Court Opinion

ID: 9477079
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:13:11.769151+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:40.660153
License: Public Domain

WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The controlling provision of law, 5 U.S.C. § 7115 (1982),1 part of the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute, 5 U.S.C. § 7101 et seq. (1982), authorizes a government agency to withhold part of an employee’s salary to pay dues to the exclusive representative of the employee’s bargaining unit (so long as the employee has agreed to the check-off). It is agreed by both parties that this authority ceases when an employee is promoted to a supervisory position and therefore stops being a member of the bargaining unit.2
The only point at issue is what the agency may do when it discovers that it has *1464withheld wages due a promoted employee and paid them over to the union in violation of § 7115. The agency claims that it may recoup such overpayments from funds that it thereafter segregates from current employees’ wages for payment of union dues. The Federal Labor Relations Authority, vested by statute with the tasks of construing the statute and of overseeing federal government labor relations, has agreed. The union contends that such recoupment violates § 7115 and therefore constitutes an unfair labor practice under 5 U.S.C. § 7116(a)(1), (5) and (8) (1982).
Because the agency’s recoupment approach gives the union and present and past members of the bargaining unit precisely what the statute affords them, no more and no less, I can find no illegality and no unfair labor practice.
There appears to be no dispute that the agency’s policy gives the union and promoted members of the unit precisely what § 7115 says they should receive. (1) The union collects in full, through the check-off system, all dues for every assigning employee, for the entire period during which the employee was a member of the bargaining unit. If the promoted employee remains a member of the union (as he or she may despite elevation from the bargaining unit), the union may secure that employee’s dues by all lawful means. These do not include check-off; the statute, as everyone agrees, does not allow checkoff as to such a promoted member. (2) Promoted members receive just what the statute affords them: check-off for all periods when they were members of the bargaining unit, no check-off thereafter.
The sole controversy revolves around the effect on the rights of current bargaining unit members. Two courts of appeal have found the government’s recoupment procedure to violate those rights. In AFGE Local 2612 v. FLRA, 739 F.2d 87 (2d Cir.1984), the court found the recoupment to infringe on such employees’ “right to expect that the money [deducted from their wages] would be used for [the] purpose of [paying their dues].” Id. at 90. To similar effect is AFGE Local 1816 v. FLRA, 715 F.2d 224, 228-29 (5th Cir.1983).
Neither opinion develops its theory very clearly. A possible reading is that the current employee has an interest under § 7115 in the actual dollars deducted from his wages, and that he is injured if those dollars are not transmitted to the union in fulfillment of his dues obligation. So framed, this theory would violate the employees’ rights even though the union gave them full credit for the deduction.
This mechanical theory suffers two obvious drawbacks. First, there are, so far as appears, no specific dollars whose physical flow is interrupted in the way envisaged. The government agency does not put a lot of bills into a pot, representing deductions from specific workers’ wages, and then pull some of those dollars back out to compensate itself for the illegal overpayments. More important, so long as the union gives the current employees full credit for the checked-off dues, those employees suffer no real-world injury whatsoever.
To find a meaningful injury for the current employees, it seems to me we must ask whether the government’s conduct will cause them to lose credit for their allotment. In this litigation the union never represents that it will attempt to deny the current employees full credit for the amounts checked off from their wages, but I will, to give the theory the benefit of every doubt, assume that it might. The law of this circuit makes clear that the union would not be entitled to deny such credit. Accordingly, any credit denial will occur solely through the unjust and unlawful act of the union, not through the conduct of the government agency. Thus I can find no unfair labor practice in the conduct of the latter.
This court has held that where an employer has checked off the dues of an employee member pursuant to agreement with a union, and the employer has failed to deliver the funds to the union on the date due, the latter may not consider the members delinquent. English v. Cunningham, 269 F.2d 517, 539 (D.C.Cir.), modified on other grounds, 269 F.2d 539, cert. de*1465nied, 361 U.S. 897, 905, 80 S.Ct. 195, 4 L.Ed.2d 152, 181 (1959). No reason is suggested why the check off should be treated differently just because it arises out of a statute.
While English v. Cunningham does not explain its result, it appears to reflect a view that once the wages are due and the union dues have been checked-off, it is as if the worker had paid the union, which had then deposited the funds with the employer as if the latter were its bank. Thus, the court reasoned that "the employer was the agent of the union” rather than of the employee. Id.3 A case fitting this model is Bassick Co. v. Bassick Local 229, 126 F.Supp. 777, 779 (D.Conn.1953). There the court held that plaintiff company could attach, as an asset of the defendant union, monies it had checked off as dues but not yet paid over to the union.
An alternative view, less favorable to the government, is that the worker has delegated his duty to pay the union to the employing government agency. Such a delegation is permissible so long as the duty does not require personal performance, see 3 Williston on Contracts § 411, at 20 (3d ed. 1960), and the worker’s obligation is discharged so long as the employer performs it correctly, id. On this stricter view of the case, it would seem that the union could deny the worker credit if but only if the government’s recoupment was improper under the law governing debtor-creditor relations between the government and the union.
The only legal authority on the subject offered by the parties or discovered by us (apart from the two recent AFGE opinions) holds that such recoupment is entirely permissible. In Lodge 2424, Int’l Ass’n of Machinists, AFL-CIO v. United States, 564 F.2d 66, 215 Ct.Cl. 125 (1977), a union sued the United States for $80.33 that the government had withheld under circumstances which almost exactly parallel those involved here — recoupment from dues checked off for current employees to offset previous unlawful check-offs for an employee promoted out of the bargaining unit. The only difference between the cases is that in Lodge 2424 the restriction on checkoff arose out of a bargaining agreement and Civil Service Commission regulations, rather than out of § 7115 (which was not enacted until 1978). Denying the union recovery and upholding the government’s recoupment, the court stated: “Few principles are so well established as the right of the Government to recover by offset or otherwise sums illegally or erroneously paid.” Id. at 71 (citing Wisconsin Central R.R. v. United States, 164 U.S. 190, 211-12, 17 S.Ct. 45, 51-52, 41 L.Ed. 399 (1896); United States v. Munsey Trust Co., 332 U.S. 234, 239-40, 67 S.Ct. 1599, 1601-02, 91 L.Ed. 2022 (1947) (“The government has the same right ‘which belongs to every creditor, to apply the unappropriated moneys of his debtor, in his hands, in extin-guishment of the debts due to him.’ ”)).4
In Lodge 2424, as here, the legal authority that disallowed a check-off for a promoted employee did not address the question of how to remedy such an improper checkoff once it was made. The court inferred the government’s power to recoup from the combination of the check-off restrictions and prevailing law as to the United States’s ability to protect itself. AFGE notes that Lodge 2424 was not based on a statute, but says nothing to suggest why that should make a difference.
Nor does the presence in Lodge 2424 of an Army regulation authorizing correction, 564 F.2d at 71, adequately distinguish the case. First, if the collective bargaining agreement there disabled the government from recoupment, it is unclear why a regulation issued by one party (the Army) could abrogate that right. Second, the court made quite clear that its holding was independent of the regulation. After the pas*1466sage quoted above invoking the government’s general right to recover by offset sums erroneously paid, the court concluded:
Therefore, the means which the government took to recover the illegal payment were not only authorized by the regulations but sanctioned by these well settled rules of law.
Id. The court today, for no apparent reason, discards these well settled rules.
Thus under either characterization of the transaction, the union is not free to deny the current workers full credit for the amounts checked off, despite the government’s recouping prior illegal payments. Under the English v. Cunningham/Bas-sick view, the check-off constitutes full payment, and that is the end of the matter. Under the delegated-duty view, the employee’s entitlement to credit is contingent upon the government agency’s following through correctly, but its decision to recoup is quite consistent with correct follow-through. To uphold the Authority here, we need not choose between these views.
In sum, Congress in § 7115 entitled employees in an appropriate bargaining unit to have their dues payment automatically allotted to the union by their employer, and the agency’s conduct here vindicated that right. Its recoupment of sums mistakenly paid in the past cannot entitle the union to deny employees credit for current checkoffs. As the supposed violation of current employees' § 7115 rights is the sole basis articulated by AFGE for its unfair labor practice claim, the absence of a violation defeats its contention.
The majority surprisingly suggests that the agency’s attempted recoupment would “compound the error” of the initial overpayment. Maj.Op. at 1462. To the contrary, quite plainly the recoupment corrects the initial error. The court’s decision, by contrast, disables the government agency from making the correction and confers on the union a wholly unintended windfall (use of government check-off to collect the dues of persons no longer unit members). Perhaps even more surprising, it assumes that if the government were allowed to recoup overpayments to the union, the latter could deny current members credit for dues withheld from their pay and allocated to the union.
As the above suggests, there seems to me little doubt that the agency’s conduct did not constitute an unfair labor practice. Were there any doubt, I believe that we would have to defer to the decision of the Federal Labor Relations Authority. As we recently observed,
‘Congress has entrusted to the FLRA primary responsibility for administering and enforcing the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Act. An FLRA interpretation of the Act, if reasonable and coherent, commands our respect.... As a court of review ... we are not positioned to choose from plausible readings the interpretation we think best. Rather, our task is to inquire whether the FLRA’s reading is sufficiently plausible and reasonable to stand as the governing law, absent alteration by Congress.’
AFGE v. FLRA, 778 F.2d 850, 856 (D.C.Cir.1985) (quoting AFGE, Locals 225, 1504, and 3723, AFL-CIO v. FLRA, 712 F.2d 640. 643-44 (D.C.Cir.1983)). See also NTEU v. FLRA, 826 F.2d 114, 120-21 (D.C.Cir.1987). Even if we read § 7115 not to expressly approve the position adopted by the agency and the Authority, we would be required to uphold it as a reasonable statutory interpretation under Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. NRDC, 467 U.S. 837, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984).
I believe the petition for review should be dismissed.

. Sections 7115(a) & (b) provide:
(a) If an agency has received from an employee in an appropriate unit a written assignment which authorizes the agency to deduct from the pay of the employee amounts for the payment of regular and periodic dues of the exclusive representative of the unit, the agency shall honor the assignment and make an appropriate allotment pursuant to the assignment. Any such allotment shall be made at no cost to the exclusive representative or the employee. Except as provided under subsection (b) of this section, any such assignment may not be revoked for a period of 1 year.
(b) An allotment under subsection (a) of this section for the deduction of dues with respect to any employee shall terminate when—
(1) the agreement between the agency and the exclusive representative involved ceases to be applicable to the employee; or
(2) the employee is suspended or expelled from membership in the exclusive representative.

. Section 7103(a)(2) excludes supervisors from the definition of employees, and § 7112(b) states that a bargaining unit shall not be determined to be appropriate if it includes a supervisor. Thus on promotion to a supervisory position an employee necessarily ceases to be covered by the agreement between the agency and the exclusive representative; accordingly, under § 7115(b) the allotment must "terminate."

. This characterization seems to fit English better than our case, given that there the automatic check-off was provided for by an agreement between the union and the employer, instead of by a statute as in this case.

. AFGE cites 31 U.S.C. § 628 (1970) as barring recoupment by the United States in this situation. That section appears on its face to have no bearing at all on the present case, and in any event has not survived into the 1982 Code.