On April 19, 2021, the Fraternal Order of Police, Fort Pitt Lodge No. 1, filed a grievance alleging that the City of Pittsburgh had violated the CBA by unilaterally terminating health care benefits for the surviving spouses of retired police officers. This grievance proceeded to arbitration before Arbitrator Christopher Miles. On March 15, 2022, Miles issued an award sustaining the grievance. The Miles Award found that the City had violated the “clear and unambiguous” retiree health insurance provisions of the CBA and directed the City to “make restitution to the adversely affected survivors.” The City appealed this award to the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, which, on August 30, 2022, denied the City’s appeal and ordered that the Miles Award “shall remain in full force and effect.” The City then appealed to the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania and sought a stay of the award, but the trial court denied the stay on October 3, 2022, explicitly ordering the City to comply with the award during the pendency of the appeal.
The critical factual event occurred while the City’s appeal was still pending. A retired police officer, Michael Mares, Sr., died on January 22, 2023. The very next day, on January 23, 2023, the City informed Mares’ son that his mother’s health care coverage would be terminated on January 31, 2023. This action was a direct contravention of the Miles Award, which required the City to continue providing health coverage for surviving spouses. It was this specific act of denial directed at a specific surviving spouse that formed the basis of the subsequent unfair labor practice charge. On March 1, 2023, the Lodge filed a charge with the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board, alleging the City’s refusal to provide continued health care to Mares’ widow violated its duty to bargain in good faith.
The issue before the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania was whether this charge was timely under Section 9(e) of the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Act, which mandates that no charge “shall be entertained which relates to acts which occurred or statements which were made more than six weeks prior to the filing of the petition or charge.” The City argued the statute of limitations began to run much earlier, asserting that the Lodge knew or should have known of the City’s refusal to comply with the Miles Award when the City filed its appeal of the trial court’s order on September 29, 2022. The City contended that its persistent appellate litigation and requests for stays were clear evidence of its non-compliance, and thus the Lodge’s charge, filed nearly five months later, was untimely.
The Court, however, affirmed the Board’s Final Order, holding the Lodge’s charge was timely filed. The Court rejected the City’s argument, emphasizing that the triggering event for the statute of limitations was not the City’s legal challenges to the award but the actual, concrete act of non-compliance.
The Court agreed with the Board and the Hearing Examiner that the unfair labor practice was the City’s “repudiation of the Miles Award on January 23, 2023, when the City informed the surviving spouse of Officer Mares that her healthcare benefits would cease.” The Court found no legal authority supporting the City’s position that “an employer’s exercise of its appellate rights to challenge the validity of a grievance arbitration award, without more, constitutes an unfair labor practice.”
The Court found the Lodge lacked such knowledge until January 23, 2023, noting the Hearing Examiner’s crucial finding that “the City does not notify the Union when the City cancels a surviving spouse’s medical benefits” and thus “the lack of notice… would not necessarily put the Union on notice that the City was refusing to comply.” The Court concluded that requiring the Lodge to file a charge based solely on the City’s appeal would be premature, as “the City’s pursuit of an appeal contesting the validity of the Miles Award and its filing of stay requests are not, here, in and of themselves, ‘acts or circumstances giving rise to the harm and the [unfair labor practice] cause of action.’”
City of Pittsburgh v. Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board, 2025 WL 2528312 (Pa. Cmwlth. Ct. 2025).