Court interpreters.

Assembly Member Lee’s proposal would introduce a multiregional bargaining option for court interpreters, activated when more than one regional bargaining effort occurs in the same calendar year and only with the mutual consent of the recognized employee organization and the regional court interpreter employment relations committee. This change sits within an existing regional framework that preserves uniform pay within each region and maintains regional MOUs, while allowing local compensation negotiations to occur separately between a trial court and a recognized employee organization.

Key mechanisms include a recognized employee organization’s ability to request multiregional bargaining, conditioned on mutual consent between the organization and the regional committee. More than one region must be bargaining in the same calendar year for the multiregional process to be available. Any multiregional bargaining is designed to proceed within the boundaries that regional terms and the regional MOU remain intact, and it does not modify existing regional MOUs. Local compensation may still be negotiated by the trial court with the recognized employee organization, but such local agreements cannot alter regional MOUs. The framework maintains meet-and-confer obligations for terms and conditions of employment, including uniform hourly pay within each region.

The bill interacts with the current law by retaining the four-region structure and the authority of regional committees to set terms and conditions, including uniform regional pay, while permitting cross-regional discussions when concurrent bargaining exists. Health/welfare and pension benefits may continue to align with those provided to other trial court employees within a region, and local compensation remains an independent channel for adjustments at the regional level. A fiscal committee review is required, and no new appropriation is specified, indicating that any anticipated costs would be assessed through the fiscal process rather than an explicit new funding line.

Ambiguities and implementation considerations include the scope of terms that could be covered in multiregional bargaining, the procedural steps to initiate cross-region talks (notice, timelines, representation), and how cross-region agreements would be reconciled with existing regional MOUs. Stakeholders—recognized employee organizations, regional committees, and trial courts—would need to navigate cross-region coordination, ensure that regional MOUs remain unmodified by multiregional efforts, and determine how any cross-region outcomes would be implemented within the existing labor-relations framework. The proposal thus creates a new cross-regional negotiation pathway while preserving regional autonomy and existing mechanisms for term-setting, wage uniformity, and local compensation.