Court Opinion

ID: 9476636
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:01:14.669793+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:25.634061
License: Public Domain

MIKVA, Circuit Judge,
with whom Circuit Judge RUTH BADER GINSBURG joins, concurring:
We agree that the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) reasonably determined that these seven proposals proffered by the Overseas Education Association, Inc. (Union) were outside the Department of Defense Dependents Schools’ (DoDDS) duty to bargain. We write separately with regard to Proposal 5 to make clear what the court does not hold today. A federal agency’s non-negotiable statutory right to “direct” employees to heed someone outside the agency does not extend broadly and blindly to every term and condition of employment, regardless of the subject matter involved. The rubric of supervision does not remove in gross all kinds of employment issues from the bargaining table. Specifically, the spectre of military personnel supervising the civilian teachers’ academic curriculum or student discipline is a concern over which DoDDS may not refuse to bargain. In our view, a Union proposal that was drawn with reasonable specificity to preclude military interference in the classroom would not offend the agency’s “management prerogatives” under the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Act, 5 U.S.C. § 7106. Of course, Proposal 5 is not so specifically drawn, and because of the Proposal’s breadth we are constrained to agree that it impinges on the agency’s right to direct the teachers, as that right has been interpreted by the FLRA in the peculiar circumstances of this case.