We have been discussing PERB and its role, as per yesterday's post. Yours truly has been collecting documents as the parties release them. One thing he has noticed is that there is a deflection going on at PERB. From UC administration's perspective, the key issues are the no-strike clause and violations thereof and the argument that the current strike is basically about political goals outside the scope of bargaining.
But when PERB issued a complaint in response to UC's filing - not the same is a final decision - against the UAW, it really didn't deal with those matters. It said instead that the UAW went on strike without first bargaining in good faith. There is some irony here. If the UAW had offered to bargain, UC would have refused since bargaining would have tacitly conceded UC's two key talking points. In effect, therefore, PERB focused on an issue that neither party would say was at the heart of the dispute.
There is an incentive for PERB to decide as little as possible. As we noted yesterday, PERB is really not a dispute-settling agency. It doesn't want to be a dispute-settling agency. It is a legal decision agency and its decisions set precedents for future cases that may involve other parties in completely different disputes. So don't look to PERB to resolve issues it doesn't have to. (Particularly, don't look to PERB to solve the situation in the Middle East.)
On Sunday, we'll suggest a route to settling the current dispute that avoids PERB, the courts, and legalism more generally.
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For those with a legal bent, as noted above, we have collected some recent documents connected to the current strike, as the parties release them:
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