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Washington D.C. — At least 20 employees of the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) who took early retirement in the face of anticipated budget shortfalls at FNS will have the option to return to work, thanks to an arbitration victory on their behalf by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) highlighting the agency’s failure to bargain in good faith.

“This decision,” said NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley, “shows that meaningful bargaining on the impact and implementation of an agency decision needs to be just that—meaningful bargaining.” She said it will have “important ramifications” throughout the federal workplace.

The ruling that FNS violated both federal labor law and the parties’ contract with its unilateral implementation of a voluntary early retirement program (VERA) provides the NTEU-represented FNS employees with the right to both reinstatement and back pay equal to the difference between their salaries at the time they retired, less any money received from their pensions. FNS is a unit of the Department of Agriculture.

The matter arose when FNS, anticipating budget issues in fiscal 2007, determined that it wanted to reduce its staff by 73 full-time equivalent positions. It entered into negotiations with NTEU over the impact and implementation of the VERA program, but limited the talks to a mere two days.

When FNS ended the talks, three key union proposals dealing with part-time work, leave without pay, job sharing, employee performance awards and added work assignments remained unresolved. FNS declared that, in the context of the VERA, it did not have to bargain over these issues, and proceeded to unilaterally implement the program.

Arbitrator Arline Pacht found in NTEU’s favor on the bulk of the issues in the case, emphasizing in her decision that since bargaining unit members had accepted the VERA “without benefiting from the advantages they might have obtained if meaningful bargaining had taken place…their decision to accept VERA was not based on a fully-informed choice.”

She noted her view that “the agency was well-intentioned in offering eligible employees the opportunity to retire in lieu of (reductions-in-force),” but largely supported NTEU on both the facts and the law, ordering reinstatement for the employees in the face of an FNS implementation she described as “misguided.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments, including more than 1,200 in FNS.