Management Rights - AELE's Home Page

Sick and Injury Leave Rules 10-5
Association officials (except the president). The Association
president denied any knowledge or official sanction and, in fact,
organized an Association phone tree which restored the normal
level of sick leave the next day. Although the contract
contained no self-help provision, the School Committee vote to
require absent teachers to forfeit a day's pay unless they
submitted an affidavit of illness was held to be a "reasonable
response to an illegal work stoppage." 26 However, since there
was insufficient evidence to demonstrate that the Association
had any responsibility for the sick out, that part of the charge
against the Association was dismissed.
An employee organization acts only through its elected officials,
not its individual members. 27 It is not enough that the
membership engaged in a strike. In order to establish the
union's liability, the employer must demonstrate that the illegal
conduct was engaged in, induced, encouraged or condoned by
the union leadership. 28
2) Reporting Forms
Even without affording the union the opportunity to bargain, a
new reporting form may be instituted where the new form
imposes no new substantive requirements affecting such items
as the amount of leave available, the criteria for granting
injury/sick leave, or any other condition of employment. This
was the result reached by the Labor Relations Commission in a
1983 case involving the Town of Wilmington Fire Department. 29
In that case, the Acting Fire Chief, in an attempt to curb what
he felt was weekend sick leave abuse by firefighters, devised a
form to be completed by all firefighters absent for one day or
more upon their return to duty. The sickness/injury/off-duty
report form contained a series of questions pertaining to the
reason for the absence, the details of any medical treatment
received, and the ability of the absent firefighter to perform
regular duties. In reversing the Hearing Officer's decision, the
full Commission found that the new form was merely a
procedural modification in the method used by the employer to
monitor sick leave and, therefore, there was no unilateral
change in a mandatory subject of bargaining. The Commission
has consistently ruled that an employer does not violate the
Law when, without bargaining, it unilaterally alters procedural
mechanisms for enforcing existing work rules, provided that
the employer's action does not change underlying conditions of
employment. 30 Similar reasoning was followed, for example,
Massachusetts Municipal Police Training Committee