On August 28, 2026, the Public Employment Relations Board issued United Teachers Los Angeles v. Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, PERB Decision No. 3054. After fifteen months of first contract bargaining, the parties reached tentative agreements for two charter units. The members ratified both agreements. The employer’s governing board then rejected them in July 2025 and again in September 2025. When the union asked why, the employer offered phrases such as “significant long term concerns” and a need for “financial flexibility.” PERB held those answers were not bargaining. They were a per se refusal to meet and negotiate in good faith.
The case turned on two related but distinct duties. First, the employer must stand behind a ratified tentative agreement. Second, if the governing body rejects the TA, it must give an explanation specific enough that the exclusive representative can return to the table and bargain over the stated objection. PERB treats those duties as separate violations.
BACKGROUND
Alliance College Ready Public Schools spent years contesting UTLA’s certification and then spent fifteen months at the table. The employer opened with a “One Alliance” proposal that would lock represented teachers to whatever Alliance later gave unrepresented staff and would waive any duty to bargain the decision or its effects. The union conceded compensation parity, health benefit parity, a one year term, and limited retroactivity to January 1, 2025. Those concessions produced full tentative agreements in March and April 2025. The units ratified them.
The board then canceled a scheduled June 11 ratification vote and told unit members, falsely, that UTLA had requested the postponement. On July 10 the board voted the agreements down. The next morning the employer’s negotiator wrote that Alliance would offer full year retroactivity “under conditions,” but defined no conditions and offered no formal proposal. Direct emails to members cited “significant long term concerns” and a side agreement while talks continued. The union asked why the board had rejected deals built on the employer’s own parity model, why money that Alliance called unaffordable in March had become available in July, and what had changed. The negotiator asked for private mediation and answered none of those questions.
REJECTION IS NOT A SILENT VETO
Alliance relied on City of Lincoln (2012) PERB Decision No. 2284-M and argued that a governing body may reject a tentative agreement without saying why. That reading does not survive. Twelve months after Lincoln, the Legislature amended Government Code section 3505.1. Under the Meyers Milias Brown Act, a governing body must vote to accept or reject a tentative agreement within thirty days of first considering it. A rejection “shall not bar” an unfair practice charge for failure to meet and confer in good faith. PERB has already held that this exposure covers regressive bargaining and a failure to vest negotiators with sufficient authority. Decision No. 3054 adds that it also covers a rejection with insufficient explanation to the union.
EERA contains no twin of section 3505.1. PERB refused to treat that omission as a license to renege. The California Supreme Court has instructed that EERA and the MMBA form one system of public employment relations law and that PERB should read them in harmony unless text and history compel a different result. AB 537 aligned the MMBA with existing unfair practice precedent. The Board therefore declined to let an EERA employer do what an MMBA employer may no longer do.
Alliance also argued that a party may forestall an agreement forever for good reasons, bad reasons, or no reason at all. PERB rejected that misreading of City of Placentia. A party may hold an inflexible position if it genuinely holds the position and can support it with reasons. It may not conceal a strategy to make bargaining futile. Hard bargaining still requires a reason the other side can test.
SPECIFICITY IS A SEPARATE DUTY
A board does not discharge the duty to explain by announcing “concerns.” PERB has long held that a party who withholds an explanation or substantiation for a position, when the information exists and the other side has requested it, both refuses to bargain and supplies an indicator of bad faith. If an argument is important enough to present at the table, it is important enough to require some proof of its accuracy.
Alliance’s phrases failed that test. “Significant long term concerns” and “financial flexibility” gave the union nothing it could answer with a proposal. They identified no cost, no term, no changed circumstance, and no conflict with another obligation. They did not explain why parity and limited retroactivity, which the employer had demanded for months and had never called financially unworkable except as to a longer retroactive period the union later dropped, suddenly became intolerable after the members voted yes. The Board held that those vague and perfunctory answers gave “no insights into its position with any specificity that UTLA could address through bargaining.”
An explanation that names the article, the dollar figure, or the operational constraint that moved the board invites further negotiation. An explanation that a board could paste onto any rejection of any contract is not an explanation. Reneging and silence are related because a silent rejection leaves the union with nothing to bargain. They remain separate violations. A board that rejects a ratified tentative agreement and then supplies a concrete reason may still face a regressive bargaining or authority charge if the reason is new and changed circumstances do not support it. A board that rejects rejects a TA and provides only generic explanations commits a separate violation.
THE REMEDY FOLLOWS THE BREACH
PERB ordered Alliance, upon request, to place the ratified articles back on the table, to meet weekly face to face, and to report progress to the Office of the General Counsel. Make whole relief runs from January 1, 2025. It measures the difference between what unit members would have received under the tentative agreements and what they received under the status quo, plus interest compounded daily, until the parties ratify a written agreement or the employer lawfully imposes terms after good faith negotiations and completed impasse procedures. The union may also recover bargaining costs and diverted resources caused in material part by the violations.
The Board emphasized that the parties were bargaining a first contract. Conduct that would wound an established relationship does more damage when the exclusive representative is still proving that a signed deal means something.
TAKEAWAYS
Unions should treat a governing body’s vote on a ratified tentative agreement as bargaining conduct, not as a civic ritual outside the labor statutes. The association should request the reasons in writing the same day as the vote, and the request should ask what changed, which terms the board found unacceptable, and what facts support that conclusion.
Public safety associations that bargain under the Meyers Milias Brown Act have an additional statutory hook. Section 3505.1 already exposes a rejection to unfair practice litigation and already imposes a thirty-day clock. PERB now requires the post-rejection explanation to be specific enough to restart negotiations on the basis of mutual understanding.
