Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, Western Region v. Federal Labor Relations Authority

The Department of Agriculture petitioned for rehearing of our decision in this case, Department of Agriculture v. FLRA, 879 F.2d 655 (9th Cir.1989). The Federal Labor Relations Authority filed a response. The Department has moved for leave to file a reply; we grant the motion and order the reply filed.

After reviewing these documents and the briefs and record previously submitted to us, we grant the Department’s petition for rehearing, and vacate Part V of our prior opinion and its mandate. For reasons that follow, we grant the Department’s original petition for review of the decision of the Authority, vacate that decision, and remand the matter to the Authority for further proceedings.

In our prior decision, we agreed with the ruling of the Fourth Circuit in Department of Defense Dependents Schools v. FLRA, 852 F.2d 779 (4th Cir.1988) {DODDS), that where the Impasses Panel orders an agency into interest arbitration without its consent, the agency head retains the right to review the resulting collective bargaining agreement under 5 U.S.C. § 7114 (c). We held, however, that in the present case the DODDS ruling was inapplicable because the agency had voluntarily agreed to…