Management Rights - AELE's Home Page

Workplace Rules and Practices 13-3
details must also be bargained over if a past practice has been created. 18
Thus, an employer may not unilaterally change the method of assigning
paid details without bargaining. 19 However, if the employer has a past
practice relating to the assignment of paid details, even though the
practice was infrequent, the employer may be able to implement the
practice. 20 In Town of Arlington, the Town was found not to have violated
the Law when it canceled all paid details except a traffic detail for which
no police oficers had volunteered to work; the Town had created a “past
practice” ten to twelve years earlier when it had canceled paid details until
volunteers came forward for a street resurfacing detail. 21
The Town of Falmouth was ordered to make whole nine superior officers
for lost paid detail opportunities after the town failed to live up to the
agreement it made to have superior officers and patrol officers continue to
share in paid details. 22 The calculation of damages involved looking at the
number of details the superior officers worked for the two year periods
both before and after the violation. 23
An employer may prioritize paid details and the decision is a management
right; however, upon request, good faith negotiations to impasse or
agreement are required over the means and method of implementing that
decision and the impacts of such decision. 24
§ 3 WORK SHIFTS AND SCHEDULES
Hours and shift schedules are both mandatory conditions of employment
and mandatory subjects of bargaining. 25 An employer may not, as a rule,
implement a new work shift without providing notice and, if requested,
bargaining first. 26 Similarly, the employer should bargain first over a
change in work shift coverage or the elimination of a shift. 27 As to
changes in an individual’s work schedule, an employer may change an
employee’s schedule without bargaining with the union unless there is a
past practice of bargaining prior to schedule changes. 28 Occasionally, an
employer may wish to change employee schedules in an effort to reduce
overtime costs. 29 As long as the overtime is not “scheduled,” and there is
no applicable contract provision, the employer may restructure schedules
after giving the union notice and an opportunity to bargain. Where a
contract expressly permits altering shifts, no notice or bargaining is
required. 30
The Taunton School Committee violated the Law by failing to bargain in
good faith by implementing a proposed teaching schedule that required
teachers to teach an extra period without bargaining with the Union to
resolution or impasse over its decision and the impacts of its decision. 31
Massachusetts Municipal Police Training Committee