STATE OF CONNECTICUT
OFFICE OF LEGISLATIVE RESEARCH
October
20, 2003
2003-R-0764
LEGISLATIVE
HISTORY OF BINDING ARBITRATION FOR TEACHERS AND MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES
By:
John Moran, Research Analyst and Judith Lohman, Chief Analyst
You asked for a brief
legislative history of the municipal and teacher binding arbitration laws,
particularly the changes since 1990.
SUMMARY
The three main public employee
groups in Connecticut, municipal employees, public school
teachers, and state employees, are each covered by a separate collective
bargaining law. Each law uses mandatory binding arbitration to resolve
negotiation impasses. All three groups are legally prohibited from striking.
The first public employee
binding arbitration law was enacted in 1975 for municipal employees. It amended
an existing law, the Municipal Employee Relations Act (MERA). The teacher
binding arbitration law, passed in 1979, amended the Teacher Negotiation Act
(TNA). The General Assembly enacted binding arbitration for state employees in
1986.
All three laws use a form of
arbitration known as "last best offer by issue. "
This kind of arbitration requires the arbitrator to choose between the final
offers of the parties on each disputed issue.
All three laws were passed
after earlier laws granting collective bargaining rights to covered employees
had been in effect for several years, and all three were passed because those
earlier laws lacked an impasse resolution procedure that could serve as a
meaningful substitute for a strike. In passing each of the binding arbitration
laws, the General Assembly amended laws seen as unfair to public employees and
as failing either to provide full bargaining rights to those employees or to
promote labor peace. In each case, proponents of binding arbitration argued
that the new laws were needed to produce a balance of power between public
employers and employees and thereby to promote serious negotiations and good
faith bargaining.
The three laws all remain
substantially intact. Proposals to amend them to reduce the authority of the
arbitrators and to remedy what many see as the antidemocratic bias of mandatory
binding arbitration are a regular feature of most legislative sessions. So far,
none of these proposals to change the basic structure of binding arbitration
for public employees in Connecticut has succeeded in the General Assembly.
OLR reports 90-R-510 and
90-R-549 detail the provisions and debate surrounding the initial enactment of
TNA and MERA binding arbitration, respectively. Read together, these two
reports show the similarities not only of the laws' provisions but also of the
situations that produced them and the arguments presented for and against them
when they were passed.
MERA AND TNA CHANGES SINCE
1990
Although TNA and MERA have
both been amended since 1990, the TNA has been amended more often.
The most significant change in
both laws was enacted in 1992, when the General Assembly, for the first time,
allowed town legislative bodies to reject initial arbitration awards. But the
legislature nevertheless preserved the finality of binding arbitration for
municipal and school board labor negotiations by requiring rejected awards to
be submitted to a second panel of arbitrators and making the second panel's
award final and binding on both parties.
Other TNA amendments include
changes in the arbitrators' criteria for deciding impasses and in the relative
weight accorded to certain considerations, procedural requirements for
arbitration, and the process for selecting arbitrators. Other MERA changes
established a statutory
process for selecting a
panel's neutral arbitrators, established a procedure and timetable for arbitrating
impasses arising in the first contract negotiated by a new bargaining unit and
a municipal employer, and increased arbitrators' fees.
1990 - TNA
PA 90-325 (sHB 5924) required:
1. the
State Board of Education (SBE) to adopt regulations governing its submission of
the names of potential impartial arbitrators to the governor;
2. the
education commissioner, instead of union and school board representatives, to
randomly select a neutral arbitrator from the neutral arbitrator list;
3. the
commissioner to develop a process to annually evaluate the arbitrators'
performances;
4. arbitrators'
written decisions to specify how they considered (a) the required factors in
making their decisions and (b) the total cost of all the last best offers they
accepted;
5. that
a representative of the local fiscal authority be heard at arbitration hearings
to testify about the school district's financial capability, unless it waives
the opportunity;
6. the
commissioner to report annually on the results of all contract negotiations
during the preceding year;
7. the
SBE to monitor salary settlements and other major economic provisions of
contracts; and
8. the
commissioner's report and the SBE's findings to be submitted to the Education
and Program Review committees, annually.
1991 - TNA
PA 91-352 (sHB 7177) made more
specific some of the factors arbitrators have to consider in deciding issues
under TNA. It required:
1. consideration
of the negotiations between the parties to include the offers and the range and
discussion of issues;
2. consideration
of the public interest and the school district's financial capability to
include other demands on town finances;
3. consideration
of changes in the cost of living to be averaged over the preceding three years;
and
4. consideration
of the salaries, benefits, and other conditions of employment in the state
labor market to include the terms of recent contract settlements or awards in
the private sector and for other municipal employee organizations.
1992 - TNA and MERA
In 1992, the General Assembly
passed two acts amending the binding arbitration provisions of both TNA and
MERA: PA 92-84 (sHB 5566) and PA 92-170 (sSB 343). The latter extensively
amended the former.
The acts allowed a local
legislative body, by a two-thirds vote, to reject teacher, school
administrator, and other municipal employee arbitration awards. Towns must
reject the whole award and not individual issues. A rejected award must be
submitted to a second arbitration by a three-member panel of neutral arbitrators
or, if the parties agree, to a single arbitrator chosen by the education
commissioner, in the case of a teacher or school administrator award, or the
State Board of Mediation and Arbitration, in the case of a municipal employee
award.
In the second arbitration
proceeding, the arbitration panel or single arbitrator must choose one of the
parties' last best offers on each issue. The award of the second panel or
single arbitrator is final and binding on both parties. The local legislative
body must pay the reasonable expenses
of the second arbitration proceeding.
The laws created a new panel
of at least 20 neutral arbitrators to chair arbitration panels that render
decisions in the first round of MERA arbitration. They established a selection
committee, made up equally of labor and municipal employer representatives
appointed by the labor commissioner, to appoint members of the new panel. Each
appointee must receive the selection committee's unanimous approval. (These
provisions already applied to the TNA under state regulations.
)
The acts changed the criteria
arbitrators must use to make decisions in both rounds of arbitration to require
the public interest and the municipality's ability to pay to be paramount and
reduced the terms of the TNA arbitration panel members from four years
(concurrent with the governor's term) to two years.
1993 - MERA
PA 93-17 (sHB 6844) restored
the State Board of Mediation and Arbitration's authority to impose binding
arbitration when a municipal employer and a union representing a new municipal
bargaining unit reach an impasse in negotiations over their first contract. It
also established a specific timetable for negotiations over such first
contracts.
1997 - TNA
PA 97-177 (sSB 1107) (1)
allowed a school board and union to agree on neutral arbitrators for teacher
and school administrator binding arbitration proceedings and (2) removed town
budget reserve funds of 5% or less from consideration when arbitrators decide
whether a school district can afford to pay for a teacher or school
administrator arbitration award.
1998 - TNA
PA 98-252 (sHB 5118) gave a
teachers' or school administrators' union and a local or regional board of
education five days after notifying the education commissioner that their
contract negotiations are at an impasse to tell him the name of the agreed-upon
single arbitrator or neutral chair of the three-member arbitration panel that
will decide the dispute, if they agree on the person. Previously, the parties
had to notify the commissioner of the agreed-upon names at the same time they
notified him of the impasse.
1999 - MERA
PA 99-270 (sHB 7011) (1)
increased the fees of State Board of Mediation and Arbitration arbitrators from
$ 50 for each day after the second day of proceedings to $ 75 for each day after
the first day of proceedings, (2) established a $ 75 arbitrator fee for each
executive session, and (3) made technical changes.
2000 - TNA
PA 00-204 (SB 160) required
the lists TNA arbitration panel nominees submitted to the governor by the SBE,
local school boards, and teachers' and school administrators' unions to include
a report from SBE certifying that the process for soliciting panel applicants
included adequate outreach to minorities and documenting that the number and
type of minority applicants considered reflect the state's racial and ethnic
diversity. It also made the list comply with a law requiring appointing
authorities to make a good faith effort to ensure that appointees are qualified
and represent the state's gender and racial diversity.
PA 00-220 required arbitrators
to notify a school district's fiscal authority of the time and place of the
arbitration hearing held in the school district by registered mail, return
receipt requested, instead of by regular mail.
2001 - TNA
PA 01-173 (sSB 1122) made
technical changes.
JM/JL: eh