By Jim Cline and Sam Hagshenas
In Arlington School District, the PERC Examiner found that the District had violated its duty to bargain and had skimmed bargaining unit work from the ironically named Arlington Non-Rep Group (NRG). The school district did not believe the NRG was a union, but prior practice demonstrated that the District had historically voluntarily recognized the NRG as a bargaining unit and thus violated its duty to bargain.
The NRG consists of non-supervisory employees who are excluded from the Public School Employees (PSE) bargaining unit. While the District mentioned the NRG (formerly the Exempt Group) in various collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) from 1985 to 2007, no CBAs were signed by both parties after 2010.
In 2019, the NRG resumed meetings with the District, discussing various compensation-related issues. In 2023, the District posted a reorganized position that would be a part of the PSE bargaining unit. The NRG met with the employer, as they believed work that was typically in their group was being skimmed to PSE. The District informed the NRG that after consulting with an attorney, it did not consider them as a union and therefore did not have a duty to bargain with them.
The NRG argued that the District had voluntarily recognized it as a bargaining unit through their history of discussions and agreements, and that the District could not choose to stop negotiating with a voluntarily recognized group.
The District argued that NRG lacked many of the characteristics of a Union, and that there had been no substantial discussions between the parties since 2007. The District testified that it treated the NRG similarly to its group of principals, which it would occasionally meet with to confer on work issues.
The Examiner sided with the NRG, finding that despite its lack of a formal union structure, it meets with the employer to bargain over wages, hours, and working conditions, advocating on behalf of employees in its group. This was enough to qualify the NRG as an exclusive bargaining representative. The Examiner noted that the gap in negotiations between 2010 and 2019 was highly unusual but emphasized that there was no evidence the NRG had abandoned its interest in the employees.
“The fact that the employer resumed bargaining with the NRG when it requested to meet in 2019 indicates a continued acknowledgement by the employer that the NRG represented this group of employees.”
The Examiner did find that the position in question was unlawfully skimmed from the NRG and held the District had refused to bargain by reassigning work to the PSE bargaining unit without bargaining with the NRG.
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