REPRESENTATION ISSUES; SEVERANCE – In General

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Severance is not appropriate merely because a small group of employees performing similar duties or related work have a community of interest with one another that is stronger than their community of interest with other employees in a larger, established unit. (See, e.g., Los Rios Community College District (2018) PERB Decision No. 2587, pp. 4-7 [rejecting severance petition seeking to remove police officers, police detectives, and college safety officers from established, larger unit of maintenance, operations, and public safety employees].) If a severance petitioner only needed to show that a small group had a stronger community of interest with one another than with the larger unit, that would be an easy standard to meet and would accordingly lead to unit proliferation. (Regents of the University of California (2010) PERB Decision No. 2107-H pp. 28-29.) Rather, a severance petitioner must show that its proposed new unit has a community of interest that is separate and distinct from the established unit to such an extent that collective bargaining is “incapable of addressing the needs of a discrete minority within the existing unit.” (City of Pasadena (2021) PERB Decision No. 2788-M, p. 10.) Absent such proof, PERB presumes that effective representation is possible even when a “pluralistic bargaining unit” includes a “diverse set of occupational groupings.” (Regents of the University of California (2025) PERB Order No. Ad-525, p. 26.) The subordinate factors’ relevance in a severance context is for determining whether a petitioner has satisfied its burden to establish that the petitioned-for classifications have such a distinct community of interest that collective bargaining can no longer address their interests within their initially-established units. (pp. 25-26.)