PARTIES; DEFINITIONS; WHO IS AN EMPLOYER? – Joint Employer, Single Employer, and Alter Ego Doctrines

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Board maintains jurisdiction over an employer covered under a PERB-administered statute when it enters into a single employer or joint employer relationship with an entity over which PERB does not assert jurisdiction. Thus, PERB maintains jurisdiction over the County, as it is covered by the MMBA and has entered into both a single employer and joint employer relationship role with respect to private non-profit Clinic employees, even if Clinic corporations fall outside PERB jurisdiction. (p. 39-40.) A single employer relationship, like a joint employer relationship, is not a formal merger of separate entities, but rather is a legal construct for collective bargaining purposes. (California Virtual Academies (2016) PERB Decision No. 2484, p. 67 (CAVA) [“Under the single employer doctrine, the ‘single employer’ is . . . an analytical construct that is imposed under judicially developed doctrines on legally distinct but nominally separate and functionally integrated entities solely for the purpose of representation and collective bargaining” (Emphasis in original)].) (pp. 40-41.) Just as PERB will not assert jurisdiction over a private sector entity merely because it enters into a joint employer or single employer relationship with a PERB-covered entity, PERB also does not lose jurisdiction over an entity that enters into a single employer or joint employer relationship with an entity over which we do not assert jurisdiction. This conclusion follows from the principle that a single employer or joint employer relationship is a legal construct for purposes of collective bargaining; it does not mean that two separate entities have legally merged into one. (p. 41.)