Court Opinion

ID: 9490331
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:40:21.460125+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:02.241850
License: Public Domain

Wald, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
The majority and I are in agreement on most aspects of this case. We agree that an employer has a duty to bargain under the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute in three instances: “in response to a request from an exclusive bargaining agent for ‘term negotiations’ “in response to a union request for bargaining consistent with the status quo made after expiration of the governing collective bargaining agreement”; and “in response to an appropriate request for mid-term bargaining.” Majority opinion (“Maj.op.”) at 1218. We also agree that the FLRA’s first decision in this case, which held that the INS could not have violated the “mid-term” bargaining obligation because there was no agreement between the INS and AFGE in force at the time Local 2366 made the bargaining request, was seriously deficient. Not only was this decision “cryptic” and “ignor[ing of] the parties’ concerns,” id. at 1218, but also “[t]he mere fact that an agreement has expired does not forestall the obligation to bargain.” Id. at 1216.
Unlike the majority, however, I cannot see that the FLRA ever concluded that the status quo between the parties did not provide for union-initiated bargaining at the local level so that the INS’ refusal to bargain was not an unfair labor practice for this reason.1 The FLRA’s decision relied almost exclusively on the argument that the union had sought only “mid-term” bargaining and the mid-term bargaining obligation does not apply once the “term” of an agreement had expired. But this point is for all intents and purposes irrelevant, since all parties were well aware that the agreement had expired. The only real question in this ease from the beginning was whether the union’s request for bargaining was consistent with the status quo, or more specifically, whether the status quo here included a provision for union-initiated bargaining at the local level. On this critical question, both the FLRA’s original decision and its opinion on reconsideration are essentially mute. The only reference to the level at which bargaining was sought in either of the FLRA’s decisions comes in the initial decision where, after commenting that other than the mid-term bargaining obligation no “theory of violation was litigated or is apparent,” the FLRA notes in a footnote that the INS “acknowledg[ed] that it would have been obligated to bargain with the exclusive representative over its assignment policy.” Joint Appendix (“J.A.”) at 141. The FLRA never indicates whether it means by this passing reference that the bargaining request had not been raised in term negotiations or rather that the status quo between the parties did not provide for union-initiated bargaining below the level of exclusive representation. The absence of any discussion of whether the status quo included union-initiated bargaining at the local level is all the more extraordinary given that the AL J devoted a substan*1220tial portion of his opinion to this issue and found that Local 2366 did have authority to request bargaining on local issues. J.A. at 123-29. While it is true that we should “uphold a decision of less than ideal clarity if the agency’s path may reasonably be discerned,” Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass’n v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 43, 103 S.Ct. 2856, 2866-67, 77 L.Ed.2d 443 (1983), it is also true that we “must judge the propriety of [agency] action solely by the grounds invoked by the agency____[which] must be set forth with such clarity as to be understandable.” SEC v. Chenery Corp., 332 U.S. 194, 196-97, 67 S.Ct. 1575, 1577-78, 91 L.Ed. 1995 (1947); see also Gannett Rochester Newspapers v. NLRB, 988 F.2d 198, 205 (D.C.Cir.1993).
It may be that the status quo between the parties at the time of the Local’s bargaining request did not provide for union-initiated local level bargaining. But since the FLRA never addressed the appropriate level of bargaining in holding that the IRS had not committed an unfair labor practice here, it seems to me that this case must be remanded to the Authority for it to clarify if that is the basis of its ruling against the union, and if so why. As it is, we are upholding a decision 99 fyoo percent of which relies on grounds we do not agree with and the other 5f/ioo percent on grounds we do not understand. That does not comport with our mandate to insure “reasoned decisionmaking” by the agencies whose decisions we review.

. The majority also contends that the Union's counsel "conceded [at oral argument] that there was no claim that the status quo under the 1976 agreement required bargaining between the INS and the Local.” Maj. op. at 1218. I do not believe that the Union's counsel made such a concession, since he repeatedly claimed that the Local had been delegated authority to bargain over local issues. See Transcript at 7, 9, 11-12, 14, 24-25; see also AFGE Brief at 5.