Opinion ID: 672300
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: A Negotiable Procedure

Text: 33 While section 7106(a)(2)(A) preserves management's right to discipline its employees, section 7106(b)(2) permits bargaining over procedures which management officials of the agency will observe in exercising those rights. 5 U.S.C. Sec. 7106(b)(2) (1988). Caselaw holds that a procedural proposal is nonnegotiable if it directly interferes with management's disciplinary rights. See Customs Serv. v. FLRA, 854 F.2d 1414, 1418 (D.C.Cir.1988). The Union insists that proposal 27 itself does not interfere with management's rights, relying on the following dicta in Department of Treasury v. FLRA, 960 F.2d 1068 (D.C.Cir.1992): 34 If the only procedures that qualify under [section 7106(b)(2) ] are those that an agency can violate without fear of a sanction interfering with substantive management rights, then negotiable procedures would seem virtually unenforceable, and paragraph (b)(2) would then lack real content. 35 Id. at 1071. This statement in Department of Treasury is true enough, but it cannot be read to condone proposal 27. 36 The procedure to which the court was referring in Department of Treasury was one that required the agency to provide a written performance evaluation to an employee within forty-five days after an evaluation was prepared. If it failed to do so, the evaluation could not be used and any material it contained that might adversely affect an employee's appraisal or rating would have to be destroyed. Id. at 1070 n. 1. The agency complained that the provision interfered with its right to direct employees and to assign work, because the proposal prohibited management from using evaluative information that is not shared with employees within the stipulated time. 37 Unlike the proposal in Department of Treasury, which imposed a time-frame within which management had to act in order to use a poor evaluation against an employee, proposal 27 does not simply establish a procedural requirement that, if followed, would permit the agency to make full use of its evidence. Rather, proposal 27 effectively eliminates an entire class of evidence--anonymous source evidence--that the Agency can use in disciplining its employees. Such a proposal violates section 7106(a)(2)(A). See American Fed'n of Gov't Employees, Local 1931 v. FLRA, 32 F.L.R.A. 1023, 1047-50 (1988) (finding that a proposal that required statements used or relied upon in adverse actions be in writing and signed by the employee interfered with management's right to make use of many forms of evidence). Thus, the Authority properly recognized that proposal 27 is not merely a procedure for the exercise of managerial rights, but an encroachment on those rights. 38