To address a chronic inability to meet minimum staffing needs at its correctional facility, Hudson County, New Jersey, unilaterally amended its mandatory overtime policy on June 13, 2024. The new provision stipulated that an officer refusing mandatory overtime citing sickness must comply with specific verification procedures: provide their home or convalescence address, remain at that location except for medical visits, and submit a doctor’s note upon returning to duty. Failure to provide the note would constitute insubordination. Critically, the policy subjected officers using sick leave to refuse overtime to “home confinement and home checks.”
The Hudson County Superior Officers Association, PBA Local 109A, filed a grievance, arguing the County “unilaterally introduced mandatory overtime rules, changed the attendance policy and otherwise is mandating home confinement during times of refusal of mandatory overtime.” The PBA asserted that home confinement was being applied to a “new period of potential circumstances” that did not necessarily involve calling out sick, such as being on vacation abroad or attending to a family emergency. The County, in response, filed a scope of negotiations petition with the New Jersey Public Employment Relations Commission seeking to restrain the grievance from proceeding to binding arbitration.
The County argued it possessed a managerial prerogative both to mandate overtime for staffing and to establish sick leave verification processes to prevent abuse. The PBA countered that the policy change was a mandatory subject of negotiation and that its application was unreasonable.
PERC framed its narrow inquiry around whether the subject matter of the grievance was within the scope of collective negotiations, explicitly declining to assess the merits of the dispute. Applying the established test for police and fire negotiability, PERC focused on whether the grievance challenged a managerial prerogative that placed “substantial limitations on government’s policymaking powers.” PERC found that it did.
PERC held that “a public employer maintains a non-negotiable, managerial prerogative to establish a sick leave verification policy and to use reasonable means to verify employee illness or disability.” PERC distinguished between challenging the establishment of such a policy and challenging a specific application of it. PERC found that the PBA’s grievance fell squarely into the first, non-negotiable category. “The grievance principally challenges the County’s managerial prerogative to establish sick leave verification processes by means of home confinement and home checks rather than challenging a specific application of the County’s sick leave verification policy,” PERC wrote. It noted the grievance did not allege any particular home check was intrusive or unreasonable, nor did it contest any specific discipline issued under the policy.
PERC rejected the PBA’s attempt to distinguish between officers “calling out sick” for a regular shift and those “refusing” overtime due to sickness. “The distinction the PBA draws… is a distinction without a difference; in both cases, the [Superior Corrections Officers] are requesting to use sick leave and are therefore subject to the County’s verification policy,” PERC reasoned. It further found the PBA’s proffered examples of non-illness-related overtime refusals, like family emergencies or vacations, were addressed by other leave provisions or explicit exceptions within the amended policy for attending medical facilities.
Ultimately, PERC concluded that the County’s operational needs outweighed the officers’ privacy interests.
County of Hudson, 52 NJPER ¶ 43 (NJ PERC 2025).