WALLIS v. BOARD OF CIVIL SERVICE COM RS OF CITY OF LOS ANGELES (1938)

I cannot agree with a decision which takes away the right of civil service employees in the department of water and power and allows them to be replaced by persons who worked for the Los Angeles Gas and Electric Corporation before its electrical distributing system was taken over by the city of Los Angeles. The result is that persons who have spent years in the city's service and have acquired civil service rights, with seniority and other privileges, may be ousted in favor of the private corporation's former employees. In my judgment, the provisions of the city charter expressly forbid such a conclusion, which is also contrary to all principles of civil service.

For many years the city has had exempt or noncivil service employees who constitute a special group of workers. The rule of the board of civil service commissioners, adopted pursuant to the provisions of the charter (sec. 125; Stats. 1933, p. 3146) gives civil service employees preference over the others. Under it ‘no Civil Service employee may be suspended until all such exempt persons are laid off’. When the city was about to take over the distributing lines of the private corporation the question as to how it could man the property to be acquired was an important one. The persons who had been operating the private system were just as necessary, for the time being at least, as the physical property. Obviously for some time after the competing system was purchased the city would require the services of hundreds of persons not only skilled in various trades and occupations but also familiar with the electrical distributing system of the company by which they had been employed. The then existing charter provisions and regulations of the board of civil service commissioners did not give the necessary authority for bringing such a large group of new employees into the city's service as exempt employees, and presumably it would have been impractical to require civil service examinations.

The charter amendment approved by the voters of the city in 1935, St.1935, p. 2356, § 431, provided the solution for this difficulty. Under its terms persons employed in the operating service of the public utility which the city acquired ‘may be retained and employed * * * in their respective positions, as nearly as may be, and, so long as continuously so retained and employed in such positions, shall be exempt from the civil service provisions of this charter * * *.’ The purpose of this amendment is clear. Under its provisions the city was authorized to employ as persons ‘exempt from the civil service provisions of this charter’ those who had formerly worked for the private corporation. But the board of water and power commissioners by taking over employees of the private corporation could not give them a civil service status. The new employees were not given any permanency of tenure, nor were they given the right to oust civil service workers. They came into the service of the city at a time when the charter specified that when a suspension for lack of work is to be made, and this is the situation which occasioned the present controversy, civil service employees are to be retained in preference to exempt persons. This policy is consistent with the purpose of civil service and protects seniority rights. Ford v. Department of Water and Power, 4 Cal.App.2d 526, 41 P.2d 188; Lotts by Board of Park Com'rs, 13 Cal.App.2d 625, 626, 57 P.2d 215.

The resolution of the board of water and power commissioners adopted prior to the election at which the question of the acquisition of the private utility system was to be voted upon could not modify or supplant the provisions of the city charter even though it was passed in aid of the campaign to purchase the private system. Moreover, nothing in this resolution assumes to do so. It merely recites that the board will carry out the provisions of the proposed charter amendment, allowing it to employ those in the service of the private corporation, at the date of the acquisition of its property, as exempt workers. Indeed, the resolution quotes the proposed charter amendment in full.

The petition should be denied.