SCOPE OF REPRESENTATION – Reassignments

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There are several means of establishing that an employer must bargain regarding changes to represented employees’ job duties, absent a waiver. Pertinent here, an employer must normally bargain a change to represented employees’ job duties if it is a material change, meaning that the employer is assigning work that was not “reasonably comprehended within the employee’s existing job duties.” (Oakland Unified School District (2003) PERB Decision No. 1544, pp. 5-8 & adopting warning letter at p. 2.) The material change standard also covers decisions to transfer a job duty between employees within the same bargaining unit. (Desert Sands Unified School District (2001) PERB Decision No. 1468, pp. 3-4.) Furthermore, an employer also must bargain over a material change in represented employees’ workload or performance standards. (County of Kern (2018) PERB Decision No. 2615-M, p. 10 & adopting proposed decision at p. 11.) To the extent the ALJ asserted that Davis Joint Unified School District (1983) PERB Decision No. 393, held that an employer need not bargain over work assignments, the ALJ failed to acknowledge that employers must bargain over duties or assignments impacting workload, performance standards, or preservation of bargaining unit work, as well as over revised duties or assignments that are not “reasonably understood” to be among the employees’ existing duties or assignments. Davis’ thrust was thus more muted than the ALJ’s characterization suggested, and we disavow any categorical rule that work assignments are outside the scope of representation.
(pp. 29-31.)