AFGE Local 4010 represents correctional officers at Federal Correctional Institute Cumberland (FCI Cumberland). In May 2022, while bargaining for a new contract, the Union asked FCI Cumberland to provide the most up-to-date staffing guidelines “so that it could decide whether to bargain and engage in informed bargaining over staffing levels and staffing guidelines.” The Union already had a copy of the 2016 staffing guidelines but wanted to ensure that those guidelines had not changed in the intervening years. FCI Cumberland refused the request, claiming (1) that the document was not “readily available,” and (2) citing a provision of federal law exempting documents deemed to be “management guidance” from information requests pursuant to collective bargaining. The Union filed an unfair labor practice charge over the refusal.

Two years later the Federal Labor Relations Authority held a hearing, during which FCI Cumberland conceded that the 2016 staffing guidelines – which the Union possessed at the time of its information request – were the currently-effective guidelines. The Union no longer needed information vis-à-vis staffing guidelines from FCI Cumberland, and so the Employer argued that the case should be dismissed as moot.

The ALJ disagreed and admonished FCI Cumberland. The ALJ noted that by conceding that the 2016 guidelines were effective in 2022, the Employer essentially admitted that it was not truthful when it claimed the requested documents were not “readily available.” Furthermore, “even a shallow dive into an understanding of the exemption it invoked at the time of the request would have shown FCI Cumberland that its staffing guidelines (which are purely operational in nature) are not the type of strategic guidance related to the process of collective bargaining itself that the federal law exempts.”

The ALJ went on to analyze the document, concluding that it did not contain strategic information about the collective bargaining process, which could have exempted it from disclosure. Instead, it “provides information to management about mandatory and recommended staffing and some post assignment guidance.”

The ALJ also refused to dismiss the case as moot, explaining “in order for me to find the case moot, FCI Cumberland would need to establish that intervening events have completely or irrevocably eradicated the effects of the violation and that there is no reasonable expectation that the violation will recur.” The ALJ determined that the unnecessary delay and expense resulting from FCI Cumberland’s refusal to turn over the staffing guideline is not remedied by its admission that the 2016 guidance was still in effect. FCI Cumberland continued to assert at the hearing that it had no obligation to provide staffing guidelines under the statute. For these reasons, the ALJ declined to dismiss the case as moot, instead ruling in favor of the Union. Since the Union no longer needed up-to-date staffing guidelines, the ALJ ordered the Employer to cease and desist from further violations of the federal collective bargaining law, and to prominently post notices of its violation at FCI Cumberland.

Federal Bureau of Prisons Federal Correctional Institution Cumberland, Maryland and American Federation of Government Employees, Local 4010, AFL-CIO, Case No. WA-CA-22-0409, 2024 WL 2860890 (F.L.R.A., 2024).