Labor Relations in the Public Sector

Richard C. Kearney, Patrice M. Mareschal

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351561242
• Edition: 5
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica

Since publication of the fourth edition of Labor Relations in the Public Sector, public sector unions have encountered strong headwinds in many parts of the U.S. Membership is falling in some jurisdictions, public opinion has shifted against the unions, and political forces are leaning against them. Retaining the structure that made the previous editions so popular, this fifth edition incorporates a complete round of updates, particularly sections on recent trends in membership figures, new legislation, and new politics as they influence bargaining rights.

See What's New in the Fifth Edition:

• 
  
  

• Up to date examination and analysis of public sector labor relations and collective bargaining
• Important changes in the public labor relations and unionization landscape
• Updated analysis of the financial and human resource outcomes of collective bargaining in the public sector
• Collective bargaining institutions and processes in government

Completely updated in terms of the scholarly and professional literature and relevant events, the new edition identifies and explains the implications of the new collective bargaining environment, including financial and human resource management issues and outcomes. As in previous editions, collective bargaining and labor relations are addressed at all levels of government, with comparisons to the private and nonprofit sectors. Designed to be classroom friendly, it includes discussions of the most recent literature and case studies as well as end-of-chapter assignments and quizzes. Practical tips and advice are offered for those engaged in collective bargaining and labor relations.

Chapter 1
History and Development

I. Introduction

As the Industrial Revolution dawned in England in the mid-eighteenth century, the employer’s authority was absolute and completely free from laws or government regulations. Employers unilaterally determined wages and the terms and conditions of employment for their workers. As a practical matter, all but the most skilled workers had to take jobs as they came, with little or no opportunity to influence compensation levels or the nature of work. Conditions in the factories were deplorable: poorly lighted and ventilated, noisy, dangerous, and dirty working spaces; 12- to 14-hour days, 7 days a week; and children as young as 6 years toiling on the factory floor. Early efforts to form trade unions were violently suppressed by laws forbidding organization as a criminal conspiracy that interfered with commerce.

It was a long, hard struggle for employees in England and Europe to gain the rights to organize and bargain collectively, and it took nearly 200 years in the United States. The transition from autocratic corporate authority to organized labor and collective bargaining was long, arduous, and sometimes bloody. Early union organizers and their supporters often met with brutal repression by police and hired thugs (see, e.g., Salmond 2004; Green 2006). Today, labor rights are held in nearly all nations. Labor, in this sense, is triumphant. But unions in the United States today face new sets of problems and challenges, the outcomes of which could well determine their very existence in the next few decades.

This chapter discusses the history and development of unionization and collective bargaining in the private sector and in government. The roots of government unions are traced through a historical examination of the American trade union movement. The development of public sector unionization is examined, including key factors that contributed to the growth of unions in government.

II. Early American Unionism

Labor organizations have existed in the United States since the earliest days of the Republic. The environment within which they have been created and grown, however, has not always been friendly or even tolerant.

The earliest domestic roots of American unionism may be traced to the self-help organizations formed by workers in the crafts and skilled trades prior to the Revolutionary War. These organizations were, in a sense, close cousins of the European guilds, whose own genealogy may be traced back to professional trade associations in the Middle Ages. The guilds regulated wages, working hours, product quality, and other concerns in trades such as bookbinding, weaving, and pottery making. The first guild to develop in the United States was probably the cordwainers (shoemakers) in 1648 in Boston, Massachusetts (Commons 1980). This guild eventually evolved into what some historians believe to be the first American trade union—the Society of Master Cordwainers. The guilds were not true “unions” in that there was no separation of labor between worker and owner. Nonetheless, workers were united in a common cause of self-protection.

The early American labor organizations were based on handicraft technologies such as shoemaking, stonecutting, carpentry, hat finishing, and printing. Their membership was composed of skilled laborers organized along the lines of individual crafts. Today, such organizations are known as craft unions. It is not surprising that organized labor began with highly skilled, strategically situated workers, because they were the first to enjoy what is referred to today as bargaining power.

Public policy toward early labor organizations was, to put it kindly, suppressive. Unions had no legal basis for existence and were considered “criminal conspiracies in restraint of trade” under common law. This criminal conspiracy doctrine emerged from a court case involving cordwainers, in which a judge ruled it illegal for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, shoemakers to act collectively in efforts to raise their wages. Several of the early craft unions were prosecuted for criminal conspiracy, but the doctrine was brought to an end by the Massachusetts court decision of Commonwealth v. Hunt (1842), which held that such organized labor activities were lawful.

Some local labor organizations entered the political arena during the 1820s and 1830s through affiliating with “workingmen’s parties.” These organizations sought to elevate the social and economic status of craft and skilled laborers. They pressed Congress and state legislatures for job-related concessions, such as the 10-hour day, and also for broader reforms, such as free universal education, an end to the military draft, abolition of debtors’ prisons, and expansion of suffrage. Many of these organizations, which were strongest in large cities such as New York and Philadelphia, even took a short-lived step toward national organization in 1834 by forming the National Trades Union to coordinate the activities of the locals.

It was during this same time period (1820s–1830s) that labor organizations began to penetrate public employment, as public workers in skilled occupations sought the 10-hour day won in some cities by their private counterparts. Most of this activity was concentrated in federal naval shipyards in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. Later, when agitation for the 8-hour workday began, the first employer to grant it was the federal government, at the Charleston Navy Yard, South Carolina, in 1842. According to Spero (1948: 87), the drive for the 8-hour day “led to the crystallization of the principle of the state as a model employer maintaining the highest possible working standards in its services as an example for others to follow.”

During this early period of growth and development, unions’ organizational health was highly dependent on national economic conditions; unions suffered during hard times and revived during more prosperous times. For example, there was a tremendous increase in union membership during the Civil War and immediately afterward as a consequence of industrial growth related to the war effort. The Depression of 1873, however, was accompanied by a startling decline in national union membership, from 300,000 to 50,600 within 5 years. By 1885, improved economic conditions pushed membership growth back to the 300,000 mark. The direct relationship between economic tailspins and union membership declines reversed early in the twentieth century. Unions declined during the prosperous 1920s and made their most spectacular gains during the Great Depression era of the 1930s.

Nonetheless, economic conditions continue to influence union fortunes. For instance, when unemployment is low and consumer demand for products is high employers tend to accommodate employee demands, perhaps even the demand for unions. Concurrently, risk-taking union advocates and organizers find it relatively easy to locate new jobs if they are fired. Thus, unionism is likely to flourish during favorable economic conditions but flag during periods of high unemployment and a weak economy (Reder 1988: 92, 93). Of course, many other factors also influence union fortunes. During the past six decades, private sector unions have struggled with membership losses during good and bad economic times. However, the Great Recession of 2008–2011 was accompanied by the most severe attack on unions—particularly in government—since the 1930s.

A. Ideological Battles in United States Unionism

Even though labor organizations could no longer be legally prosecuted for criminal conspiracy in restraint of trade after the 1842 Commonwealth decision, this did not by any means signal a new era of tolerance and encouragement of unionism. Bitter union–management battles erupted during the 1870s. Employer “union-busting” tactics such as lockouts; espionage; blacklisting of union organizers; summary firings of “agitators”; and, to break strikes, club-swinging “goon squads” forced some unions to go underground and operate as secret societies. One of these societies—the Molly Maguires, formed by coal miners—met employer violence with violence of its own, perpetrating acts of arson and murder in the Pennsylvania coal mines.

Many opposing union philosophies competed for the allegiance of the American working class during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Some groups sought victories through the political process, whereas others advocated collective bargaining. Most organizations wanted to operate and pursue their goals within the boundaries of the capitalist system, but others spoke out in favor of the emerging European philosophies of socialism and communism.

Perhaps the strongest of the leftist groups was the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), which rejected capitalism outright and strove to organize the global working class, take control of the state, and overturn the capitalist system.

Founded in 1905 by radical socialists and syndicalists, whose penchant for a good fight took precedence over “planning, negotiating, and politiking [sic]” (Stegner 1990: 13), the “Wobblies” enjoyed their greatest strength among mining, lumbering, and agricultural workers in the western states of Idaho, Colorado, and Utah. (Their nickname reportedly was taken from a Chinese cook’s pronunciation of IWW as “I wobble wobble.”) The Wobblies committed numerous acts of industrial sabotage and were successful in leading several large strikes in the United States and other countries during World War I. Many martyrs were produced along the way, including the legendary Joe Hill, who just before his very public execution in 1915 cried to his fellow Wobblies, “Don’t waste time mourning—organize!” However, severe repression by the federal government—including the incarceration and lynching of union leaders such as Joe Hill—and the lack of broad appeal of IWW philosophies to the American working class led to the organization’s demise shortly after the war (see Rosemont 2002; Buhle and Schulman 2005). The Wobblies’ utopian vision of “one big union” for the workers of the world remains a historical curiosity to all except a handful of diehards who have recently sought to revive the IWW through leftist movements. (For current information on the Wobblies, see the IWW website: www.IWW.org.)

Other labor organizations on the ideological far left have enjoyed some support in the United States, including the Farm Equipment Workers, Tobacco and Allied Workers, United Office and Professional Workers, and Fisherman’s Union. Two communist unions even managed to survive the McCarthy-era repression of the 1950s: the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers. But a number of factors have conspired to mitigate socialist- and communist-oriented labor organizations in the United States. The rigid class structures of Europe have never developed in the United States to set boundaries for class conflict, largely because of a relatively high standard of living for working people, a fairly steady economic growth with the opportunity for individual advancement and upward mobility, the diverse ethnic and religious characteristics of American immigrants, and a strong ethos of individualism in the American public. From a political perspective, organized labor has been hemmed in by the absence of a labor-based political party and by actions of federal and state courts that have constricted the boundaries of union political and organizing activities (Galenson 1980: 73–79; Forbath 1991; Archer 2007).

B. Business Unionism

The real battles within the labor movement in the United States have been fought not over questions of political ideology but over issues of which types of workers should be organized and by whom. The ethos of business unionism, as originally professed by Samuel Gompers, has dominated the American labor movement. Economic gains and improvements in working conditions have served as the primary objectives of trade unionism, not social and political change. Theories of the labor movement in the United States reflect the early ascendancy of business unionism, asserting that American workers have joined unions out of concern for job security (Tannenbaum 1921; Perlman 1928), as a means for democratizing the workplace (Webb and Webb 1897), as a result of expansion of the job market from increased industrialization (Commons et al. 1936), from a crystallization of group interests arising from workers’ social and economic situations (Hoxie 1928), and in response to various pay and fringe benefit incentives (Olson 1965). The Marxist (and IWW) philosophy that unions should form the locus of a working class consciousness and serve as the basis for restricting competition over jobs has never been widely accepted in the United States.

As already noted, the earliest organizing efforts were among the craft unions. Heavy industrialization, which began during the mid-1800s, provided a new and rapidly growing industrial labor force of unskilled and semiskilled workers who were not trade or craft oriented. Organization of this new pool of workers would have to be along “shop” lines, based on the place of work rather than the type of work. The Knights of Labor launched the first significant effort to capture this industrial segment of the workforce.

Originally formed in 1869 as a craft union for custom tailors in Philadelphia, the Knights gradually began to include other crafts under its organizational umbrella. Within 10 years, it had evolved into the first national labor union in the United States. The Knights dropped its status as a secret society and, under the leadership of an affable Irishman named Terence V. Powderly, began to seek both craft and industrial affiliates throughout the country. By the time of its successful 1886 strike against financier Jay Gould and the Wabash Railroad, the Knights claimed a membership of 700,000. However, the Knights’ membership was somewhat unstable and divisive, and a subsequent series of ill-conceived and violent strikes led to one defeat after another for the union (Phelan 2000). By the turn of the twentieth century, the Knights of Labor was nearly extinct. Further organization of unskilled workers awaited the development of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the 1930s.

The remaining craft union pieces of the complex Knights of Labor organizational mosaic were quickly gathered by the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which was originally established in 1881 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as a federation for skilled craft workers. The 25 national craft union affiliates elected Samuel Gompers, head of the Cigar Makers Union, as their first president. The ultimate pragmatist, Gompers soon made the AFL a major actor in the American economic system. Gompers was, in essence, a free marketeer who rejected philosophical, political, and social issues in favor of advancing and protecting members’ economic interests. Under his leadership, the AFL grew steadily, surviving both the Depression of 1893–1896 and a violent strike that broke the back of an AFL local at the Carnegie Steel Company in Homestead, Pennsylvania. The AFL also proved strong enough to withstand the scientific management movement of Frederick W. Taylor, court injunctions against strikes and other union actions, and years of stifling “yellow-dog contracts” (a contract in which a worker promised not to join a union while under the hire of an employer). There were, however, some dark times, particularly following World War I and during the early years of the Great Depression.

The AFL’s resurgence after the Great Depression was, in the words of Sloane and Witney (1981: 75–76), “in spite of itself,” as the union “almost snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.” A leadership gap was part of the problem (Gompers had died), but more to blame was the union’s continuing reactionary posture against mass production workers whom the Knights of Labor had first tried to organize. The AFL’s unrelenting refusal to allow unskilled industrial workers into the organization eventually prompted a secessionist movement steered by John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers. After Lewis’ efforts to gain...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Authors
• List of Case Studies
• 1 History and Development
• 2 Unions Today
• 3 Legal Environment of Public Sector Labor Relations
• 4 Fundamentals of the Bargaining Process
• 5 Process and Politics of Public Sector Collective Bargaining
• 6 Financial Impacts of Unions and Collective Bargaining
• 7 Union Impacts: Personnel Processes and Policies
• 8 Strike!
• 9 Resolving Impasses: Alternatives to the Strike
• 10 Living with the Contract
• 11 Public Employee Unions in the Future
• References
• Index