Employer-employee relations: confidential communications.

Existing law that governs the labor relations of public employees and employers, including the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act, the Ralph C. Dills Act, and provisions relating to judicial employees, public schools, higher education, the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, the Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District, the Sacramento Regional Transit District, and other public transit employees, prohibits employers from taking certain actions relating to employee organizations. This includes imposing or threatening to impose reprisals on employees, discriminating or threatening to discriminate against employees, or otherwise interfering with, restraining, or coercing employees because of their exercise of their guaranteed rights. Those provisions further prohibit denying to employee organizations the rights guaranteed to them by existing law. This bill would also prohibit a local public agency employer, a state employer, a judicial employer, a public school employer, a higher education employer, or the district from questioning any employee or employee representative regarding communications made in confidence between an employee and an employee representative in connection with representation relating to any matter within the scope of the recognized employee organization's representation. The bill would provide that communications between an employee and their employee representative would not be confidential if, at any time, the representative was a witness or party to any of the events forming the basis of a potential administrative disciplinary or criminal investigation.