Court Opinion

ID: 9477431
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:23:21.520382+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:52.512762
License: Public Domain

RUTH BADER GINSBURG, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
The Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute provides for a one-year period during which an employee’s written consent to an automatic pay deduction for union dues is not revocable. 5 U.S.C. § 7115(a); see, e.g., In re Margaret Jackson, 59 Comp.Gen. 667 (Aug. 14, 1980) (where employee signs allotment form, she may not revoke that authorization before one year); Dep’t of the Navy, Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth, N.H., 19 FLRA 586 (1985) (same). The Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA), I believe, has diminished the force of that statutory prescription by allowing reinstated employees to avoid their one-year commitment.
Were I the initial decisionmaker, I would hold Greenwood’s back pay award subject to the dues check off for the one-year term of his consent,1 although not beyond that term. Such a resolution of this controversy would give effect to the worker’s written assignment for which § 7115(a) provides; it would also mesh well with the Back Pay Act, which states that an employee “affected by an unjustified or unwarranted personnel action” is to be treated “for all purposes” as if he had “performed *557services for the agency during [the period for which the adverse personnel action was in effect].” 5 U.S.C. § 5596(b)(1)(B). See also id. § 5996(b)(l)(A)(i) (reinstated employee entitled to amount he would have “earned or received during the period if the personnel action had not occurred”). The Union seeks too much, however, in demanding that the dues deduction persist beyond the one-year term of the dues withholding form Greenwood filed. Greenwood was out of work and removed from the workplace at the expiration of the term of his consent; he was not so situated as to contemplate that renewal would occur automatically if he took no formal action to discontinue the arrangement.
Congress did not advert specifically to the case of the reinstated employee, however, when it framed § 7115(a). Nor was the Back Pay Act written with a concern for unions. Given the respect we owe to the FLRA’s judgment when Congress leaves room for interpretation, I cannot reject the Authority’s decision as an unreasonable one. I therefore concur in the court’s opinion and write separately only to emphasize that (1) the issue presented here is one the Authority might appropriately revisit; (2) preferably, from the perspective of both agencies and adjudicatory tribunals, Congress itself might provide the definitive answer by a clarifying amendment to the Labor-Management Relations Statute or the Back Pay Act.

. The Union argued here that “a reinstated employee who returns to the workplace receives benefits in the form of improved conditions of employment,” and noted, specifically, that "the record reflects that the Union represented Greenwood in his appeal of his discharge before the Merit Systems Protection Board.” Brief for Petitioner at 21-22.