Originally from Dispute Resolution Journal

A brief background of public sector collective bargaining in New Jersey is presented—from the passage of the New Jersey Employer-Employee Relations Act and the establishment of the Public Employment Relations Commission in 1968 to subsequent actions of the New Jersey Supreme Court in the socalled Dunellen Trilogy cases, in which it set limitations on bargainable issues.

In the Trilogy, the court observed that it was the responsibility of the judiciary to determine, on a case-by-case basis, what issues negated public management's legislatively given authority to formulate policy. Those issues, it concluded, would be unenforceable through litigation or arbitration.

In the first of the Trilogy cases, a dispute involving a teachers' association, the court observed that the line between educational policy and decisions that affected the financial and personal welfare of the teachers (negotiable issues) was obscure. The author chronicles the see-saw debate between the courts (which followed the Dunellen Trilogy with Dunellen II) and the legislature in the battle between narrowing and broadening the scope of negotiations.