88
Opinion of the Court
Justice Breyer delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute requires federal agencies and the unions that represent their employees to "meet and negotiate in good faith for the purposes of arriving at a collective bargaining agreement." 5 U. S. C. § 7114(a)(4). We here consider whether that duty to bargain extends to a clause proposed by a union that would bind the parties to bargain midterm—that is, while the basic comprehensive labor contract is in effect—about subjects not included in that basic contract. We vacate a lower court holding that the statutory duty to bargain does not encompass midterm bargaining (or bargaining about midterm bargaining). We conclude that the Statute delegates to the Federal Labor Relations Authority the legal power to determine whether the parties must engage in midterm bargaining (or bargaining about that matter). We remand these cases so that the Authority may exercise that power.
I
Congress enacted the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (Statute or FSLMRS) in 1978. See 5 U. S. C. § 7101 et seq. Declaring that "labor organizations and collective bargaining in the civil service are in the public interest," § 7101(a), the Statute grants federal agency employees the right to organize, provides for collective bargaining, and defines various unfair labor practices. See §§ 7114(a)(1), 7116. It creates the Federal Labor Relations Authority, which it makes responsible for implementing the Statute through the exercise of broad adjudicatory, policy-making, and rulemaking powers. §§ 7104, 7105. And it establishes within the Authority a Federal Service Impasses Panel, to which it grants the power to resolve negotiation impasses through compulsory arbitration, § 7119, hence without the strikes that the law forbids to federal employees, § 7116(b)(7).
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