REPRESENTATION ISSUES; PROOF OF SUPPORT – In General; Requirements

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PERB Regulation 32700, subdivision (d) does not allow electronically signed proof of support from exclusively represented employees. For most of PERB’s history, the agency’s regulations have disallowed electronically signed proof of support. (Regents of the University of California (2018) PERB Order No. Ad-459-H, p. 4.) This partially changed on February 15, 2021, when revisions to PERB Regulation 32700 took effect. Revised Regulation 32700, subdivision (d)(4), added an electronic signature option for “employees who are not exclusively represented by an employee organization.” The plain language of the revised regulation thus left PERB’s longstanding requirement of original signatures unchanged for exclusively represented employees who wish to change or decertify their representative or sever themselves from a represented unit. While the February 2021 regulatory changes allowed electronic signatures for unrepresented employees, the changes did not impose any new limit on represented employees’ ability to decertify or change representatives. Rather, represented employees retain the same rights to do so that they have had since EERA’s enactment. By allowing electronic signatures only in the limited instance of petitions to represent unrepresented employees, PERB declined to liberalize decertification processes, thereby rejecting a potentially destabilizing change. (pp. 7, 9.)