EMPLOYER REFUSAL TO BARGAIN IN GOOD FAITH; DEFENSES – Business Necessity; Emergency Exception

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“[U]nder exceptionally limited circumstances, an employer may be excused from negotiating on the basis of true emergency that provides a basis for claiming that a business necessity excused a unilateral change.” To establish this emergency exception, the employer must make a specific and actual showing of an emergency that leaves no alternative to the action taken and allows no time for meaningful negotiations before taking action. The alleged necessity must be the unavoidable result of a sudden change in circumstance beyond the employer’s control. Emergency is not synonymous with expediency, convenience, or best interests. The County failed prove that it had no alternative to placing the ballot measure on the November 2020 ballot and the expediency, convenience, or best interests served by placing the ballot measure on the November 2020 ballot did not amount to an emergency that excused the County from its obligation under the MMBA to provide the Associations notice and an opportunity to bargain before doing so. (pp. 49-52.)

A public agency may be privileged to place a measure on the ballot prior to completing negotiations when it is “faced with an imminent need to act prior to the statutory deadline for submitting the [measure] for the ballot.” But the statutory deadline itself is not such an “imminent need.” No evidence in the record established an “imminent need” for the County to have called a special election to place the ballot measure on the November 2020 ballot. As a result, the County’s obligation to meet and confer over the measure’s negotiable amendments was not excused. (pp. 51-52.)