A violation of any of the provisions of the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute. It is a term of art (see § 7116) that is narrower in scope than the misleading adjective "unfair" suggests. ULP charges are filed with the Authority by an individual, a union, or an activity. They are investigated by the General Counsel who issues a ULP complaint if the General Counsel concludes the charge(s) have merit, and who prosecutes the matter before an Administrative Law Judge in a factfinding hearing and before the Authority, which decides the matter.
The most common agency ULPs are duty-to-bargain ULPs (usually a failure to give the union notice of proposed changes in conditions of employment and/or engage in impact and implementation bargaining), formal discussion ULPs, Weingarten ULPs, and failure-to-provide-information ULPs. The most common ULP committed by a union is a failure to fairly represent (see fair representation) all unit members without regard to union membership.