Collective bargaining rights have always played a crucial role for public sector unions and employees as they provided the ability to address emerging problems and improve society. The responsible social segment can help promote and establish optimal wages and policies, therefore communities and politicians fought for the regulation in different periods of national history (McCartin, 2017). This paper aims to discuss public unions, collective bargaining rights, and their appliance by politics and the sector’s employees.
The demand for collective bargaining rights appeared as labor relationships developed nationwide, and the proper regulation for labor conditions and wages needed to be established. While many public-sector unions were founded in 1890-the 1930s to regulate relationships between the workers and manufacturers, only in 1934 did The Wagner Act legalize their activities (McCartin, 2017). Since then, legislative documents like the Taft-Hartley Labor Act of 1947 and the Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959 were signed to solidify the collective bargaining rights.
Public sector unions with collective bargaining rights can influence local government’s decisions in the labor sector and revise their activities from a social perspective. In 2011, after serious economic crises, national budgeting was in severe conditions with expenses gaps and growing unemployment rates (Hoang & Goodman, 2018). The politicians tried to repeal collective bargaining to eliminate the unions’ ability to protest or reveal the economy’s severity to society. As Wisconsin abolished the rights, the state’s communities suffered from losing financial support and authority in governmental decision-making (Nack et al., 2020). The public sector employees risk losing their rights to be heard for increasing attention to critical labor projects.
Collective bargaining rights were developed within the labor, and social unions gained authority in national regulation, and The Wagner Act of 1934 is an example of legislative submission of their power. In 2011, politics unsuccessfully attempted to repeal collective bargaining rights for public sector employees to decrease the unions’ influence on governmental decisions. For public sector employees, such regulation can severely impact their ability to address social problems to the government, making the latter the ultimate regulator for all processes.
References
Hoang, T., & Goodman, D. (2018). Public pensions and collective bargaining rights: Evidence from state and local governments. Public Administration Review, 78(5), 772-784. Web.
McCartin, J. A. (2017). Can labor still use the Wagner Act?. Dissent, 64(4), 93-102. Web.
Nack, D., Childers, M., Kulwiec, A., & Ibarra, A. (2020). The recent evolution of Wisconsin public worker unionism since Act 10. Labor Studies Journal, 45(2), 147-165. Web.