In the 1980s, public sector unionism has become the most vibrant component of the American labor movement. What does this new "look" of organized labor mean for the economy? Do labor-management relations in the public sector mirror patterns in the private, or do they introduce a novel paradigm onto the labor scene? What can the private sector learn from the success of collective bargaining in the public? Contributors to When Public Sector Workers Unionize—which was developed from the NBER's program on labor studies—examine these and other questions using newly collected data on public sector labor laws, labor relations practices of state and local governments, and labor market outcomes. Topics considered include the role, effect, and evolution of public sector labor law and the effects that public sector bargaining has on both wage and nonwage issues. Several themes emerge from the studies in this volume. Most important, public sector labor law has a strong and pervasive effect on bargaining and on wage and employment outcomes in public sector labor markets. Also, public sector unionism affects the economy in ways that are different from, and in many cases opposite to, the ways private sector unionism does, appearing to stimulate rather than reduce employment, reducing rather than increasing layoff rates, and developing innovate ways to settle labor disputes such as compulsory interest arbitration instead of strikes and lockouts found in the private sector.

The attacks on public sector collective bargaining rights during the past year have arguably been the most important development in U.S. labor and employment law in recent memory. While the most famous and radical moves took place in Wisconsin and Ohio, over a dozen states have enacted significant restrictions on the rights of government employees and their unions. This is important, not least because public sector workers now comprise more than half the total number of union members in the U.S., and because of the broader political implications of “defunding” and otherwise crippling a major constituent of the Democratic Party. This article, based on a symposium paper, discusses not only these developments but also other key events in public sector labor relations in recent years: the battle for collective bargaining rights at the Transportation Safety Administration; and recent cases interpreting a 2007 decision of the Missouri Supreme Court which held that the Missouri Constitution provided a right to collective bargaining for all public employees in the state (without defining what that right specifically entails).

Public sector unions operate in politically challenging environments. Recent limitations on collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin and attempts to curtail collective bargaining in Ohio are illustrative of union vulnerability to shifts in the political climate. In Wisconsin, only months after taking office, Governor Walker eliminated most collective bargaining rights for public sector employees, excluding the police and firefighters. Day care workers and home health care aides had only gained such rights under the previous governor (Collins, 2012). In Ohio, Governor Kasich introduced similar legislation, but unlike Walker also attempted to limit collective bargaining for public safety employees. Like in Wisconsin, child care providers and home health care aides lost their collective bargaining rights gained under the immediately preceding governor (Early and Wilson, 2012). The susceptibility of unions to political changes stems in part from the legal environment in which they operate and in part from the nature of their employers (Slater, 2012). State law governs collective bargaining for public sector employees, and the employers, that are also elected officials, can change the law depending on their preferences. Preferences of elected officials related to collective bargaining rights, and unions more broadly, depend on various factors ranging from party ideology, legitimacy concerns, and power relations among political actors to changes in local fiscal conditions and shifts in public opinion. The election of public officials unsympathetic to unions in several states and the pressure placed by recent budget crises even on sympathetic elected officials resulted in what some scholars call a “war on public sector collective bargaining” and “the most widespread and substantive attack on collective bargaining in the US since the 1930s' battles in the private sector” (Freeman and Han, 2012, p. 387). This paper examines recent developments in public sector labor relations at the state and local levels. It begins with an overview of the state and local public sector workforce characteristics followed by a brief description of events surrounding pension crises and limitations on collective bargaining rights in several states and municipalities. The paper further discusses forms, causes, and implications of restrictions on collective bargaining for public sector employees. Finally, concluding remarks focus on some of the lessons learned from recent developments in public sector labor relations and offer suggestions for the way forward.

From the dawn of the twentieth century to the early 1960s, public-sector unions generally had no legal right to strike, bargain, or arbitrate, and government workers could be fired simply for joining a union. Public Workers is the first book to analyze why public-sector labor law evolved as it did, separate from and much more restrictive than private-sector labor law, and what effect this law had on public-sector unions, organized labor as a whole, and by extension all of American politics. Joseph E. Slater shows how public-sector unions survived, represented their members, and set the stage for the most remarkable growth of worker organization in American history. Slater examines the battles of public-sector unions in the workplace, courts, and political arena, from the infamous Boston police strike of 1919, to teachers in Seattle fighting a yellow-dog rule, to the BSEIU in the 1930s representing public-sector janitors, to the fate of the powerful Transit Workers Union after New York City purchased the subways, to the long struggle by AFSCME that produced the nation's first public-sector labor law in Wisconsin in 1959. Slater introduces readers to a determined and often-ignored segment of the union movement and expands our knowledge of working men and women, the institutions they formed, and the organizational obstacles they faced.