REMEDIES FOR UNFAIR PRACTICES; REINSTATEMENT; BACKPAY BENEFITS – Back Pay; Interest
Single Topic for Decision A475E
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1201.03000 – Back Pay; Interest
In direct response to the employer’s contention that the affected employees should have obtained employment from the unlawful subcontractor, it should be self-evident that a wrongfully terminated employee was not required to break with her union or violate her union convictions under the guise of mitigation. Here, the union correctly protested the employer’s unlawful decision to subcontract school bus services to another school district, therefore the affected employees were under no obligation to abandon their union by accepting employment with the unlawful subcontractor. Indeed, the notion that the duty of mitigation required the affected employees to accept employment from the subcontractor under these circumstances is analogous to a suggestion that unlawfully fired workers must cross a picket line to maintain interim employment and become strikebreakers or else forfeit their right to backpay. The Board rejected such a notion as antithetical to the rights guaranteed by EERA. (p. 11.)