ESSAA Wins Decision Over Utica Board

In a decision involving the Utica Administrators' Association, a PERB Administrative Law Judge recently ruled that a school district's attempt to extend its administrators' work day violated the Taylor Law. The decision by Judge David P. Quinn invalidated a directive to administrators to attend monthly meetings of the Utica City School District Board of Education.

The essential facts are as follows: On July 3, 2001 the Utica City School District Board of Education passed a resolution to conduct regular meetings on the fourth Tuesday of every month, and requested that its Superintendent instruct department heads to attend those meetings. The Superintendent, by memorandum, dated July 6, 2001 notified directors and department heads that they were to adjust their schedule to be at each of the Regular Meetings. The imposition on administrators' time was significant as these meetings often extended late into the night. The bulk of these meetings were irrelevant to the work of administrators yet the Superintendent required administrators to stay throughout the entire meeting. The Utica Administrators Association filed a charge complaining that the terms and conditions of employment had been unilaterally modified by the District without bargaining.

The District responded with fairly predictable arguments. First, the District claimed that administrators' job descriptions required them to "perform such other and further duties as the superintendent and deputy superintendent deem appropriate." It is well established that, while the assignment of duties that are inherent to a job is not subject to negotiation, the length of a work day is. Thus, the District was not free to extend the work day because of the job descriptions. Because the July 6th directive required administrators to attend meetings that they did not have to attend before, it constituted a unilateral increase in the directors' hours of work.

The District also argued that because the collective bargaining agreement does not define the administrators' hours of work it was free to assign work as it saw fit. Wrong. The judge rejected the argument indicating that in the absence of a specific contractual provision, the recognized, normal work day (past practice) governed. The evidence showed that the administrators were not required to appear at Board meetings in the past, and that attending these meetings impermissibly extended the work day.

The District also argued that administrators frequently attended Board meetings anyway. The judge found that voluntary appearance at board meetings, as a part of an administrators' discretionary performance of his or her professional duties, does not obviate the school district from bargaining over a mandatory extension of the work day.

The judge ordered as the remedy that the District rescind the memorandum requiring attendance at board meetings, and employees for attending meetings of the Board at an hourly rate (an average of $48 per hour), plus interest at the maximum legal rate (9%).

In sum, if you only know one thing about the Taylor Law it should be this: The terms and conditions of employment are mandatorily negotiable, and cannot be changed unilaterally by the school district or the union. Copies of the decision are available from Kevin G. Martin, Esq.

Kevin Martin, Bob Saperstein, and Paul Derkash are the ESSAA attorneys who provide a full array of legal services, including; conducting arbitrations, negotiations, and 3020-A defense.