This Chapter provides for a portion of the implementing rules and standards pertaining to the city's Employer-Employee Relations Policy.
History: New 1/2014
[1]
Specific Authority: Chap. 2.72 MMC; Resolution No. 2014-06
This policy is enacted to carry out the provisions of Government Code Sections 3500 et seq., by establishing orderly procedures to promote full communication between the city and its employees by providing a reasonable method of resolving disputes regarding wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment between the city and its employee organizations.
(a) 
Nothing in this policy is deemed to supersede existing state law, city charter or ordinances which establish and regulate the city's merit personnel system, or for other methods of administering employer-employee relations.
Nothing contained in this Part or the adoption of these rules shall be construed as giving city employees or employee organizations the right to participate in, support, cooperate or encourage, directory or indirectly, any strike, sickout or other total or partial stoppage or slowdown of work In the event employees engage in such actions, they shall be deemed to have abandoned their employment with the city and to have subjected themselves to termination.
The following terms and phrases when used in this Part shall have the meanings set forth in this section, except where the context clearly indicates a different meaning.
(a) 
"Confidential Employee"
means an employee who regularly participates in the making, or who regularly has knowledge, of decisions of the city affecting employee relations.
(b) 
"Employee Organization" or "Recognized Employee Organization"
has the meaning specified in Government Code section 3501.
(c) 
"Employee Relations Officer"
means the City Manager or his duly authorized representative.
(d) 
"Impasse"
means a deadlock in discussions between a recognized employee organization and the Employee Relations Officer over any matters concerning which they are required to meet and confer in good faith, or over the scope of such subject matter.
(e) 
"Management Employee"
means an employee having responsibility for formulating, administering, or managing the implementation of city policies and programs.
(f) 
"Mediation"
has the meaning specified in Government Code section 3504.
(g) 
"Proof of employee approval"
means (1) an authorization card recently signed by an employee, or (2) employee dues deduction authorizations, using the payroll immediately prior to the date a petition is filed hereunder, provided that deductions for more than one employee organization for the account of any one employee will not be considered proof of employee approval for more than one employee organizations, or (3) a verified authorization petition or petitions recently signed by an employee. For purposes of this paragraph, "recently signed" means signed within one hundred eighty (180) days prior to the filing of a petition hereunder.
(h) 
"Professional Employee"
means an employee engaged in work (1) predominately intellectual and varied in character as opposed to routine mental, manual, mechanical or physical work, and (2) involving the consistent exercise of discretion and judgment in its performance, and (3) of such a character that the output produced or the result accomplished cannot be standardized in relation to a given period of time, and (4) requiring knowledge of an advance 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 or a hospital, as distinguished from a general academic education or from an apprenticeship or from training in the performance of routine mental, manual or physical processes.
(i) 
"Scope of Representation"
has the meaning specified in Government Code 3504.
(j) 
"Supervisory Employee"
means an employee having responsibility for assigning and directing the work of other employees, or for rewarding or disciplining them, or for adjusting their grievances, or effectively to 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.