EMPLOYER REFUSAL TO BARGAIN IN GOOD FAITH; NEGOTIATIONS; INDICIA OF SURFACE OR BAD FAITH BARGAINING; TOTALITY OF CIRCUMSTANCES – Exploding Offers

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Making a time-limited, i.e., exploding offer without a legitimate basis is an indicator of bad faith. Here, the County made an offer with an expiration date only three days later, at which point the County did, in fact, withdraw its offer. While County’s argument that its exposure to tax liability would increase as the year progressed was a reasonable basis for not leaving its offer on the table throughout 2017, the County did not give a clear, supportable reason for its exceedingly short, three-day deadline. Nor did it give any reason why it could not have provided a longer, more reasonable period of time for the Association to respond to its offer without materially increasing its potential tax liability. We infer from the County’s inability to justify the tight timeline that the three days was intended at least in part to pressure the Association into reaching agreement on a successor MOA, which is not a legally sufficient explanation to make an exploding offer. Although we do not preclude the possibility of circumstances under which such a short deadline may be legitimately justified, the facts here do not present us with such a situation. (pp. 37-40.)