Professors Subject to Collective Bargaining Agreement Can't Sue for Unpaid Wages

​A group of adjunct professors could not proceed with their unpaid-wage claims under California law because resolving the claims depended on the interpretation of the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the professors and the private university that employed them, a state appeals court recently ruled. Under the doctrine known as federal pre-emption, the federal Labor Management Relations Act (LMRA) prevents state courts from adjudicating claims requiring them to interpret or construe CBAs, the court explained.

The university's practice regarding adjunct faculty is to hire them to teach individual classes on a semester-by-semester basis. For each semester, the university would issue appointment letters offering employment to prospective adjunct professors during a specified assignment period that ran from the first day of that semester's classes to the end of the semester. The appointment letters stated that the employment terms were consistent with the terms of the CBA between the university and its adjunct faculty union and with university policies applicable to the teaching assignment. The letters provided a link to the CBA. They also specified a per-course salary, the number of credits for the course and an estimate of the number of hours the adjunct would work per week.

Although the appointment letters specified the first day of classes each semester as the beginning of the adjunct's work appointment and the end of the semester as the end of the appointment, adjunct professors were required to work outside of these time periods. They were expected to prepare a syllabus and final examination for the class before the start date of classes, and they were obliged to submit students' final grades after classes and final exams concluded. These obligations were set out in the CBA and in a part-time faculty policy handbook.

Adjunct faculty at the university are represented by a labor organization, which over the years has entered a series of CBAs with the university, governing the terms of adjunct faculty employment. For the time period covered by the lawsuit, two CBAs were in effect. Both of those CBAs set a salary schedule for adjunct faculty, and both required adjuncts to submit syllabi before classes began and submit final grades in a reasonable and timely manner.

An adjunct professor sued the university, alleging a claim for unpaid wages on her behalf and the behalf of a class of similarly situated adjuncts. According to this claim, the assignment letters set the terms of an employment contract only for the period specified in the letters, i.e., the teaching semester, and set a salary solely for that period. Yet adjunct faculty were required to work outside that period to prepare syllabi and course materials before classes started, as well as to grade exams and submit final grades after classes ended, and they were not paid for their time outside the assignment period.

The trial court ruled that the claim for unpaid wages was pre-empted by federal law, and the professor appealed.

Federal Pre-emption of Unpaid-Wages Claim

Section 301(a) of the LMRA provides that lawsuits over violations of contracts between an employer and a labor union may be brought in any federal district court in the U.S. To promote the uniform interpretation of CBA provisions, Section 301 of the LMRA has been construed by the U.S. Supreme Court to pre-empt state-law actions seeking to enforce the CBA itself, as well as state-law claims that require interpretation or construction of a labor agreement, the California appeals court explained.

However, the court said the bare fact that a CBA will be consulted in the course of state-law litigation plainly does not require the claim to be extinguished. Pre-emption occurs when a claim cannot be resolved on the merits without choosing among competing interpretations of a CBA and its application to the claim, it said.

The appeals court then concluded that the question presented—whether adjuncts' salary covered only the teaching semester or whether it covered work before and after the semester as well—could not be resolved without interpreting the CBA.

Although the professor contended that the adjuncts' work dates were the semester start and end dates established in their assignment letters, each of the assignment letters includes a link to the CBA and states that the terms of the appointment are consistent with the terms of the CBA. To resolve the issue of whether the professor was not paid for work she performed before and after the semester, a fact-finder would have to resolve whether the assignment letters incorporated the CBA and what effect the CBA had on the terms of the professor's employment, the appeals court said. It therefore affirmed the trial court's order dismissing the claim for unpaid wages.

Gola v. University of San Francisco, Calif. Ct. App., No. A161477 (April 13, 2023).

Joanne Deschenaux, J.D., is a freelance writer in Annapolis, Md.