Management Rights - AELE's Home Page

CHAPTER 9 - REORGANIZATION
A governmental employer's decision to reorganize a department is within
its managerial prerogative. 1 A public employer may exercise its
managerial prerogative to determine the nature and level of its services
without first bargaining over this decision with its employees' exclusive
collective bargaining representative. 2 This is the case even where the
reorganization involves transferring bargaining unit work to a position
outside the bargaining unit. 3
A public employer still must negotiate over the impacts of a core
governmental decision on mandatory subjects of bargaining prior to
implementation. 4 Such duty to impact bargain generally includes the
duty to reach agreement or impasse with the union prior to
implementation of the reorganization decision. 5
In an effort to reduce costs and/or free up uniformed public safety
employees, some departments have considered utilizing civilian
dispatchers in place of sworn personnel. This can be done in an
individual department or could involve combining one or more public
safety dispatch functions into a central communications center. So long
as the proper procedures are followed, this can be done at almost any
time.
As a general rule, the assignment of bargaining unit work to persons
outside of the bargaining unit is a mandatory subject of bargaining. 6 An
employer violates the Massachusetts Collective Bargaining Law, M.G.L. c.
150E, by unilaterally changing employees' terms or conditions of
employment without providing the union with notice and an opportunity
to bargain. 7 In order to prevail in a charge of prohibited practice (unfair
labor practice) before the Labor Relations Commission (LRC), an employee
representative (union) must prove that the work assigned constituted
bargaining unit work and that the change had a substantially detrimental
effect on the bargaining unit. 8
§ 1 BARGAINING UNIT WORK
In order to determine what constitutes bargaining work, an examination
must first be made of the parties' collective bargaining agreement, or, if
that is not conclusive, their past customs and practices. 9
In the private sector, management may argue that the reassignment of
work out of the bargaining unit is lawful and requires no bargaining where
Commonwealth of Massachusetts