Opinion ID: 510615
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Grant of Discretion Under the Technician Act

Text: 20 Section 709(g)(2) of the Technician Act, in relevant part, provides: 21 Notwithstanding sections 5544(a) and 6101(a) of title 5 or any other provision of law, the Secretary concerned may ... prescribe the hours of duty for technicians. Notwithstanding section 5542 and 5543 of title 5 or any other provision of law, such technicians shall be granted an amount of compensatory time off from their scheduled tour of duty equal to the amount of any time spent by them in irregular or overtime work, and shall not be entitled to compensation for such work. 22 (Emphases added.) Not surprisingly, the parties would have us focus on different portions of this provision. The Guard repeatedly directs our attention to the prosaic [n]otwithstanding ... any other provision of law. Meanwhile, the FLRA finds significance in the mosaic of may and shall: although technicians shall be granted compensatory time off and shall not be paid a premium for overtime, the statute provides only that the Secretary may, not that he shall, prescribe the hours of duty for technicians. According to the FLRA, this distinction means that the Secretary's authority to prescribe work schedules is discretionary rather than mandatory; and because the Guard is obligated to bargain to the extent of its discretion, it argues, the work schedule proposals are negotiable. It also contends that the distinction between may and shall distinguishes this case from New Jersey Guard, and from Wright v. Alabama Army National Guard, 437 F.Supp. 54 (M.D.Ala.1977), aff'd, 605 F.2d 943 (5th Cir.1979) (on the basis of the district court's decision). 23 In Wright, the court held that although the Technician Act predated Public Law 93-259, which brought the Guard within the definitional coverage of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), it continued to exempt the Guard from the overtime pay provisions of the FLSA. As the FLRA correctly points out, in Wright, the relevant statutory language provided that notwithstanding ... any other provision of law, technicians shall not be entitled to overtime pay. In New Jersey Guard, however, in finding that the union's proposals would impinge upon the discretion vested in the state adjutant general by the Technician Act, the court relied on two of the Act's provisions: section 709(e)(3), which provides that, notwithstanding any other provision of law, the state adjutant general may  discharge any technician for cause; and section 709(e)(5), which provides (again, notwithstanding any other provision of law) that any appeal from such a discharge shall not extend beyond the adjutant general. 677 F.2d at 280. The court in that case did not distinguish between the discretionary and the mandatory language, however. Nor do we in this one; it is a distinction in search of significance. 24 The question, at this point in our analysis, is not whether the Secretary's authority under the Technician Act is mandatory or discretionary, but whether that Act, standing alone, commits decisions regarding technicians' work schedules to the Secretary's unfettered discretion. We believe that it does. The Act requires the Secretary to grant compensatory time for overtime work, prohibits him from paying overtime pay, and allows him to prescribe the hours of duty for technicians, all notwithstanding any other provision of law. Clearly, the Technician Act does not require him unilaterally to prescribe work schedules. Because the Guard was never bound by the workday and workweek limitations in section 6101, the Secretary (or those to whom he delegated his authority under the Act) presumably could have bargained over hours of work even before the enactment of the Schedules Act. That choice, however, notwithstanding any other provision of law, is his alone. 25 Although the notwithstanding language of the statute really could not be clearer, we stoop to note that our view of section 709(g) also finds support in the legislative history of the Technician Act. The House committee report on the bill states: 26 This bill provides that the Secretary ... may prescribe the hours of duty for all technicians.... This authority will continue the existing practice regarding hours of work and compensatory time off. It is the firm view of the committee that the irregular hours of work to which technicians are subjected on frequent occasions make it impractical, both from the standpoint of the Government and the individual, to be limited to the normal provisions regarding a straight 40-hour week with overtime or differential pay for additional hours of work. The frequent irregular hours are inherent in the technician job and position. 27 H.R.Rep. No. 1823, 90th Cong., 2d Sess. 13, reprinted in 1968 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News, 3318, 3336. Thus, Congress recognized that the very nature of the technicians' job, with their dual civilian and military responsibilities, often requires that they be subjected to irregular work hours. The Technician Act therefore authorizes the Secretary of the Army to prescribe their hours of duty notwithstanding ... any other provision of law. 28 In the face of the statute and its legislative history, the FLRA says: Read in context, the reference to 'any other laws' concerns laws of the same sort, i.e., laws which would restrict the agency from prescribing hours other than the standard schedule of five 8-hour days. Otherwise, it argues, the references to specific statutory provisions would be superfluous. While it is not clear to us that the Schedules Act would not in any event be a law of the same sort, we decline the FLRA's creative invitation to limit the unambiguous language of the statute. 29