Public Sector Employment Under Siege
This article was prepared for a symposium at Indiana University Maurer School of Law on Labor and Employment Law under the Obama Administration. The article analyzes the current spate of attacks on public employees with particular reference to three sub-topics: teacher tenure and evaluation “reform,” the periodic cycles of public sector fiscal crises, and the unilateral modification of public sector collective bargaining agreements. The article concludes with the assessment that cyclical attacks on public sector workers reflect a skewed viewpoint that public employees owe first-class obligations but possess only second-class rights.
Chapter 21: Public Sector Labor Issues: Rights, Retrenchment, and Democracy
Public sector unions operate in politically challenging environments. Recent limitations on collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin and attempts to curtail collective bargaining in Ohio are illustrative of union vulnerability to shifts in the political climate. In Wisconsin, only months after taking office, Governor Walker eliminated most collective bargaining rights for public sector employees, excluding the police and firefighters. Day care workers and home health care aides had only gained such rights under the previous governor (Collins, 2012). In Ohio, Governor Kasich introduced similar legislation, but unlike Walker also attempted to limit collective bargaining for public safety employees. Like in Wisconsin, child care providers and home health care aides lost their collective bargaining rights gained under the immediately preceding governor (Early and Wilson, 2012).The susceptibility of unions to political changes stems in part from the legal environment in which they operate and in part from the nature of their employers (Slater, 2012). State law governs collective bargaining for public sector employees, and the employers, that are also elected officials, can change the law depending on their preferences. Preferences of elected officials related to collective bargaining rights, and unions more broadly, depend on various factors ranging from party ideology, legitimacy concerns, and power relations among political actors to changes in local fiscal conditions and shifts in public opinion. The election of public officials unsympathetic to unions in several states and the pressure placed by recent budget crises even on sympathetic elected officials resulted in what some scholars call a “war on public sector collective bargaining” and “the most widespread and substantive attack on collective bargaining in the US since the 1930s’ battles in the private sector” (Freeman and Han, 2012, p. 387).This paper examines recent developments in public sector labor relations at the state and local levels. It begins with an overview of the state and local public sector workforce characteristics followed by a brief description of events surrounding pension crises and limitations on collective bargaining rights in several states and municipalities. The paper further discusses forms, causes, and implications of restrictions on collective bargaining for public sector employees. Finally, concluding remarks focus on some of the lessons learned from recent developments in public sector labor relations and offer suggestions for the way forward.
THE ROLE OF THE STATES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS IN NATIONAL FISCAL POLICY
TN the Employment Act of 1946 "*• Congress recognized, among other things, the importance of state and local governments in carrying out national economic policies. Thus Congress deemed it necessary to employ in that Act the assistance and cooperation of these governmental units in . . . " promoting free competitive enterprise . . . and promoting maximum employment, production, and purchasing power." 1 If national fiscal objectives are to be achieved, state and local financing must be in harmony with federal policies and must make positive contributions in stimulating private business in depression periods and in reducing inflationary tendencies during boom periods. Local governments, and to some extent states, find it difficult to pursue anti-cyclical policies because of their large numbers, their limited borrowing powers, the narrow range of their taxing powers, and the fact that many of them follow taxing and spending programs in a highly independent and uncoordinated pattern. Yet because of the magnitude of their expenditures and tax