Public Employment Relations Board Clarifies Effect of a Prior Personnel Board Decision

The California Constitution’s merit principle protects civil service employees from politically partisan mistreatment or other arbitrary actions. If a state employee believes she faced discipline or discharge in violation of the merit principle, she may appeal that decision to the State Personnel Board (SPB). Public employees in California also have collective bargaining rights and the right to engage in union or other protected concerted activity. If an employee believes she has been disciplined or discharged because she exercised those rights, she and/or her union would go to the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) for relief.

What happens when an employee (and/or her union) file claims with both SPB and PERB regarding the same discipline? The two agencies handle distinct claims, but there may be significant overlap in issues such as whether there was cause for the discipline. In a recent case—State of California (California Correctional Health Care Services) (2024) PERB Decision 28883—PERB clarified the rules about cases already heard by the SPB. In this case, the state correctional health system fired a pharmacist after he engaged in protected union activity. The employee went to the SPB, which found that he had engaged in misconduct but reduced the penalty of discharge to a one-month suspension.

In its decision on the anti-union discrimination claim, PERB explained that in the right circumstances, it will defer to the SPB’s finding on a certain issue. For example, if the SPB found that an employee engaged in misconduct, PERB may defer to that finding of misconduct. However, that would not answer the ultimate question of whether the Employer discriminated when it imposed the discipline. PERB remains the “watchdog agency” with the responsibility to remedy unfair labor practices like anti-union discrimination, so PERB must still decide whether there was anti-union discrimination. For example, if a union steward engaged in misconduct, but other employees who engaged in the same misconduct were not disciplined, PERB could still find that the Employer discriminated when it disciplined the union steward. In this particular case, PERB found that SPB’s finding of misconduct did not settle the question of whether the pharmacist was discriminated against and sent the case back to an administrative law judge for determination of that issue.

This decision demonstrates that often there is more than one avenue of challenging unfair discipline and discharge, and workers and their Unions should consider the benefits and drawbacks of the different remedies available. For further information, contact your labor law counsel.