Boling v. Public Employment Relations Bd.

This case arises from a decision by the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) finding that the City of San Diego (City) violated the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act (Gov. Code, § 3500 et seq.; Act) when the City's mayor made a policy decision to advance a citizens' pension reform initiative (Initiative) without meeting and conferring with the affected employees' unions (Unions).  The California Supreme Court upheld PERB's finding that the mayor's actions violated the City's meet and confer obligations.  (Boling v. Public Employment Relations Bd. (2018) 5 Cal.5th 898, 913, 919 (Boling).)  The Supreme Court then remanded the matter to this court to "address the appropriate judicial remedy for the violation."  (Id. at p. 920.)  We also consider previously unaddressed challenges to PERB's administrative remedies.

As we shall explain, we decline the Unions' request to invalidate the Initiative as a judicial remedy because we conclude the Initiative's validity is more appropriately addressed in a separate quo warranto proceeding.  We further conclude we must modify PERB's compensatory and cease-and-desist remedies to prevent the remedies from impermissibly encroaching upon constitutional law, statutory law, and policy matters involving initiatives, elections, and the doctrine of preemption that are unrelated to the Act.  (See Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB (2002) 535 U.S. 137, 144, 147 [122 S.Ct. 1275, 152 L.Ed.2d 271] (Hoffman Plastic) [a labor relations board's administrative remedies may not encroach upon statutes and policies unrelated to the board's enabling act].)

Specifically, we modify PERB's compensatory remedy to order the City to meet and confer over the effects of the Initiative and to pay the affected current and former employees represented by the Unions the difference, plus seven percent annual interest, between the compensation, including retirement benefits, the employees would have received before the Initiative became effective and the compensation the employees received after the Initiative became effective.  The City's obligation to comply with the compensatory remedy extends until completion of the bargaining process, including the exhaustion of impasse procedures, if an impasse occurs.  We modify PERB's cease-and-desist remedy to order the City to cease and desist from refusing to meet and confer with the Unions and, instead, to meet and confer with the Unions upon the Unions' request before placing a charter amendment on the ballot that is advanced by the City and affects employee pension benefits and/or other negotiable subjects.  As so modified, we affirm PERB's decision.

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