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Negotiating parity salary provisions

Negotiating parity salary provisions
Matter of Plainedge Federation of Teachers, 31 PERB 3015

The Plainedge Federation of Teachers submitted a bargaining demand that provided that the Plainedge Union Free School District would pay its teaching assistants a percentage salary increase equal to the median percentage increase paid annually to teaching assistants in other school districts in Nassau County.

PERB decided that this demand was a mandatory subject of collective bargaining. PERB said that the Federation?s formulaic salary proposal ?effects a type of pattern bargaining which has never been considered to do violence to the policies of the [Taylor Law].? PERB described the demand as involving ?a substantive wage benefit, albeit at a rate to be fixed at a future date pursuant to a mathematical formula resting on conditions or circumstances not within either the Federation?s or the District?s control.?

PERB took pains to note that it did not construe the demand as a ?parity demand,? which would be a prohibited subject of collective bargaining. Parity wage provisions typically involve an automatic adjustment of the rate of pay or a benefit negotiated by one union representing some of the employer?s employees should a second union representing other employees of the same employer obtain a higher or better rate of pay or benefits in a subsequent negotiations than did the first union.

Because the Federation of Teachers? demand did not involve this type of salary or benefit adjustment, PERB decided that it did not constitute a parity demand and thus the demand was a mandatory subject of collective bargaining. A majority of PERB members had earlier ruled that parity demands were prohibited subjects of negotiations. The current board, however, specifically distinguishes parity demand from those linking future increases in wages or benefits to the outcome of subsequent bargaining involving different parties.

The decision concludes with the comment that ?as this demand is not one for parity, we express no opinion as to the negotiability of true parity clauses? [emphasis supplied]. This may signal that the current PERB board may not entirely agree with previous decisions concerning the negotiability of ?true parity demands.?

Full post as published by New York Public Personnel Law on September 03, 2009 (boomark / email).