Copyright© 2000 by School Services of California, Inc.
Agency Shop may be a Reality for Community
Colleges
Legislation-SB 1960 by Senator John Burton (D-San Francisco)-would require the implementation of a mandatory "fair share" or "agency shop" fee for all public school and community college employees who are members of a collective bargaining unit.
What are "fair share" or "agency shop" fees? When an employee is required to either join an employee organization (union) or to pay the organization a "fair share fee" as a condition of employment, this is known as an "agency shop" arrangement.
SB 1960 has passed the Senate, and was recently heard in the Assembly Public Employee, Retirement and Social Security Committee, where it was approved on a 4 to 1 vote.
Existing law on this matter is embodied in the Educational Employee Relations Act (EERA), also known as the Rodda Act, which was approved by the Legislature and signed by Governor Jerry Brown in 1975. In addition to a variety of other provisions, EERA provides for a process by which employees of the public school and the community colleges may select an exclusive representative as part of the bargaining unit within their district. This representative may then negotiate the terms and conditions of employment with the governing board, with the results of negotiations subject to ratification (voter approval) by the employees. Under current law, state and local public employees are authorized to include "agency shop" fees in the scope of what is bargained.
In the case of all the public employer-employee relation's laws, the exclusive bargaining agent, or union, must represent every employee within the bargaining unit in any matter, whether or not the employee is a member of the union.
In 1999, the Legislature approved and Governor Davis signed SB 645 (Burton), which is similar to SB 1960. SB 645 amended the Higher Education Employee Relations Act (HEERA) to require the implementation of a mandatory "fair share" or "agency shop" fee, known as "organizational security," for all employees of the University of California and the California State University who are members of a collective bargaining unit. SB 1960 is an attempt to implement mandatory "agency shop" for K-14 employees in the same manner that SB 645 implemented them for higher education employees.
SB 1960 has the effect of circumventing the collective bargaining process by directly imposing agency shop fees rather than allowing them to be bargained, and then submitting the provisions to the employees for a vote.
Even though many districts have negotiated these provisions, supporters of the legislation maintain that public school employee organizations are entitled to the same mandatory provisions for "organizational security" now enjoyed by the employee organizations of UC and CSU. On the other hand, opponents of the measure note that bypassing the collective bargaining process to unilaterally implement an organizational security fee creates a burden on employees to petition for its rescission, rather than simply having the matter submitted to the employees through the normal ratification process at the local level.
In an effort to lessen the burden on employees who oppose the mandatory imposition of organizational security fees, the cost of an election to rescind the fee would be borne by the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB). However, if the employees subsequently petition to reinstate those provisions, that election cost is borne by the petitioning party.
SB 1960 is now in its final committee (Assembly Appropriations) and will
likely be on the Governor's desk for his consideration in early August. Based
on the Governor's support of SB 645 last year, approval would seem likely.
--Arnold Bray