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Parties Involved:
American Federation of Government Employees, Council of Prison Locals, Council 33
Intervenor for Respondent
Federal Bureau of Prisons
Petitioner
Federal Labor Relations Authority
Respondent

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued January 20, 2011 Decided July 8, 2011 

No. 10-1089 

FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS, 

PETITIONER

v. 

FEDERAL LABOR RELATIONS AUTHORITY, 

RESPONDENT

AMERICAN FEDERATION OF GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES,

COUNCIL OF PRISON LOCALS, COUNCIL 33, 

INTERVENOR

On Petition for Review of a Final Decision 

of the Federal Labor Relations Authority 

Howard S. Scher, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, 

argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs was 

William G. Kanter, Attorney. 

Joyce G. Friedman, Attorney, Federal Labor Relations 

Authority, argued the cause for respondent. With her on the 

brief was Rosa M. Koppel, Solicitor. William R. Tobey, Deputy 

Solicitor, entered an appearance. 

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David A. Borer and Judith Galat were on the brief for 

intervenor American Federation of Government Employees, 

Council of Prison Locals, Council 33 in support of respondent. 

Mark D. Roth entered an appearance. 

Before: GINSBURG and BROWN, Circuit Judges, and 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge. 

 Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GINSBURG. 

 GINSBURG, Circuit Judge: The Federal Bureau of Prisons 

petitions for review of a decision of the Federal Labor 

Relations Authority holding the Bureau had a duty to bargain 

over its implementation of a “mission critical” standard for 

staffing federal correctional institutions. Because the 

Authority unreasonably concluded the mission critical 

standard is not “covered by” the collective bargaining 

agreement between the Bureau and its employees’ union, we 

grant the petition and vacate the Authority’s decision. 

I. Background 

 The terms and conditions of employment for federal 

correctional officers are prescribed in a nationwide collective 

bargaining agreement (the Master Agreement), executed in 

1998 by the Bureau and the American Federation of 

Government Employees, Council of Prison Locals No. 33 (the 

Union). Article 18 of the Master Agreement, entitled “Hours 

of Work,” establishes procedures for the scheduling and 

assignment of work for officers at each of the Bureau’s 

facilities. Section (d) of Article 18 provides work 

assignments are to be determined on a quarterly basis through 

a bidding system. Seven weeks before the end of the quarter, 

each correctional institution must publish a roster listing the 

positions that will be available to officers in the next quarter. 

The officers bid for posts and shifts, and assignments are 

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made according to seniority. The list of assignments is then 

sent to the warden of the institution for approval. 

 Article 18(g) provides for the assignment of “relief” 

officers to serve for the quarter, covering for officers who are 

on sick or annual leave. A relief officer might be assigned to 

several different posts over the course of the quarter, although 

“reasonable efforts will be made to keep sick and annual relief 

officers assigned within [the same] shift.” All officers must 

cycle through the relief assignment before any officer is 

required to serve in that role again. 

 When senior managers at the Bureau learned late in 2004 

the agency would not be receiving all the funding they had 

expected for 2005, they took steps to reduce overtime 

expenses, which in their view had become excessive. 

Wardens were relying upon regular staff to work overtime (at 

a higher wage) to cover absences that might have been filled 

by a relief officer paid his regular wage. In order to avoid this 

waste of newly scarce funds, the Bureau needed wardens to 

assign more officers to relief duty each quarter and 

correspondingly reduce the number of officers assigned in 

advance to other posts. 

To explain the need for this change, the Bureau’s 

Assistant Director, John Vanyur, issued a memorandum 

stating the quarterly roster for each institution should include 

only those posts deemed “critical” to the mission of that 

institution. Although under the Master Agreement the warden 

retained the right of final approval, Vanyur cautioned that 

under the “mission critical” standard certain posts — such as 

“Medical Escort,” “Front Gate Officer,” and “Chapel Officer 

— should not “typically” or “ordinarily” be deemed 

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“critical.”* The work associated with these non-critical posts 

would be assigned instead as a “task” to be performed by 

officers serving as relief, and only as needed. 

 One week after Vanyur sent this memorandum, the Union 

demanded the Bureau negotiate over how the mission critical 

standard would be implemented. The Bureau refused to 

bargain because, in its view, it had already bargained with the 

Union over the procedures for assigning work and the result 

of that bargaining, Article 18, “covered” and therefore 

preempted any further duty to bargain. See Dep’t of Navy v. 

FLRA, 962 F.2d 48, 53 (D.C. Cir. 1992). The Union then 

filed a formal grievance claiming the Bureau’s refusal to 

bargain was an unfair labor practice, in violation of the 

Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute, 5 

U.S.C. §§ 7101-7154; see § 7116(a)(1), (5) (the Statute). 

When the Bureau denied the grievance, the Union invoked 

arbitration. 

 The arbitrator concluded the mission critical standard was 

not covered by Article 18 because that provision “deals with 

procedures only” and not with the content of the rosters. In 

his view, Article 18(d), which prescribes the bidding system, 

could not possibly cover “a nationwide change in staffing 

patterns that affected ... virtually every bargaining-unit 

employee.” He characterized the Bureau’s argument 

otherwise as “specious” and in bad faith. Then, after 

concluding the “impact” of mission critical staffing upon 

employees was both “reasonably foreseeable” and “greater 

*

 The memorandum was addressed to the Bureau’s regional 

directors rather than to its wardens. Vanyur testified in arbitration, 

however, that he had sent a subsequent letter explaining that the 

wardens, not the regional directors, still had final approval over 

their rosters. The letter is not in the record but neither the Union 

nor the Authority casts doubt upon Vanyur’s testimony. 

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than de minimis,” the arbitrator ordered the Bureau to “enter 

forthwith into good faith ... negotiations with the Union.” 

 The Bureau filed an exception to this award with the 

Authority, which held the arbitrator had correctly stated the 

law and correctly ruled for the Union. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 

Fed. Bureau of Prisons v. Council of Prison Locals, Council 

33, 64 F.L.R.A. 559, 560–62 (2010). That “Article 18 and the 

critical roster program both deal with rosters,” the Authority 

said, is not enough to show the Article “covers” that program. 

Id. at 561. Rather, it agreed with the arbitrator’s 

understanding that Article 18 merely “lays out the procedures 

for filling specific positions,” and does not “address[] the 

impact ... of eliminating certain positions.” Id. The Bureau 

had a duty to bargain with the Union over the implementation 

of the mission critical standard, the Authority said, because 

the rosters issued pursuant to that standard were not “the type 

of rosters addressed in Article 18.” Id. Deeming the 

arbitrator’s findings “reasonable and supported by the 

record,” id., the Authority denied the Bureau’s exception, id.

at 562. 

The Authority also identified a “separate and 

independent” ground for affirming the award: To wit, the 

arbitrator had based his decision not only upon the Statute but 

also upon Article 3(d) of the Master Agreement, which the 

Authority said imposed upon the Bureau “an independent 

bargaining obligation.” Id. Because the Bureau had objected 

solely to the arbitrator’s statutory ruling, the award could 

stand upon the contractual basis alone, the Authority held, 

even if the Bureau was correct that under the Statute the 

mission critical staffing standard was “covered by” Article 18. 

Id.

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II. Analysis 

The Bureau petitions for review of the Authority’s 

decision, which “[w]e will not set aside ... unless it is 

‘arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not 

in accordance with law.’” Nat’l Treasury Emps. Union v. 

FLRA, 452 F.3d 793, 796 (D.C. Cir. 2006) (hereinafter 

NTEU) (quoting 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A)); see 5 U.S.C. § 

7123(c). The Bureau argues the Authority misapplied the law 

when it held the Bureau’s instructions on staffing were not 

“covered by” the Master Agreement. See NTEU, 452 F.3d at 

796–98. 

If a collective bargaining agreement “covers” a particular 

subject, then the parties to that agreement “are absolved of 

any further duty to bargain about that matter during the term 

of the agreement.” Dep’t of Navy, 962 F.2d at 53.

*

 For a 

subject to be deemed covered, there need not be an “exact 

congruence” between the matter in dispute and a provision of 

the agreement, so long as the agreement expressly or 

implicitly indicates the parties reached a negotiated agreement 

on the subject. NTEU, 452 F.3d at 796 (internal quotation 

marks omitted). 

An agreement between an agency and its employees’ 

designated representative must be construed “in view of the 

policies embodied in the [Statute].” Id. at 797. When the 

question is whether an agreement “covers” a matter, we must 

answer bearing in mind the importance of finality to 

collective bargaining. See Dep’t of Navy, 962 F.2d at 59 (the 

“covered by” doctrine ensures the parties’ “stability and 

repose” during the term of their agreement). We will 

*

 The initial term of the Master Agreement was 1998 to 2001, but 

the Agreement provided it would be renewed automatically for oneyear periods until the parties negotiated a replacement. 

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therefore reject any construction of a collective bargaining 

agreement that treats it as but “a starting point for constant 

negotiation over every agency action.” Id. (internal quotation 

marks omitted). 

 The Bureau argues Article 18 covers and preempts all 

disputes about particular rosters issued pursuant to and in 

compliance with the procedures in Article 18(d). The 

Authority responds that a “narrow procedural provision” such 

as Article 18(d) cannot reflect bargaining over a “broader 

subject” such as, here, the “reorganization of posts.” Stated 

differently, both parties understand Article 18 to be a 

procedural provision; what they disagree about is the scope of 

the agreement it reflects. 

 We believe the Bureau’s position is the correct one: The 

procedures prescribed in Article 18 cover the substance of all 

decisions reached by following those procedures. Section 

7106(a) gives an agency an exclusive, non-negotiable right to 

assign work but, under § 7106(b), it may bargain with the 

representative of its employees over the “procedures” it will 

use when it exercises that authority and the “appropriate 

arrangements” it will make for any employee “adversely 

affected” by a particular action. An agreement prescribing 

such “arrangements” and “procedures,” that is, the “impact 

and implementation” of an agency’s management right, 

therefore covers the content of the agency’s decisions made 

under that rubric. See Dep’t of Navy, 962 F.2d at 50 

(“Although an agency is not required to bargain with respect 

to its management rights per se, it is required to bargain about 

the impact and implementation of those rights”). Article 18, 

specifically in sections (d) and (g), reflects the parties’ earlier 

bargaining over the impact and implementation of the 

Bureau’s statutory right to assign work. See § 7106(b) 

(permitting bargaining over the “numbers, types, ... or 

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positions assigned to any ... work project[] or tour of duty”). 

Specifically, these provisions represent the agreement of the 

parties about the procedures by which a warden formulates a 

roster, assigns officers to posts, and designates officers for the 

relief shift. 

 The Authority, however, held the Bureau had a 

mandatory duty to engage anew in impact and implementation 

bargaining over the mission critical standard on the ground 

that a roster implementing that standard is not the “type of 

roster[]” covered by Article 18. 64 F.L.R.A. at 561. In 

support of that reading, the Authority said only that the 

mission critical initiative “addresses the impact of a 

nationwide change in staffing patterns,” and does not “deal[] 

with procedures.” Id.

*

 The Authority has never explained 

why a roster drafted and issued in accordance with the 

procedures prescribed by Article 18 is not an Article 18 

roster, nor has it responded to the Bureau’s unquestionably 

correct observation that Article 18 itself is the product of 

impact and implementation bargaining under § 7106(b). 

 Perhaps the best evidence Article 18 covers the mission 

critical standard comes from the testimony of Philip Glover, 

the Union’s lead negotiator of the Master Agreement, who 

described the purpose of that provision. Before the Master 

Agreement was executed in 1998, Glover said, “there wasn’t 

a clear roster procedure” at federal prisons. At the prison 

where he had worked, for example, “six lieutenants [would] 

get into a room and divvy up the staff similar to a softball 

team being picked,” and there was no “set procedure” for 

challenging an assignment once made. In negotiation of the 

*

 It is incoherent, in any event, to suggest the mission critical 

standard “addresse[d] the impact of a nationwide change in staffing 

patterns” when the premise of the Union’s complaint is that the 

“nationwide change” is the mission critical standard itself. 

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Master Agreement, the Union secured from the Bureau a 

“complete rewrite” of Article 18 to place procedural checks 

upon the Bureau’s authority to assign work, including the 

advance publication of available posts, the solicitation of bids, 

and a limited right to appeal an assignment. Article 18, as 

Glover’s testimony confirms, is a compromise — “[not] 

exactly what [the Union] devised, but ... what we ended up 

with in negotiations.” Because the parties reached an 

agreement about how and when management would exercise 

its right to assign work, the implementation of those 

procedures, and the resulting impact, do not give rise to a 

further duty to bargain. Article 18 therefore covers and 

preempts challenges to all specific outcomes of the 

assignment process. 

 The Authority erred insofar as it held negotiated 

procedures such as those in Article 18 cannot cover decisions 

about substance. In fact that is exactly what § 7106 of the 

Statute contemplates. See Dep’t of Navy, 962 F.2d at 50; see, 

e.g., id. at 61–62 (agreement permitting Marine Corps to set 

performance criteria barred challenge to specific criteria; 

agreement establishing procedures for seconding employees 

to other facilities barred challenge to specific transfers); see 

also NTEU, 452 F.3d at 796–98 (agreement detailing how 

IRS employees accrue leave covered Union’s proposed 

“leave-swapping” program). Here, as in Department of the 

Navy, the Authority mistakenly imposed upon the employing 

agency a duty to negotiate over the impact and 

implementation of a procedure that is itself the outcome of 

impact and implementation bargaining. See 962 F.2d. at 61-

62. Because that approach makes a collectively bargained 

agreement no more than a “starting point for constant 

negotiation” rather than a guarantor of “stability and repose,” 

id. at 59, we must reject it. 

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The arbitrator caught the scent of just this problem while 

in pursuit of an appropriate remedy. Although, when 

considering the merits, he had found the mission critical 

standard had catalyzed a “nationwide change in staffing 

patterns,” he realized that imposing “pre-mission critical” 

standards — the very status quo ante remedy the Union had 

requested — “would accomplish nothing”: The Bureau 

would retain “its Article 18(d) prerogatives” and “[l]ocal 

wardens would simply repost the kind of mission critical 

rosters they [had] been posting” since receiving the Vanyur 

memorandum because it was within their discretion under 

Article 18(d) to do so. Instead of restoring the status quo 

ante, the arbitrator directed the Bureau to engage in impact 

and implementation negotiation with the Union over “Mission 

Critical Posts.” 

The circularity of the arbitrator’s reasoning about the 

remedy reflected the flaw underlying the rest of the award, as 

the Bureau argued to the Authority. With respect to the 

merits, the arbitrator had found the Vanyur memorandum 

effected a significant change in the procedures for developing 

rosters under Article 18(d). With respect to the remedy, 

however, the arbitrator concluded the mission critical standard 

did not change anything of substance because it did not 

ultimately alter the warden’s ability to control the assignment 

of work. 

As the Authority, if not the arbitrator, should have seen, 

the Union’s grievance is at bottom a complaint about the 

discretion Article 18 itself affords to the wardens. According 

to witnesses on both sides, Article 18 was negotiated in a 

period of better funding and more liberal hiring. Wardens had 

been exercising their approval authority favorably to the 

officers, by staffing more full-time posts than were needed 

and then paying overtime wages to meet the need for relief 

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officers. Deteriorating economic conditions made these 

practices unsustainable, but that change does not justify 

disregarding an agreement made when times were better. 

Ignoring this inconvenient history (as had the arbitrator), 

the Authority simply deferred to the findings in the award and 

concluded the Master Agreement did not cover the mission 

critical standard. 64 F.L.R.A. at 561. Neither in its decision 

nor in its brief on appeal has the Authority addressed Glover’s 

testimony about the origins of Article 18. It has also ignored 

the arbitrator’s belated realization that Article 18, even 

without the mission critical standard, permitted wardens to 

adopt the very rosters about which the Union had grieved. 

The Authority abused its discretion by approving an award so 

patently at odds with itself. 

Both the arbitrator’s difficulty with the question of 

remedy and the Authority’s silence on the subject likely stem 

from a glaring ambiguity in the record about the legal force of 

the Vanyur memorandum. The record before the Authority 

included the arbitrator’s second-hand quotation of the Vanyur 

memorandum, but not the memorandum itself; it included 

testimony about Vanyur’s subsequent letter clarifying the 

memorandum, but not the letter itself. Nor had any party 

provided an account of how the mission critical standard was 

implemented. The record reflected at most an effort by the 

Bureau’s management to persuade or perhaps even to pressure 

wardens to adopt a particular approach for managing their 

budgets, not a binding policy. Because the Authority made no 

attempt to determine the force, if any, of the Vanyur 

memorandum, or to consider the intended scope of Article 18, 

its conclusion the Master Agreement does not cover the 

standard described in that document is all the more difficult to 

credit. 

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 We also reject the Authority’s contention Article 3(d) of 

the Master Agreement provides a “separate and independent” 

basis for the arbitral award. As the Authority reads it, Article 

3(d) requires the Bureau to negotiate over any “national 

policy issuance” that affects the officers’ conditions of 

employment. Although we doubt a contractual provision 

covering a management decision would not also cover a 

policy issuance to the same effect, we need not decide the 

matter here; because the arbitral award makes no distinction 

between the purportedly “separate” statutory and contractual 

grounds for the award, the Bureau correctly maintains it was 

not required to file a separate exception. 

III. Conclusion 

 The Authority endorsed an incoherent arbitral award and 

embraced an unreasonably narrow view of what the Master 

Agreement “covers.” Because its decision is thus 

“incompatible with ... the terms [and] the purpose” of the 

Statute, “we are obliged to intervene.” Dep’t of Navy, 962 

F.2d at 53. Accordingly, we grant the petition for review, 

vacate the decision of the Authority, and remand this matter 

for the Authority to set aside the arbitral award. 

So ordered.

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