EMPLOYER REFUSAL TO BARGAIN IN GOOD FAITH; REFUSAL TO PROVIDE INFORMATION – In General

Single Topic for Decision 2485E

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In determining whether a party has unreasonably delayed in responding to a request for presumptively relevant and necessary information, the responding party must exercise the same degree of diligence and thoroughness as it would in other business affairs of importance. Charging party stated a prima facie case that a public school employer had unreasonably delayed providing information by allegedly failing, without explanation, to provide charging party with certain information pertaining to unit members’ wages and benefits for six weeks. Fact that parties were not meeting during the six-week period because of a separate dispute over ground rules to negotiations did not, as a matter of law, excuse public school employer’s failure to provide information or advise employees’ representative that the information was not immediately available, since information was necessary and relevant for evaluating proposals and preparing counterproposals, even in the absence of in-person meetings. In the absence of any contemporaneous explanation by the District for its six-week delay in providing presumptively relevant information, charging party alleged sufficient facts to state a prima facie case that employer unreasonably delayed providing information. Charging party failed to state a prima facie violation of EERA section 3543.5, which makes it unlawful for a public school employer to “[k]nowingly provid[e] an exclusive representative with inaccurate information, whether or not in response to a request for information, regarding the financial resources of the public school employer.” Although the school district provided three different financial scenarios based on different budgetary assumptions, the fact that the information or the manner in which it was presented was confusing or unpersuasive did not either that any difficulty or confusion was deliberate (as alleged in the charge), or that the information was necessarily inaccurate.