Collective Bargaining - As Applied To Public or Government Employees

As Applied To Public or Government Employees

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The controversy over submitting public governments to collective bargaining agreements dates back to the 1930s. In the United States, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a supporter of collective bargaining rights for employees in the private sector, indicated his opposition to such agreements for government or public employee unions in a 1937 letter to the National Federation of Federal Employees:

"The desire of Government employees for fair and adequate pay, reasonable hours of work, safe and suitable working conditions, development of opportunities for advancement, facilities for fair and impartial consideration and review of grievances, and other objectives of a proper employee relations policy, is basically no different from that of employees in private industry. Organization on their part to present their views on such matters is both natural and logical, but meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government.

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.

Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied."

This letter would suggest that the former president believed that "collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service" as a result of the possibility of strikes shutting down the government, not that it should not exist at all.

The laws governing local, regional, and national governments may allow government employees to form unions, yet prohibit them from engaging in collective bargaining over one or more rights or benefits such as pay, personnel rights, health insurance, or pension contributions, as well as preventing them from going on strike against the government. Both the federal government and some state and local governments in the United States have such rules. Public employee unions are usually prohibited from bargaining collectively with respect to pay or other benefits and/or rights on the grounds that their employer, the general public, is not represented in such collective bargaining agreements but rather by administrative officials who cannot fully represent nor bind the voters to rules or procedures that may conflict with existing or subsequently executed laws and regulations. Thus, a collective agreement providing for fixed rights such as salary rates and pension contributions could not be revised by subsequent legislatures elected by the public at large, even if such measures were required to prevent fiscal insolvency.

Another reason cited for not granting collective bargaining rights to public employees is the advantage held by public employee in rights granted under existing civil service or personnel rules. In countries such as the United States, the courts have repeatedly held that public employees possess a property interest in their jobs, which interest triggers constitutional protections to the employee including due process of law. In fact, public employees without collective bargaining rights frequently have more protection against arbitrary and unjust employer action than do private employees with such rights. The reality of collective bargaining is that it is essentially a bilateral process, whereas public policymaking is a multilateral process accessible to all taxpayers on equal terms. This conflict raises the possibility that over time, public employee unions could wield an insurmountable advantage in political power when negotiating government wage and personnel policies with public administrators and elected officials, to the detriment of taxpayers and other competing groups and interests in the democratic process. This advantage in bargaining power is magnified with respect to certain monopolistic services provided only by the government and which are critical to the welfare and safety of the public at large, such as police and fire protection.

Collective bargaining agreements with public employee unions also affect taxpayer rights to due process of law, that is, the right to contest deprivations of property or rights without the right of individual appeal. In the private sector, constitutional collective bargaining and binding arbitration agreements may deprive shareholders of stock or dividend value. Shareholders, however, always have the option to liquidate their interests in a particular private company if bargaining or arbitration with unions affects the value of their property (stock). In contrast, negotiated increases in the cost of pay, pensions, health insurance and other benefits for public employees deprive both existing and subsequent taxpayers of their property through reduction of their income via increased taxation, without due process and right of redress through administrative or judicial appeal.

Read more about this topic:  Collective Bargaining

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