2.25.080 Collective bargaining.
A. Employer-Employee Bargaining Obligations. The collective bargaining process begins when both parties meet and confer on matters within the scope of representation.
1. Meet and Confer. The district employee relations officer, and other district representatives, and the representative of the exclusive recognized employee organization for each authorized employee bargaining unit shall meet and confer in good faith in an attempt to reach agreement on all matters within the scope of representation.
2. Consultation in Good Faith. All matters affecting employer-employee relations, including those that are not subject to meeting and conferring, are subject to consultation. The district, through its district employee relations officer and other representatives, shall consult in good faith with representatives of all recognized employee organizations on employer-employee relations matters which affect them.
3. Impasse Procedures. When agreement is not reached through the meet and confer process, dispute settlement procedures have been established to facilitate resolution of unresolved negotiation items at impasse.
Either party may initiate the impasse procedures by filing with the other party a written request for an impasse meeting, together with a statement of its position on all disputed issues. The district employee relations officer shall then schedule and conduct an impasse meeting promptly, both to review the position of each party in a final effort to reach agreement and to discuss arrangements for the utilization of the impasse procedures.
a. Mediation. Upon written declaration of impasse, a party may request mediation within 10 days. The parties shall only proceed to mediation upon mutual agreement. All mediation proceedings shall be private. The mediator shall make no public recommendations nor take any public position concerning the issues. If the parties are unable to agree on a mediator after a reasonable period of time, they shall select the mediator from a list of seven names to be provided by the State Conciliation Service, or if that body for any reason shall fail to provide such list, by the American Arbitration Association. The parties shall alternatively strike one name, beginning with the recognized employee organization, until there is one remaining name on the list who shall be the mediator.
b. Fact Finding. If the parties have failed to resolve all their disputes through mediation not sooner than 30 days, but not more than 45 days, after the mediator was appointed, the employee association may request that the disputed issues be submitted to fact finding. If the matter is not submitted to mediation, the employee association may request fact finding within 30 days after a written declaration of impasse. Upon a timely request for fact finding, the parties will comply with the procedures and guidelines set forth under the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act and its regulations. (Ord. 1270.1 § 8, 2017)