The Meyers-Milias-Brown Act requires the governing body of a local public agency to meet and confer in good faith regarding wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment with representatives of a recognized employee organization. The act requires, if a tentative agreement is reached and the governing body adopts the tentative agreement, that the parties prepare jointly a nonbinding written memorandum of understanding of the agreement. Under existing law, if representatives of the public employee agency and the recognized employee organization fail to reach agreement, the parties may agree together upon the appointment of a mutually agreeable mediator.

This bill instead would permit either party to request mediation and would require the parties to agree upon a mediator, if either party has provided the other with a written notice of declaration of impasse. If the parties cannot agree upon a mediator, the bill would authorize either party to request the board to appoint a mediator. The bill would require the board to appoint a mediator within 5 days after receipt of the party’s request, as prescribed. A public agency would not be required to proceed to mediation in its negotiations with respect to a bargaining unit under the above-described circumstances if the public agency has an impasse procedure that includes, at a minimum, a process for binding arbitration.

The Meyers-Milias-Brown Act requires the Public Employment Relations Board to determine in disputed cases whether a particular item is within or without the scope of representation. Existing law requires the governing body of a local public agency, or those boards, commissions, administrative officers, or other representatives as may be properly designated by law or by a governing body, to meet and confer in good faith regarding wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment with representatives of recognized employee organizations. Existing law authorizes an employee organization to request that the parties’ differences be submitted to a factfinding panel not sooner than 30 days or more than 45 days following the appointment or selection of a mediator pursuant to the parties’ agreement to mediate or a mediation process required by a public agency’s local rules. Existing law authorizes an employee organization, if the dispute was not submitted to a mediation, to request that the parties’ differences be submitted to a factfinding panel not later than 30 days following the date that either party provided the other with a written notice of a declaration of impasse. Existing law prohibits an employee organization’s procedural right to request a factfinding panel from being waived expressly or voluntarily.

This bill would authorize differences under these provisions to include those differences that arise from any dispute over any matter within the scope of representation as to which an obligation to meet and confer exists, and are not limited to negotiations after impasse after collective bargaining for a new or successor memorandum of understanding. The bill would limit the criteria that the factfinders would be required to consider to those criteria that the factfinders deem relevant to the dispute. The bill would authorize an employee organization to voluntarily waive the right to request a factfinding panel, in writing. The bill would include legislative findings and declarations that certain of these amendments are clarifying and declaratory of existing law.