Committee delays vote on S.125 amendment that would open some judiciary positions to collective bargaining

The Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs postponed a decision on whether to concur with House amendments to S.125 after hearing testimony about the bill’s impact on supervisory and managerial positions in the state judiciary.

The bill’s House amendment to Section 5 would remove “supervisory employees” from the judiciary’s list of exempt positions and add a higher decertification threshold — changing the current 30% threshold for decertification to 50% plus one. The committee agreed to delay a final concurrence vote until after a conference committee meeting and to reconvene the committee the following morning at about 9:30 a.m. for a decision.

Terry Corson, state court administrator, told the committee the judiciary has historically exempted supervisory and managerial employees, judicial officers, confidential employees, attorneys and law clerks from bargaining units since 1977 and that the change in Section 5 would strike supervisory employees from that exemption. "We have just 4 supervisory employees in the judiciary," Corson said, and he described those four as having supervisory responsibilities in finance, courthouse security and technology help-desk supervision. He contrasted the judiciary’s structure with the executive branch, saying the executive branch has far more employees and supervisory layers — he cited roughly 10,000 executive-branch employees and about 1,200 supervisory employees — and argued that the judiciary’s smaller, less-stratified management structure makes the proposed change inappropriate.

Corson also said court operations managers — about 24 positions that run day-to-day operations of courthouse divisions (criminal, civil, family or probate, depending on courthouse size) — are managerial, not supervisory, and that court operations managers and the supervisory employees he represents opposed reclassifying managerial positions as supervisors. "They indicated that they were not aware of this. They did not support it," Corson said of both groups.

Joseph McNeal, who identified himself as advising the judiciary on labor relations matters, expanded on the distinction between supervisory and managerial roles. He said court operations managers exercise independent judgment and discretion in developing policy and directing operations and that placing them in a bargaining unit could create "a division of loyalty" between managerial responsibilities and union representation.

Steve Howard, who spoke for labor interests at the hearing, framed the issue as allowing eligible employees the right to a private vote. "If they wanna vote no, they can," Howard said, describing the importance of a secret ballot process by mail. Howard also said his organization had not yet decided which positions it would propose for a bargaining unit and that the state’s labor board would determine unit composition after reviewing job descriptions and competing proposals.

Committee members debated the decertification threshold and the timing of a vote. Several members said they wanted more time to review materials and the testimony; one member suggested 40% might be a compromise but ultimately agreed to accept the House amendment’s 50% plus one threshold as a possible option. The chair said the committee would reconvene after the conferees meet and attempt to take the vote the next morning; she noted that if the committee concurs with the House amendments, the bill would then proceed to the governor, while failure to concur would send the bill to conference.

No formal concurrence or nonconcurrence vote occurred during the hearing. The committee’s recorded action was to postpone the vote and reconvene the next morning after the conference committee meeting, approximately 9:30 a.m., to decide whether to concur with the House amendments.