By Chris Casillas and Sarah E. Derry
In City of Renton, PERC Examiner Coss dismissed the Renton Police Officers’ Guild’s Unfair Labor Practice complaint, which challenged the pay scheme for bicycle officers. The Examiner held that, contrary to the Guild’s allegations: (1) the City did not engage in direct dealing with Officers when it created a new payment method; (2) the Guild had actually agreed to end the alternate payment method and so the City did not unilaterally change the bike pay; and (3) the Guild’s complaint was barred by the statute of limitations.
The City at various points had provided different methods for premium pay for bicycle officers. In 2014, the City ceased one alternate method of compensating bike patrol officers and switched exclusively to a different method. This was apparently allowed under a 2012 tentative agreement between the parties that provided the City could eliminate one payment structure. But the Guild had believed this method of payment applied to only one officer, who was about to retire. The Guild argued that when it agreed to eliminate alternate pay structures in 2012, to the Guild’s knowledge, no other members received these alternate compensation methods.
It was not until the employer cancelled the alternate methods in 2014 that the Guild learned that other employees were, in fact, receiving those types of premium pay. The Guild argued that between 2011 and 2012, the City worked directly with union members create the alternate method of payment – such direct dealing is an unfair labor practice. Examiner Coss, however, determined that the pay method had been created in a 2007 MOU, so City had not refused to bargain. The Examiner was not persuaded by the Guild’s arguments that other agreements, signed between 2007 and 2011, had superseded the 2007 agreement.
The Examiner essentially found that the Guild should have known what method of premium pay its members were receiving:
The employer could not have known that the union was responding to its proposals to eliminate the contractual bike patrol premium …without ever having discussed the issue with its own affected members. It is not the duty of employer’s bargaining team to attempt to determine what the union’s bargaining team understands, or does not understand nor which members it has spoken to or chosen to include in negotiations. In this case, the union’s bargaining team made the independent decision to not contact, nor include on its team, any of its members that would be impacted by the elimination of the bike patrol premium.
The case also turned on whether the Guild’s complaint was filed within the six-month statute of limitations. The statute begins to run when the Guild knows, or should know, about a change. The Guild here argued that it filed the complaint when it found out about the bike payment structure that many members were apparently using. But Examiner Coss found:
[T]he union’s own investigation found evidence of 156 separate instances of union member time records claiming, and the employer paying the alternate premium pay. This is clearly not the conduct of anyone, least of all the employer, attempting to “conceal” the alternate bike patrol premium pay.
Therefore, Examiner Coss concluded, “The union was notified of, and agreed to, the elimination of bike patrol premiums in all forms.”
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