Middlebury v. Fraternal Order of Police, Middlebury Lodge No. 34

Excerpt

The plaintiff town appealed to the trial court from the decision of the defendant State Board of Labor Relations, which concluded that the town had violated the Municipal Employee Relations Act (§ 7-467 et seq.) by unilaterally changing its past practice of including extra duty pay in calculating pension benefits for members of the named defendant union. The labor board's decision was based on its conclusions that the town had violated the statute (§ 7-470 (a) (4)) requiring municipal employers to bargain in good faith, that there had been a consistent past practice of including extra duty pay in the calculation of pension benefits, and that the union had not waived its right to bargain with respect to changes to the calculation of future retirement benefits. In reaching its decision, the labor board applied its well established stan- dard that a union's waiver of its right to bargain with respect to an otherwise mandatory subject of bargaining must be clear and unmistak- able. During the pendency of the town's administrative appeal to the trial court, however, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a decision in MV Transportation, Inc. (368 N.L.R.B. No. 66), in which the NLRB abandoned the clear and unmistakable waiver standard in favor of the contract coverage standard, under which the NLRB initially reviews the plain language of the parties' collective bargaining agreement to determine whether the change made by the employer was within the compass or scope of the contractual language granting the employer the right to act unilaterally. Because the NLRB had held that the contract coverage standard applied retroactively to all pending cases, the trial court remanded the case to the labor board to consider whether to adopt that new federal standard. Subsequently, the labor board declined to adopt the contract coverage standard, and the trial court rendered judgment dismissing the town's administrative appeal, concluding, inter alia, that the town had faile