Regulations issued by an agency bearing on conditions of employment that must be complied with by other agencies. Such regulations are a major limitation on agency discretion and therefore on the scope of bargaining, which presupposes agency discretion. Agencies chiefly involved in issuing such regulations are the Office of Personnel Management (on personnel management) and the General Services Administration (on property management).
Absent agreement to the contrary (see, e.g., 52 FLRA No. 128), section 7116(a)(7) makes it an unfair labor practice to enforce a midcontract change in a rule or regulation that comes into conflict with the agreement provision that was consistent with the rule or regulation in effect at the time the agreement was executed.
With respect to Governmentwide regulations, see 37 FLRA No. 104 and Legislative History of the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute, Title VII of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, 96th Congress, 1st Session, Committee Print No. 96-7, p. 823.) See, also 46 FLRA No. 147, and the cases cited therein, where the Authority distinguishes between proposals that paraphrase or set forth the terms of a Governmentwide regulation and proposals merely requiring compliance with existing Governmentwide regulations. The former, by imposing an independent, contractual limitation on the agency, directly interfere with management's § 7106 rights, whereas the latter do not.
See, also, IRS v. FLRA, 996 F.2d 1246 (D.C. Cir. June 29, 1993), adopted by the Authority in 48 FLRA No. 15, where the court said the following:
We hold that if a government-wide regulation under section 7117(a) is itself the only basis for a union grievance . . . and the regulation precludes bargaining over its implementation or prohibits grievances concerning alleged violations, the Authority may not require a government agency to bargain over grievance procedures directed at implementation of the regulation. . . .