Management Rights - AELE's Home Page

Appointments 7-5
entry-level wage of a bargaining unit position without giving the
bargaining representative notice and an opportunity to bargain.
Dracut School Committee 30 held that an employer cannot offer an applicant
for a bargaining unit position a different pay rate than it is paying present
bargaining unit members without offering to bargain (or at least providing
the union with notice and an opportunity to bargain.) In that case, the
school commitee and the teachers’ association were parties to a colective
bargaining agreement which provided that all newly-hired teachers were to
be placed at a salary step commensurate with their teaching experience.
For more than fifteen years, the school committee capped the step
placement of new-hires at Step 5 regardless of their experience. Realizing
the difficulty such a cap had on attracting qualified teachers, the
Committee unanimously voted to remove the Step 5 cap for new-hires.
While the union argued that the school committee could not unilaterally
change its past practice without first giving the union an opportunity to
bargain over that mandatory subject, the school committee argued that it
had three grounds on which to justify its decision. First, it argued that
the establishment of an individual’s salary-step level was purely between it
and the individual. The school committee argued that since the individual
was not yet a bargaining unit member, the union had no right to demand
bargaining. Next, the school committee argued that the establishment of
step levels was a non-bargainable management right because it involved
the establishment of educational policy. Finally, the school committee
argued that if it were required to bargain over the step levels given to newhires,
it could be impermissibly constrained from hiring the applicant of
its choice, which it argued was a management right.
Beginning its opinion by stating the general rule that initial wages for a
newly-created bargaining unit position are “wages” for bargaining
purposes, the LRC then cited a recent case where it held that payments
made to employees because of their work performance and length of
service did constitute “wages”. 31
Addressing each of the school commitee’s arguments in order, the LRC
first found that since one’s step level directly afects his or her “wages”, it
was a mandatory subject of bargaining. In deciding as it did, the LRC
said:
It is true that mere applicants for hire who have
not had prior employment within the unit are
not employees in the unit. However, it is the
bargaining unit position, not the individual
applicant, that is the focus of this case. If a
bargaining unit is under contract and subject to
certain conditions of employment and an
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