T itle VII of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, commonly referred to as the "Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute" (FSLMRS), recognizes the right of most federal employees to engage in collective bargaining with respect to their conditions of employment. Although the FSLMRS does not permit the negotiation of matters that are specifically provided for by federal law, such as wages and retirement benefits, federal unions have bargained with management over a variety of other subjects, such as the availability of daycare facilities and the allocation of parking spaces. Under the FSLMRS, unions may also negotiate for the availability of "official time," paid time off from assigned government duties to engage in activities related to labor-management relations. The ability to negotiate for official time has been of particular interest to Congress. Legislation that would require the reporting of official time and limit how such time is used has been introduced in the 115 th Congress. This report provides background on the FSLMRS and discusses key rights afforded to federa l employees and management under the statute. The report also examines the availability of official time and reviews some of the significant official time cases decided by the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA), the federal agency that administers the FSLMRS. Prior to the enactment of the FSLMRS, federal employees were permitted to engage in collective bargaining pursuant to two executive orders. Executive Order 10988, issued by President Kennedy in 1962, granted federal employees the right "to form, join and assist any employee organization or to refrain from such activity." Under that order, once recognized as the exclusive representative of employees in an appropriate bargaining unit, an employee organization could negotiate an agreement that would cover all employees in that unit. Executive Order 11491, issued by President Nixon in 1969, further developed the framework for federal labor-management relations by establishing the (1) Federal Labor Relations Council, a predecessor to the FLRA, and (2) Federal Service Impasses Panel (FSIP), an entity that continues to provide assistance to resolve negotiation impasses. Executive Order 11491 also identified unfair labor practices that were prohibited for management and labor organizations. In 1978, the right to engage in collective bargaining became recognized in statute through the FSLMRS, which codified many of the concepts included in the executive orders. In addition to providing for the right to engage in collective bargaining, the FSLMRS also established the FLRA, which, among other duties, supervises union elections, adjudicates unfair labor practice complaints, and resolves questions concerning the negotiability of bargaining proposals. Under the FSLMRS, a labor organization becomes the exclusive representative of a collective bargaining unit following a secret ballot election in which a majority of the employees in the unit vote favorably for the union. Once selected, the union is responsible for representing the interests of all employees in the bargaining unit, even if an individual has chosen not to join the union. Unlike organized employees in the private sector, federal employees are also prohibited from engaging in a strike. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2016, 27.4% of all federal employees were members of a union. While the union membership rate for federal workers has declined slightly over the past ten years, it continues to exceed the union membership rate for private-sector employees. In 2016, only 6.4% of private-sector employees were members of a union. This disparity in union membership rates has been noteworthy to some given the inability of federal employees to negotiate over wages and major employee benefits. While the FSLMRS applies to most federal agencies, several agencies are specifically excluded from coverage under the statute. The FSLMRS defines the term "agency" to exclude the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the FLRA, the FSIP, the U.S. Secret Service, and the U.S. Secret Service Uniformed Division. The ability to engage in collective bargaining has been provided to GAO employees pursuant to section 732(e) of title 31, U.S. Code. However, employees of the other named agencies do not have the right to engage in collective bargaining. The FSLMRS also authorizes the President to exclude additional agencies and agency subdivisions from coverage if he determines that an agency or subdivision has a primary function of intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work, and the statute cannot be applied "in a manner consistent with national security requirements and considerations." The President has exercised this authority to exclude numerous additional agencies and subdivisions from coverage under the FSLMRS, including the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. The FSLMRS states that "[e]ach employee shall have the right to form, join, or assist any labor organization, or to refrain from any such activity, freely and without fear of penalty or reprisal, and each employee shall be protected in the exercise of such right." The right recognized by the FSLMRS includes the ability "to engage in collective bargaining with respect to conditions of employment through representatives chosen by employees." The FSLMRS further defines the phrase "conditions of employment" broadly to include personnel policies, practices, and matters that affect working conditions. The phrase does not encompass, however, policies, practices, and matters "to the extent such matters are specifically provided for by Federal statute." Thus, to the extent federal law provides for pay, retirement benefits, health coverage, and other items, such subjects are not negotiable. In U.S. Dep't of Defense v. FLRA , an early case involving the FSLMRS, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (D.C. Circuit) confirmed that the scope of the duty to bargain is subject to "important limitations," notably those matters that are provided for by federal law. In addition, the FSLMRS identifies management rights that are generally not negotiable, except with regard to the procedures that will be used to implement an agency's proposals. Section 7106(a) of the FSLMRS identifies the following as nonnegotiable: · the mission, budget, organization, number of employees, and internal security practices of the agency; · hiring, assigning, directing, laying off, and retaining the agency's employees, or suspending, removing, reducing in grade or pay, or taking other disciplinary action against employees; · assigning work, making determinations with respect to contracting out, and determining the personnel by which agency operations shall be conducted; · with respect to filling positions, making selections for appointments from among properly ranked and certified candidates for promotion, or from any other appropriate source; · taking whatever actions may be necessary to carry out the agency mission during emergencies. Courts have noted that section 7106(a) ensures that the collective bargaining system established by the FSLMRS does not "undermine the effectiveness of government through unwarranted intrusion on management prerogatives." At the same time, however, section 7106(b) of the FSLMRS provides that nothing in the section "shall preclude any agency and any labor organization from negotiating ... procedures which management officials of the agency will observe in exercising any authority under this section[.]" The FSLMRS and the two subsections are meant to "establish a balance between the nonnegotiable substantive rights of management and the negotiable procedures to be followed when management exercises its substantive rights." In Dep't of Defense, Army-Air Force Exchange Service v. FLRA , the D.C. Circuit considered when a bargaining proposal that purports to address how management implements changes actually interferes with the rights of management under section 7106(a). Specifically, the D.C. Circuit deemed a proposal requiring the exhaustion of a collective bargaining agreement's review procedures before a removal or suspension was "procedural" in nature, and upheld the FLRA's decision that the proposal was negotiable because it would not have the effect of stopping management from "acting at all." In Dep't of Defense, Army-Air Force Exchange Service , the court viewed the proposal as merely requiring the use of existing review procedures that would not unreasonably delay management action or frustrate management's authority under section 7106(a). The court maintained that the so-called "acting at all" standard for evaluating procedural matters was a "reasonable and natural construction" of section 7106: "The management power to act that is protected by Section 7106(a) may be limited by the procedures under Section 7106(b), but only so far as the procedures do not have the effect of eliminating management authority by preventing its 'acting at all.'" In that same case, the D.C. Circuit also upheld the FLRA's determination that a series of proposals that conditioned job assignments on seniority were not negotiable because the proposals were viewed to be "substantive" matters and the negotiations over such proposals would "directly interfere" with an agency's ability to assign work. The court agreed with the FLRA's finding that compelling the selection of an employee for an assignment based on seniority removed the agency's discretion to make decisions based on the judgment and reliability of the individual. In the court's view, these proposals directly interfered with the right of the agency to assign employees under section 7106(a). In recognizing the use of the two different standards, the D.C. Circuit distinguished between proposals that are procedural and those that are actually substantive. A proposal that directly implicates how work is actually performed, like those specifying criteria for personnel assignments, is substantive and should be subject to the "directly interfere" standard. Other proposals that are less direct, such as the exhaustion of review procedures, are procedural and should be subject to the "acting at all" standard. In a subsequent decision, the D.C.