Management Rights - AELE's Home Page

Management Rights 1-3
In its 1977 decision in the leading case of Town of Danvers and Local
2038, IAFF, the Labor Relations Commission set the tone for municipal
collective bargaining in Massachusetts on the issue of mandatory subjects
of bargaining. The following excerpt is informative:
The public employer, like the private employer,
must have the flexibility to manage its
enterprise. Efficiency of governmental
operations cannot be sacrificed by compelling
the public employer to submit to the negotiating
process those core governmental decisions
which have only a marginal impact on
employees' terms and conditions of employment.
The public employer has a greater responsibility
to all citizens of the community than its
counterpart in the private sector. The
government, as employer, must be responsible
not merely to narrow corporate interests but to
the overall public interest.
When management in the public sector gives up
some if its "prerogatives" . . . it foregoes the
right to make decisions in the name of all the
people. When management in the private sector
loses its unilateral power to act, however, the
public loses little or nothing because the
decision-making process is merely transferred
from one private group to another, rather than
from public to private. The loss of the power to
manage unilaterally in the public service is,
therefore, more serious than the same
phenomenon in the private sector. Kilber,
Appropriate Subjects for Bargaining in Local
Government Labor Relations, 30 Md. L. Rev.
179, 193 (1970)
Therefore, those management decisions which
do not have direct impact on terms and
conditions of employment must not be
compelled to be shared with the representatives
of employees through the collective bargaining
process. Those decisions must remain within
the prerogative of the public employer. To
compel the sharing of core governmental
decisions grants to certain citizens (i.e.,
Massachusetts Municipal Police Training Committee