The Scope of Mandatory Bargaining: A Critique and a Proposal

This paper argues that the mandatory-permissive distinction in the scope of the duty to bargain collectively should be abandoned in favor of a policy of classifying all lawful subjects as mandatory. The author shows that in recent applications of the distinction by the NLRB and the courts, many subjects of interest to labor have been declared within the exclusive control of management. She argues that the rationales used by the Board and the courts in these decisions are not compelling, and the mandatory-permissive distinction is even less convincing when its current application is compared to the criteria of an ideal scope of bargaining.