UNION UNFAIR PRACTICES;RESTRAINT, COERCION, INTERFERENCE OR DISCRIMINATION – In General

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Where a charging party alleges a respondent has interfered with protected activities via litigation, the charging party faces an extra hurdle that is not present in other interference cases: the charging party must establish that the respondent acted without any reasonable basis and for an unlawful purpose. (County of Tulare (2020) PERB Decision No. 2697-M, pp. 9-10.) PERB applies these principles because it finds persuasive a private sector labor law decision, Bill Johnson’s Restaurants, Inc. v. NLRB (1983) 461 U.S. 731 (Bill Johnson’s), which protects labor rights while also preserving parties’ ability to pursue colorable litigation in good faith. Bill Johnson’s principles are thus akin to litigation privilege principles, though less absolute. (See Sacramento City Unified School District (2020) PERB Decision No. 2749, p. 14.) By following Bill Johnson’s, PERB applies a qualified litigation privilege rather than the nearly absolute privilege set forth in Civil Code section 47, subdivision (b), preserving parties’ ability to litigate colorable legal rights while disallowing baseless, bad faith conduct that tends to harm protected labor rights. (County of Riverside (2018) PERB Decision No. 2591-M, p. 7, fn. 5; see generally Zerger et al., editors, California Public Sector Labor Relations (2d ed. 2021) § 13.15.) Applying these qualified principles helps to assure that California’s labor laws are not rendered ineffective. (Cf. People v. Persolve, LLC (2013) 218 Cal.App.4th 1267, 1274.)