AFSCME, Local 3299 submitted a request for information (RFI) to the University of California (UC). The RFI sought health and safety records about employees at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), a national research laboratory that UC operates. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) owns LBNL, but UC runs it under a contract with DOE. UC is the employer of all AFSCME-represented employees at LBNL.
AFSCME requested that UC provide six categories of records, for the prior five years, related to the health and safety of AFSCME-represented employees at LBNL. UC responded that: 1) the RFI was overbroad and burdensome; 2) DOE owned the records; and 3) AFSCME must file a federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with DOE.
AFSCME filed an unfair practice charge with PERB. The charge alleged that UC violated its duty to meet and confer under the Higher Education Employment Relations Act (HEERA) by failing to provide the records it requested. The ALJ sustained AFSCME’s claim and issued a compromise remedy intended to comply with the U.S. Privacy Act of 1974. Both parties filed exceptions to the ALJ’s order.
PERB outlined the requirements an employer must follow to respond to an exclusive representative’s RFI. An employer generally must provide a representative with all information that is necessary and relevant to the right to represent employees regarding mandatory subjects of bargaining. Employers must respond with diligence and thoroughness, because an unreasonable delay is the same as an outright refusal to provide information. An employer must provide all information that is available to it, and not just information it owns. Once an agency receives a request for relevant information, it must either promptly and fully supply the information or timely and adequately explain its reasons for not doing so. If the RFI meets the necessary and relevant standard, the employer’s unjustified failure to provide that information is a per se violation of its bargaining duty, and a charging party is not required to show harm or prejudice as part of its prima facie case.
If, as in this case, the employer believes that the RFI seeks confidential information, the employer must meet and confer in good faith to negotiate a potential accommodation, such as redactions of private information in the records or a confidentiality agreement. If the parties cannot reach agreement, then PERB will decide the remedy through the resolution of an unfair practice charge. If the employer raises a significant privacy interest, then a balancing test applies: the employer has the burden of showing that the privacy interest outweighs the representative’s interest in the information. When privacy rights do outweigh the union’s interest in the information, the sensitive information can be withheld and/or redacted.
PERB remedied this case by directing a PERB compliance officer to: oversee the disclosure process; ensure prompt implementation of PERB’s order; and accommodate all legitimate competing interests. This decision details PERB’s analysis of the state and federal privacy laws involved in the RFI, the redactions of information within a record that would be required, and explains that AFSCME was not required to use a FOIA request to DOE.
AFSCME v. Regents of the University of California (2026) PERB Decision No. 3034-H.