Lindsay Municipal Code § 2.40 Employee Relations

1. This chapter is authorized under Chapter 10, Division 4, Title 1 of the Government Code (Section 3500 et seq.) and is intended to provide a means to promote full communication between the city and its employees, to provide a reasonable method of resolving disputes regarding wages, hours and other terms and conditions of employment.
2. The city shall meet and confer in good faith regarding wages, hours and other terms and conditions of employment with representatives of recognized employee organizations and shall consider fully such presentations as are made by the employee organization on behalf of its members prior to arriving at a determination of policy or course of action.

(Ord. 333 § 1, 1974)

Terms used in this chapter that are used in Government Code Section 3500 et seq. will have the same meanings as are provided in that Code. The definitions set forth below are additional major terms used in this chapter.

1. City Representative. The city representative of all employer-employee relations under this chapter shall be the city manager, and he shall administer the city personnel system and may delegate any of the powers and duties to a personnel director or may delegate the appointing authority granted by the city council to any other officer or employee of the city or may recommend that such powers and duties be performed under contract.
2. Employee. An employee is any full time employee of the city except elective officers and library employees.
3. Employee, Confidential. Any employee whose duties would give the employee access to decisions and decision making processes of the city concerning any matters relating to employer-employee relations.
4. Employee Representative. The authorized representative of a recognized employee organization as set forth in subsection H of this section.
5. Failure to Agree. Failure to agree means the city representative and a recognized employee organization have been unable to reach agreement concerning a subject over which they are required to meet and confer in good faith.
6. Mediation and Conciliation. The use of a neutral third person to assist the city representative and a recognized employee organization to voluntarily reach an accord where there has been a "failure to agree."
7. Meet and Confer. Meet and confer in "good faith" means that the city, or such representatives as it may designate and representative of recognized employee organizations, shall have the mutual obligation personally to meet and confer in order to exchange freely information, opinions and proposals, and to endeavor to reach agreement on matters within the scope of representation.
8. Recognized Employee Organization. An employee organization that the city has formally acknowledged as representing the majority of the employees in a group for recognition designated by the city. An employee organization while so recognized shall be the only recognized employee organization for employees in the employee group. "Employee organization" means any organization of any kind, or any agency or employee representation committee in which employees participate and which exists for the primary purpose of dealing with the city concerning wages, hours and other terms and conditions of employment.
9. Supervisors and Management.
10. Any employee having significant responsibilities for formulating and administering city policies and programs including but not limited to department heads; and
11. Any employee having authority in the interest of the city to hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward or discipline other employees, or having the responsibility to direct them or to adjust grievances or to effectively recommend such action if in connection with the foregoing, the exercise of such authority is not of a merely routine or clerical nature, but requires the use of independent judgment;
12. For sworn uniformed personnel of the police department, any employee including the rank of sergeant and above;
13. For personnel of the fire department, any employee above the rank of engineer;
14. For personnel of other city departments:
15. Finance Department. Any employee classified as purchasing agent, assistant finance director, or higher,
16. Planning Department. Any employee classified as associate planner or higher,
17. Public Works Department. Any employee in the class identified or a higher class:
18. Building division, plan checker
19. Engineering division, civil engineering associate
20. Street division, street maintenance foreman, building and maintenance supervisor
21. Water division, water foreman,
22. Parks Department. Any employee classified as parks foreman or higher,
23. Recreation Department. Any employee classified as recreation supervisor or higher.

(Ord. 333 § 2, 1974)

To insure that the city is able to carry out its statutory functions and responsibilities, the following matters will not be subject to the terms of this chapter, but shall be within the exclusive discretion of the city:

The right to manage the city, the right to direct the work force, to select and determine the number and types of employees required, to assign work to employees in accordance with the requirements determined by the city, to establish and change work schedules and assignments, to hire, transfer and to promote or to lay off employees for lack of work and for all other legitimate reasons, to suspend, discipline or discharge for just cause, to expand or diminish services, to subcontract any work or operations, to determine and change methods of operations, to determine and change at its sole discretion the number of locations, relocations and types of operations and the processes and materials to be employed.

(Ord. 333 § 3, 1974)

1. In order to be recognized for the purposes of this chapter, an employee organization must represent a majority of the employees in an employee group.
2. The city has investigated and studied the work assignments and interest of all city employees. The city has made conclusions based on this study that there are three separate and distinct employee groups and that the acknowledgment of these groups will be the most conducive to harmonious employer-employee relations and to the efficient operation of the city. The three separate employee groups so acknowledged are:
3. All sworn police department employees, excluding all nonsworn employees;
4. All firemen;
5. All other employees of the city.
6. Supervisors, management and confidential employees may be members of any employee group if they so desire and be represented thereby (subject to employee organization 2.40.020H of this chapter, and be represented thereby (subject to employee organizations by bylaws and/or constitution) but may not represent employees of any of the above employee groups on matters within the scope of representation.

(Ord. 394 (part), 1984; Ord. 333 § 4, 1974)

Any organization representing employees that seek recognition as the majority representative of the employees in one of the acknowledged employee groups shall file with the city council a petition containing the following information:

1. Name and address of the employee organization;
2. Names and titles of its officers;
3. Names of authorized employee representatives and their authorities and responsibilities; .
4. A copy of the employee organization's constitution or bylaws which shall contain a statement that the employee organization has as one of its primary purposes representation of the employees in their employment relations with the city.

(Ord. 333 § 5, 1974)

The city council shall certify that any employee organization is the recognized employee organization for the group based on Government Code Section 3500 et seq. and reasonable proof (including an election, if necessary) that the organization represents a majority of the employees in the employee group.

1. Nothing in this chapter shall prohibit any employee from appearing in his own behalf in his employment relations with the city.
2. The recognition by the city of any employee organization shall not be subject to challenge by any group and/or individual or by the city, before an elapsed time of twelve months from the last date of recognition.
3. Professional employees may seek separate recognition through a professional employee organization. (A professional is an employee engaged in work predominantly intellectual and varied in character as opposed to routine mental, manual, mechanical or physical work; involving the consistent exercise of discretion and judgment in its performance; of such a character that the output produced or the result accomplished cannot be standardized in relation to a given period of time; requiring knowledge of an advanced type in a field of science or learning customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction and study in an institution of higher learning as distinguished from general academic education or from an apprenticeship or from training in the performance of routine mental, manual or physical processes; or any employee who has completed the courses of specialized intellectual instruction and study described in this subsection and is performing related work under the supervision of a professional person to qualify himself to become a professional employee as defined in this subsection.)
4. Nothing in this section shall prohibit any employee of the city the right to organize and join any organization of their choice or to refuse or refrain to join or participate in the activities of employee organizations.

(Ord. 333 § 6, 1974)

1. Employees within an appropriate unit wishing to decertify the incumbent exclusively recognized employee organization may file a petition containing signatures of at least thirty percent of the affected employees, stating the employees no longer desire to be represented by the incumbent employee organization. The decertification petition may be filed with the city manager' s office between one hundred and eighty to two hundred and ten days prior to the expiration of an MOU.
2. Upon receipt of such petition, the city manager shall review the decertification petition and determine whether the petition has been filed in compliance with the provisions of this section. If the determination is in the negative, the city manager will consult with the representatives of the petitioning organization, and if such determination remains unchanged, the petition shall be denied and returned to the organization with the reasons for the denial stated in writing.
3. The petitioning organization may appeal the city manager's denial to the city council. If the city manager finds the petition to be properly filed and containing the required valid signatures, the city manager shall arrange for a secret ballot election to be held within thirty days of such findings. The employee organization winning the secret ballot election and being certified as the "exclusively recognized employee organization" shall be bound by the terms and conditions of the existing MOU until the MOU expires.

(Ord. 436 § 1, 1989)

The city representatives and representatives of recognized employee organizations shall meet and confer in good faith as set forth in Section 3505 of the Government Code on all matters relating to wages, hours and other conditions of employment within the employee representation unit as set forth under Section 2.40.040, except that the city representatives shall not meet and confer on any subject preempted by federal or state law or by city ordinance, nor with respect to the city's civil service rules and regulations or on other subjects as set forth under Section 2.40.030.

(Ord. 333 § 7, 1974)

Any failure to agree (impasse) as defined in Section 3500 et seq. of the Government Code will be settled in the following manner:

1. A mediator or conciliator shall be selected by mutual agreement between the city representative and the affected recognized employee organization. If, however, the parties cannot agree on such a person, then he shall be chosen by the city council within a reasonable period of time after the parties have failed to agree on such a person. The person so selected shall meet with the parties within a reasonable period of time to aid in a voluntary adjustment of the failure to agree.
2. The mediator or conciliator shall make no findings of fact or public recommendations or positions. His power will be strictly limited to his efforts to aid the parties to a voluntary accord. The costs of the person shall be borne equally by the parties.
3. In the event that mediation or conciliation of the failure to agree fails to bring the parties to a voluntary agreement, then the issue or issues over which an impasse had been reached shall be submitted to the city council for its determination.

(Ord. 333 § 8, 1974)

In the event that there is a dispute over the scope of representation or whether a matter is legally subject to meeting and conferring in good faith and the parties do not voluntarily resolve that dispute, the matter will be submitted to the city attorney, who shall make recommendations to the city council for its final determination.

(Ord. 333 § 9, 1974)

Any employee who participates in any manner in any strike, work stoppage, slowdown, sick-in, or other concerted refusal to work or impediment to work by employees of the city or who participates in any manner in any picketing in support of any such strike, work stoppage, slowdown, sick-in or other concerted refusal to work, or impediment to work by employees of the city, or who induces other employees of the city to engage in such activities shall be subject to termination of employment by the city in addition to any other remedies provided by law.

(Ord. 333 § 10, 1974)