The FLRA now has only two members evenly split by party since the term of the former Democratic chairman expired. Image: Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffThe FLRA has said it will continue to allow outside parties to ask that it issue general policy statements on federal labor-management issues, rejecting a request from the NTEU union that it limit such requests only to agencies, unions and other associations “made up of and serving the interests of federal employees.”
Interventions by outside parties became an issue for federal unions during the Trump administration, when the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation asked the FLRA to issue policy statements barring unions from using official time for grass-roots type lobbying. In 2020 the FLRA, then with a 2-1 Republican majority, did so.
That was one of a number of rulings in favor of management during that administration that federal unions have been working to overturn with a Democratic White House and, from last year until early this year, a 2-1 Democratic majority on the FLRA. NTEU was seeking to effectively prevent such outside requests in the future.
The FLRA now has only two members evenly split by party since the term of the former Democratic chairman expired, with no replacement yet nominated. However, the two members agreed that nothing in the federal labor-management relations law “precludes the Authority from considering policy-statement requests made by entities outside of its jurisdiction. Moreover, the Authority’s interpretation and application of the Statute affects individuals and groups outside of the Authority’s jurisdiction, including the general public.”
The decision added that since the FLRA was established in 1979, it has received only such 48 requests—most of them in its early years—that it has denied most of them, and that only three have come from other than an agency or union.
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