Reading Room Document

Establishment of a Labor Relations System for Employees of the Federal Labor Relations Authority

Neither Executive Order No. 11,491 nor Title VII of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, nor any other law, precludes the Federal Labor Relations Authority and other offices administering Federal labor-management relations law from establishing a collective bargaining system for their employees. The FLRA does not need specific statutory authority in order to bargain with its employees, in light of the general federal policy favoring bargaining by public employees. Any labor relations system established by the FLRA must comply with Title VII and other relevant federal laws and executive orders. In the absence of specific statutory authorization, a labor relations system established in the federal sector may not provide for binding arbitration by an outside third party, because federal officials may not delegate to a private party decisionmaking authority vested in them by Congress; however, advisory arbitration would be legally permissible. The OLC does not provide release dates for its opinions, so the release date listed is the date on which the opinion was authored. The original opinion is available at www.justice.gov/file/24556/download.

July 1, 1980