Duty of Fair Representation
Your responsibility as a union
officer or steward
EERA
Educational Employment Relations Act
– The California law that governs labor relations
between employees and school district
Other Labor laws in California
Meyers-Millias-Brown Act – governs other public
employees labor relations
Higher Education Employee-Employers Relations Act
– governs relations in California University
employment
Exclusive Bargaining Agent
The EERA allows employees to select an employee
organization as their EXCLUSIVE bargaining agentThis means only the organization selected by a majority
of the employees may speak for those employees
– (This does not exclude self representation)
This exclusivity results in a
Duty of Fair Representation.
Duty of Fair Representation
The union’s duty to fairly and adequately
representation all members of a
bargaining unit in activities that the union
is statutory responsible to perform.
– Because the union is the only one who can
represent employees in the unit, the union
must fairly represent all employees regardless
of membership in the organization.
Violations of DFR
A union violates the DFR only if it’s
conduct is
– Arbitrary
- a decision that has no rational basis , has no
rational basis, based on poor judgment or a demonstrating a lack
of effort to carry out its duties
– Discriminatory – The decision to represent one member
or group of members differently than others
– Bad Faith – When a union intentionally harms employees
by acting unfairly in carrying out it’s representational duties
Duty of Fair Representation
violations
Grievance Handling
– Decision to not grieve
must be based on a
logical facts resulting
form an honest
investigation.
– If it is grievable for
group “A” then it is
grievable for group “B”
Bargaining
Negotiations a provision
that is without rational
basis, harms an
employee or group of
employees (example:
Negotiating a provision that
gives away constitutional
rights)
Duty of Fair Presentation
The Duty of Fair representation does not
extend to the internal operations of the
organizations only the relationship
between the employer and the
represented employees