board of Labor Relations v. Board of Education, 177 Conn. 68, 74, 411 A.2d 28 (1979). "In this regard, it is also well established that 'courts should accord great deference to the construction given the statute by the agency charged with its enforcement.' " Id., quoting Anderson v. Ludgin, 175 Conn. 545, 555, 400 A.2d 712 (1978). Indeed, courts have traditionally granted labor boards a very large degree of discretion when making bargaining unit determinations. Connecticut State Board of Labor Relations v. Board of Education, supra, 177 Conn. 74, 411 A.2d 28; Success Village Apartments, Inc. v. Local 376, 175 Conn. 165, 397 A.2d 85 (1978).

The school board-employer has the statutory duty to bargain in good faith with the certified representative of the teachers. General Statutes §§ 10-153a, 10-153e(d). This duty requires an employer to provide relevant information that is needed by the representative for the proper performance of his duties. Detroit Edison Co. v. NLRB 440 U.S. 301, 303, 99 S.Ct. 1123, 1125, 59 L.Ed.2d 333 (1979); NLRB v. Acme Industrial Co., 385 U.S. 432, 435-36, 87 S.Ct. 565, 567-568, 17 L.Ed.2d 495 (1967). That obligation extends beyond the period of contractual negotiations to the union's need for information while administering and policing the contract. NLRB v. Acme Industrial Co., supra, 436, 87 S.Ct. 568; Western Massachusetts Electric Co. v. NLRB, 589 F.2d 42, 46 (1st Cir.1978). Whether information is relevant to the representative's duties...