Labor History of The United States - Rise of Public Sector Unions

Rise of Public Sector Unions

The first strikes by government employees took place in the 1830s, but the unions generally bypassed government employees because they were controlled mostly by the patronage system before the arrival of civil service. After the fiasco of the Boston Police Strike in 1919, which was suppressed by Governor Calvin Coolidge, and the opposition of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to government labor unions, unionization remained uncommon among government employees. The Wagner Act of 1935, and subsequent legislation, applied only to employees in the private sector, since the federal government could not interfere in state government. The major exception was the emergence starting in the 1920s of unions of public school teachers in the largest cities; they formed the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). In suburbs and small cities, the National Education Association (NEA) became active, but it insisted it was not a labor union but a professional organization.

Change came in the 1950s. In 1958 New York mayor Robert Wagner, Jr. issued an executive order, called "the little Wagner Act", giving city employees certain bargaining rights, and gave their unions with exclusive representation (that is, the unions alone were legally authorized to speak for all city workers, regardless of whether or some workers were members.) Wisconsin, New York, and other states saw the emergence of public-sector unions, including teachers, clerks, firemen, prison guards and others. At the federal level President John Kennedy, a Democrat, in 1962 issued Executive Order 10988, upgrading the status of unions of federal workers.

After 1960 public sector unions grew rapidly and secured good wages and high pensions for their members. While manufacturing and farming steadily declined, state- and local-government employment quadrupled from 4 million workers in 1950 to 12 million in 1976 and 16.6 million in 2009. Adding in the 3.7 million federal civilian employees, in 2010 8.4 million government workers were represented by unions, including 31% of federal workers, 35% of state workers and 46% of local workers. As Daniel Disalvo notes, "In today's public sector, good pay, generous benefits, and job security make possible a stable middle-class existence for nearly everyone from janitors to jailors."

In 2011 as states faced a growing fiscal crisis and the Republicans made major gains in the 2010 elections, public sector unions came under heavy attack in Wisconsin, Indiana, New Jersey and Ohio from conservative Republican legislatures.