• The union was found to have waived bargaining by failing to make a timely demand. The District Court reversed the Board on the waiver issue and remanded the matter for further findings on which RIF effects are covered under the contract. 
• The Hearing Officer decided in favor of the Employer finding that the duty to bargain the effects ofthe layoffs identified in this case had been discharged prior to implementation of the RIF, but that theunion waived bargaining the effects of the layoff at issue by failing to make a timely demand for bargaining. The Employer’s Counterclaims were found to be without merit and were dismissed. The Union appealed the Decision first to the Board which upheld the Hearing Officer on 11/26/12. 
• The employer’s duty to provide information to the union is not met when the employer does the bare minimum of providing notice to, and meeting with, the Union while purposely withholding information relevant to a layoff. 

Order Adopting the Hearing Officer’s Recommended Decision. 

• Finding that the District Committed a PPC by refusing to hear grievances appealed to the school boardpursuant tothe CBA, violating NMSA § 10-7E-19(G) and (H). 
• Finding that the District Committed a PPC by giving three bargaining unit members stipends withoutnegotiating those stipends, violating NMSA § 10-7E-17(A)(1), 19(C), (F), and (G).
• Finding that the violated PEBA §19(H) byfailing to followArticle 17 of the CBA when it hired a foreman from outside the Shiprock facility. 

• Sergeants were accreted into an existing bargaining unit because their actual duties as performed did not meet the three-part test established by the Board to determine whether an employee is a “supervisor” as that term is defined by the Act. The test included the following:
  • Whether there was sufficient “change of circumstances” from the creation of the original bargaining unit to now warrant a change in that unit;
  • Whether a grandfathered bargaining unit may be accreted or clarified at all; and
  • Whether accretion is otherwise appropriate, i.e., requiring a community of interest between the new and existing groups of employees. 

• Public employees have the right to engage in other concerted activities for mutual aid or benefit. This right shall not be construed as modifying the prohibition against public employee strikes. See § 10-7E-5(B). The PELRB has historically followed the NLRA with regard to employees claiming protections for their activities either for union-related purposes aimed at collected bargaining or for other “mutual aid or protection” so that even before the 2020 amendment to the Act expressly protecting concerted activities for mutual aid or benefit such concerted activities enjoyed protected status. 
• PELRB held that furloughs are an exercise of management’s reserved rights under an article of theparties’ CBA reserving to management the right to relieve an employee from duties because of lackof work or other legitimate reason, or under sections reserving to management the right to determine the size and composition of the work force, or to determine methods, means, and personnel by which the employer’s operations are to be conducted. Therefore, the State was not obligated to bargain further over the furloughs. 

• Refusing to recognize an employee as union steward and disciplining that employee for acting as steward is a violation of § 19(A). 
• “Other agreements” should logically also include Memorandums of Understanding, and settlementagreements concerning grievances and PPCs.

• There is nothing in the CBA’s requirement that the union provide the Employer a written list of the names, address, telephone numbers of those authorized to act on behalf of the Union and the extent of their authority that gives the Employer the right to veto the Union’s designation of a steward because the steward’s name is absent from the required quarterly listing, especially in light of the fact that the Employer would have refused to recognize the union’s appointment of its steward regardless of whether the steward’s name had been added to the list because the Employer’s stated justification for its actions was that the parties’ agreement “does not permit, authorize or contemplate an RLD Steward outside of Albuquerque, Santa Fe or Las Cruces work location areas.” Thus, whether or not the name appears on a list is irrelevant to the reason given for refusing to honor his appointment. The steward’s “post of duty” is irrelevant to the question whether he may serve as the designated union Steward. 
• The Employer did not commit a PPC by refusing to allow a contested union steward to attend onpaid status, meetings agreed to by the parties for purposes of administering their CBA because theCBA’s definition of the term “Union officials” entitled to such leave listed the Local Union Presidents, Local Vice-Presidents, and “any other union official as designated by mutual agreement of the parties.” The CBA does not include union stewards as an official for whom leave must be approved and it is plain from the context of the PPC and the parties’ respective dispositive motions that the contested union steward is not mutually agreed to be entitled to such paid status. A different result obtains, however, with regard to the Employer’s obligation under the CBA to grant leave for the investigation and processing of grievances, which was also denied the contested steward where the parties’ CBA requires the Employer to allow union stewards paid leave “for the purposes of representing employees only within their respective agency at grievance meetings, disciplinary appeals based on suspension, demotion, or dismissal and cases to the PELRB”. 

• Where the local ordinances’ definition of “supervisor” leaves out most of the criteria established by PEBA for testing whether a particular position is supervisory or not, including the rather basic criterion that a supervisor actually supervises someone it so broadly defines the term that it encompasses those who only occasionally assume supervisory or directory roles; or perform duties which are substantially similar to those of his or her subordinates, are “lead employees” and arguably includes those who merely participate in peer review or occasional employee evaluation programs. Therefore, it impermissibly excludes a class of employees entitled to bargaining rights under the PEBA. 
• Board held that where provisions of the City of Raton’s grandfathered ordinance do not meet therequirements of § 26(A) (Repealed in 2020), for grandfathered status, the particular provision shallbe denied grandfathered status, not the ordinance as a whole. 
• Although the local ordinancecontainsa more expansive management rights reservation than the usual that reservation of management rights is expressly subject to other “restrictions contained in this section and the collective bargaining agreement and any provision of this Chapter”. Therefore, it is merely a general reservation of management rights and such general reservations do not operate to defeat the obligation to bargain collectively over wages, hours and working conditions established by contract or under a collective bargaining law to the extent those subjects constitute mandatory subjects of bargaining. Consequently, the management rights clause in question did not violate