Seth Perlman/AP Photo
Members of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees union walk an informational picket line in Springfield, Illinois, July 2011.
On January 17, 1962, John F. Kennedy issued an executive order granting federal employees the right to organize, join unions, and collectively bargain with their employers. But those rights have never been extended to all public-sector workers and progress has been slow.
Yet many of the Democratic presidential candidates advocate for labor law reform. Such reforms must not just address private-sector employees, but, for the first time in our nation’s history, extend collective-bargaining rights to all local, state, and federal government employees.
Historically, the denial of this right to public-sector employees has had serious consequences for the labor movement and, by extension, the economic and political power of working Americans. In 1935, the Wagner Act granted private-sector workers full collective-bargaining rights. The impact was immediate, with private-sector union membership doubling in just four years.
However, in a little-discussed or -debated provision, the Wagner Act excluded public-sector employees. At the time, members of Congress did not seriously think through the exclusion of government workers and, when the consequences of the omission became clear just a few years later, labor advocates were fearful of opening up the Wagner Act to amendment because union opponents might seize on the opportunity to weaken the law.
As a consequence, public-sector union membership was “artificially repressed.” When membership in private-sector unions reached its peak in the 1950s, public-sector workers were still battling for legal recognition; no law protected their rights to form and join unions. The void on the public-sector side hobbled the labor movement’s size and strength at the height of the private-sector labor movement’s power and influence.
When public-sector workers finally achieved legal recognition, it was not through a national law like the Wagner Act. Kennedy took action because many federal workers had defied the law and were already organizing, and Congress was actively considering a variety of federal-worker labor laws in response. To ensure he shaped the outcome, Kennedy issued an executive order before Congress could act.
For all other public-sector employees, legal recognition happened only at the state and local levels; some towns, cities, and states started offering informal agreements to bargain with a union and collective bargaining for some workers and not others. Only a few states offered full rights. To this day, public-sector collective-bargaining law varies tremendously by state and government employees are continuing to explore the boundaries of their rights. For example, Delaware state legislative staffers announced their intentions to unionize this week, making their decision the first of its kind in the country.
Overall, much of the public-sector legal success has been in union-friendly cities and states in the Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast, reinforcing the concentration of labor power in some regions of the country. By 2000, half of union members lived in only six states (California, New York, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Ohio).
The exclusion of public-sector workers from the protections of the Wagner Act ultimately had serious consequences for the labor movement.
The collective-bargaining rights government employees obtained have also proven more unequal in the scope of rights granted and more susceptible to being cut back than the ones given to private-sector workers by the Wagner Act. Unlike national rights that create a uniform standard of protection across the country, rights granted by states are not as secure or equal. States, as the laboratories of democracy, are encouraged to experiment and have no obligation to offer the same rights and protections as other states.
As a result, government workers’ rights vary tremendously across the country, and states have both granted and rescinded these rights over time. Since Wisconsin passed Act 10 in 2011, stripping public-sector workers in the state of many of their collective-bargaining rights, public-sector union membership in the state has declined by more than half in just eight years.
The exclusion of public-sector workers from the protections of the Wagner Act ultimately had serious consequences for the labor movement. Instead of public- and private-sector unions reaching peak power and influence simultaneously, the growth of public-sector unions was delayed and limited to union-friendly states. Americans have never seen a cohesive, geographically diverse labor movement in the United States.
Nevertheless, organized labor has strengthened the political voices of working people. Unions are exceptional mobilizers, helping boost the turnout of their members. Peter Francia, a political science professor at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, estimates that “union households accounted for more than one of every five voters in the 2004, 2006, and 2008 elections.”
Union leaders also lobby for progressive policies for workers, including health care reform, better pay and benefits, and workplace health and safety regulations. Organized labor is the “most powerful and resourceful political constituency on the political left in American politics,” says Dorian Warren, president of Community Change and Community Change Action, organizations that advocate for low-income people. This is why steep declines over the last decade in union membership in states like Wisconsin and Michigan are particularly troubling—and contributed to Republicans taking the White House in 2016.
The decline in labor’s power poses a significant threat to working Americans’ interests. Last year, Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii introduced the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act to require all states to offer a minimum level of collective-bargaining rights to all public-sector employees (states would be free to exceed the limited protections by granting more rights). This would, essentially, offer for the first time the same rights to government workers that private-sector workers were guaranteed in the 1935 Wagner Act.
A thriving, energized labor movement has ripple effects across the economy and in politics. Average citizens and elected officials have forgotten the gifts organized labor gave to the United States over the last century—the eight-hour workday, safer workplaces, and living wages. Unionization improves the wages and benefits of members but also non-unionized workers as well. It is no coincidence that the economic well-being of average Americans has declined at the same time that the number of union members has fallen in the United States.
If Democrats retake the presidency in 2020, reforming labor law should be a central priority in order to boost the fortunes of all working people and to help build the political mobilization and momentum for other progressive causes. Nearly 60 years after Kennedy extended collective-bargaining rights to federal employees, the work of protecting every American’s right to form and join a union must be respected and completed.
This article was posted in conjunction with the Scholars Strategy Network.
