Opinion ID: 580690
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Aggrieved Party

Text: 17 Finally, with respect to the third condition, the petitioners assert that the Authority erred in concluding that the ULP charge was filed by the Union in the discretion of the aggrieved party, viz. Owens. Interpreting that phrase as it appears in § 7116(d), the Authority has adopted a policy that: 18 [w]here a union, in its representational capacity, files a ULP charge alleging harm to a unit employee, and there is no indication that the employee had attempted to preclude the union from filing on the employee's behalf, [the Authority] will conclude that the ULP charge was filed ... in the employee's discretion.... 19 Owens 38 FLRA at 1355; see also Federal Bureau of Prisons and Am. Fed'n of Gov't Employees, Local 3690, 18 FLRA 314 (1985); INS, 20 FLRA 743 (1985). The petitioners argue that this policy deprives the aggrieved party of her statutory choice: an employee is deemed to have chosen either the grievance or ULP route without any evidence or a showing that the employee has made a conscious decision to pursue the given route (emphasis original). 20 We can imagine circumstances in which the Authority's policy of presuming that the union is acting with the approbation, or even the knowledge, of the employee on whose nominal behalf it files an ULP charge would stretch the phrase in the discretion of the aggrieved party beyond the reach of § 7116(d). For example, we doubt that the statute could fairly be read to cover a situation where the employee was unaware that the union had filed an ULP charge encompassing her claim. The facts now before us, however, do not even test the elasticity of the statutory phrase, much less stretch it to the breaking point. 21 The charge was filed shortly after Owens received the proposed notice of suspension; she was vice president of Local 1411 when the charge was filed; the sole agency action protested in the charge was her proposed suspension; and the record contains no evidence that Owens disagreed with or was unaware of the charge being filed. At least in these circumstances we are constrained to agree with the Authority: it is reasonable to expect that an employee's disagreement with an exclusive representative's choice of procedures will leave some evidentiary trace. In the record before us, there is none.