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 agent- This 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.

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