NFFE Prevails Over FLRA/BLM in the U.S. Court of Appeals

(National Federation of Federal Employees)On June 17, 2005, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit handed down a scathing indictment of the Federal Labor Relations Authority’s (FLRA) overbroad reading of management’s right to assign work, which upheld the non-negotiability of NFFE Locals 951 and 2152 proposals to the Bureau of Land Management, Department of the Interior (BLM).

On October 31, 2001, BLM formally notified both NFFE Locals that it would conduct a 13 week evaluation to determine if premium pay for administratively uncontrollable overtime (AUO) is appropriate for law enforcement bargaining unit members.  AUO is a flat, annual payment paid to appropriate positions in lieu of overtime premiums, which vary from pay check to pay check.  The two NFFE Locals submitted proposals which requested information underlying AUO determinations that NFFE believed would allow the Unions to monitor the evaluation program, ensure that BLM used accurate criteria in its evaluation, and demonstrate whether BLM implemented the evaluation program equitably.  BLM declared these proposals non-negotiable on the grounds that the information requested was voluminous and required the agency to assign multiple employees for several weeks to collect, copy, and redact the documents before providing the information to the Unions.  As such, BLM determined that these proposals excessively infringed on management’s right to assign work.  The FLRA upheld BLM’s conclusion, and we petitioned the D.C. Circuit for review.

In a unanimous decision, the court found that not a single case supported the FLRA’s departure from its long-standing precedent which supported negotiability where the proposal does not dictate who must fulfill the proposal, and when or how the proposal will be implemented.   The court declared that it makes no difference whether the proposals at issue required management to collect, collate, and redact 10,000 documents, or ten documents since burden to management’s right to assign work is not legal grounds for finding a proposal non-negotiable.  As such, the D.C. Circuit found that the FLRA’s ruling contravened Congressional intent by “restricting collective bargaining and convert(ing) the management rights provisions from ‘narrow exception(s)’ into major obstacles to collective bargaining.”

In an unusual departure from most petitions for review, where the court will remand the case for further action by the Authority consistent with its holding but does not dictate what action is necessary, the D.C. Circuit went one step farther and remanded our case with express instructions to direct BLM to bargain over NFFE’s proposals.

NFFE praises the court’s decision and its righteous determination that management and the Authority have improperly thwarted and circumvented our bargaining rights.