Opinion ID: 448995
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the seniority rights proposals

Text: 4 Union Proposals 4, 5 and 8 are designed to ensure that the retention and placement of employees during a RIF be determined by seniority. Under Proposal 4, [r]eduction in force will be by seniority as listed on tenure lists of competitive areas. 5 Proposal 5 would establish a system of displacement rights, under which an employee potentially affected by a RIF would be permitted to assume the position of an employee with less seniority, so long as the senior employee either was qualified or could be retrained for the new position. 6 Proposal 8 similarly would allow certain technicians who had been promoted out of the bargaining unit to bump back into it if their present positions were eliminated during a RIF. 7 5 The Authority held each of these three proposals non-negotiable under section 7117(a)(2) of the Statute, which provides that the duty to bargain extends to matters that are the subject of any agency rule or regulation only if the Authority has determined ... that no compelling need (as determined under regulations prescribed by the Authority) exists for the rule or regulation. 8 The FLRA found Proposals 4, 5 and 8 inconsistent with a National Guard Bureau regulation, Technician Personnel Manual chapter 351 (TPM 351), which provides that employee retention during a RIF is to be determined not by seniority but by combined military and civilian performance evaluation scores. Applying its standards for determining compelling need, which are codified at 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2424.11, 9 the Authority held that TPM 351 serves a compelling need under section 2424.11(c) because it implement[s] in an essentially nondiscriminatory manner the statutory mandate [of sections 709(b) and (e)(1) of the Technicians Act] that technicians maintain military membership in the National Guard and hold the military grade specified for their technician positions. 10 On this basis, the Authority concluded that Proposals 4, 5 and 8 were outside the statutory duty to bargain. 11 6 As the Union concedes, a panel of this court affirmed an identical Authority finding as to the same regulation 12 last year in American Federation of Government Employees, Local 2953 v. FLRA. 13 Local 2953held that, in light of the unique provisions of the Technicians Act assigning the technicians a dual civilian and military function, TPM 351 implemented the mandate of that Act in an essentially nondiscretionary manner by requiring that the technicians' military performance be taken into account in determining employee retention during a RIF. 7 The petitioner and the amici urge us to overrule Local 2953, maintaining that the decision misconstrues the mandate of the Technicians Act and improperly expands section 2424.11(c)'s exception to the statutory duty to bargain. However, as the Union recognizes, 14 we are bound by the principle of stare decisis to abide by a recent decision of one panel of this court unless the panel has withdrawn the opinion or the court en banc has overruled it. 15 This principle would be undermined if previous decisions were open to reconsideration merely because they were debatable. We find no convincing grounds for reconsidering Local 2953 here, and accordingly find that decision controlling. 8 In an effort to avoid this result, the Union challenges the constitutionality of section 7117's compelling need provision. As previously noted, although section 7117(a)(2) provides that the statutory duty to bargain ordinarily does not extend to matters that are the subject of an agency regulation for which the FLRA determines there is a compelling need, section 7117(a)(3) provides that such matters are negotiable if an exclusive representative represents an appropriate unit including not less than a majority of the employees in the issuing agency ... to whom the ... regulation is applicable. 16 The Union contends that, by according large labor organizations certain bargaining rights that are denied smaller organizations, the statute infringes the First Amendment right to freedom of association. Alternatively, the Union contends that the statutory classification lacks a rational relationship to the purpose of the compelling need restriction, and thus violates the equal protection principle implicit in the Fifth Amendment. We find these arguments without merit. 9 First, we reject the Union's argument that the provisions of section 7117 violate the First Amendment. While the First Amendment guarantees the rights of public employees to speak freely and to associate with others, and protects the right of associations to engage in advocacy on behalf of their members, it imposes no affirmative obligation on the government ... to recognize [such an] association and bargain with it. 17 Because the government is under no constitutional duty to bargain collectively with labor organizations, it retains the authority to provide that such bargaining shall be limited to a particular class of subjects. Congress exercised this authority in section 7117(a)(2) when it provided that agency regulations for which a compelling need exists would generally be outside the scope of collective bargaining. 10 The Union contends, however, that by making an exception to this rule for the organizations described in section 7117(a)(3), the statutory scheme grant[s] large associations legal rights denied small associations, thereby violating the freedom of association. 18 We believe this argument to be flawed in several respects. First, we disagree with the petitioner's view that section 7117 favors large and powerful unions over small and weak unions. 19 Section 7117(a)(3) confers broader negotiating rights not simply on the basis of the size of the bargaining unit, but rather on the basis of the size of the bargaining unit in relation to the number of agency employees to whom a particular regulation applies. Thus, to use an example given by the FLRA, subsection (a)(3) would grant the broader bargaining rights to a bargaining unit of 101 employees in a 200-employee agency, but not to a bargaining unit of 50,000 employees in a 101,000-employee agency. 20 Nor is there any necessary correspondence between the size of a bargaining unit and the size of any national union that represents the employees in that unit. 11 Furthermore, the petitioner's argument that section 7117(a)(3) burdens the right of its members to belong to a small rather than a large bargaining unit appears to assume that, under the Statute, employees have a right to determine the size of the bargaining units to which they will belong. 21 Under section 7112, 22 however, the authority to determine appropriate units of bargaining lies with the FLRA, not with the employees affected. The petitioner does not suggest that this provision abridges its members' freedom of association, and there can be little doubt that the provision is within Congress' power to regulate labor-management relations in the federal sector. It follows that section 7117(a)(3)'s partial reliance on the size of units of bargaining as determined by the FLRA does not impair employees' freedom of association. 12 Finally, to the extent that section 7117(a)(3) arguably favors large unions over small ones, we nevertheless find the provision constitutional. Since, as we have observed, there is no constitutional right to bargain collectively with the federal government, Congress may make reasonable distinctions in the scope of the bargaining rights that it grants. As we explain below in considering the petitioner's equal protection challenge, we find that the classification contained in section 7117(a)(3) is reasonable. 13 Under the lenient standard that the courts have traditionally applied in reviewing social and economic legislation, a statute that neither burdens fundamental rights nor employs suspect criteria will be upheld against an equal protection challenge if the legislature could have reasonably concluded that the challenged classification would promote a legitimate state purpose. 23 Moreover, such legislation is accorded a presumption of rationality that can only be overcome by a clear showing of arbitrariness and irrationality. 24 14 We think that, under a rational basis analysis, the framework of bargaining rights contained in section 7117 is clearly constitutional. As the legislative history reveals, that framework represents a compromise reached in the House of Representatives between two competing standards--the approach adopted by the Senate, which would have followed the existing law in barring negotiation over agency regulations supported by a compelling need, 25 and the more expansive approach proposed by the House Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, which would have permitted negotiation over all agency regulations. 26 The compromise, which originated in the substitute amendment proposed by Congressman Udall 27 and which was ultimately accepted by both houses, allowed negotiation over agency regulations supported by a compelling need only where a union represents at least a majority of agency employees affected by such regulations. Although the legislative history contains no specific explanation for Congress' choice to draw the line where it did, we cannot say that its decision was an irrational one. 28 Congress could reasonably have believed that the framework adopted in section 7117 offered the most workable accommodation between the objectives of promoting collective bargaining and preserving management authority in certain important areas. Moreover, as the FLRA maintains, section 7117 operates to ensure that regulations supported by a compelling need are not subject to piecemeal negotiation with numerous bargaining units throughout the agency, but are negotiable only at a level that would affect a majority of the agency employees involved. 29 Because the petitioner has failed to demonstrate that section 7117 is unsupported by a rational basis, we hold that that provision is not invalid under the equal protection principle implicit in the Fifth Amendment.