Week Two Discussion – Case Study 3-1

Case Study 3.1: Collecting Union PAC Money

The deduction of union dues and support for the political action activities of the union was a negotiated provision of local government’s contract with its unions.

Question: Do you think that the State should be allowed to dictate to local governments how they should negotiate with their employees? Explain.

The purpose of the discussion question is to think about and apply concepts from the chapter readings. It is not enough to read and absorb, as students of organizations, the real learning comes in how well you can apply what you have learned to a case study and, by extension, into your own organization.

The discussion question response should be a combination of insight, concepts and support from additional sources. It is not enough to offer an unsupported opinion as a response, but to strengthen that opinion with facts and support.

Grading Criteria: 500 Word Min.

Your response to the discussion question(s) must be tied back to the chapter material(Case Study) and outside research is expected. When I ask you to support your answer, you are expected to combine opinion with, minimum 2, citations(Always cite your sources utilizing APA 6th Edition format), insight from your experiences, observations of others experiences, analysis of the facts/information and a conclusion. PLEASE do not limit your citations to just the book! Find other supporting material outside of the class structure.

Lecture 1: The Memphis Sanitation Strike – 1968

Publicity of this public sector union action caused organizing to skyrocket. The below table (and Fig. 3-1 in the text) gives a chronology of strike events:

Monday, February 12	Memphis sanitation and public employees strike after last-minute attempts to resolve grievances fail. Newspapers claim 200 workers of 1,300 remain on the job but only 38 of 180 trucks move. Mayor Loeb says strike is illegal but says “this office stands ready…to talk to anyone about his legitimate questions at any time.”
Tuesday, February 13	An International Union official flies in from Washington to meet with the mayor. He calls for union recognition, dues checkoff, and negotiations to resolve the workers’ grievances. The mayor says he’ll hire new workers unless the strikers return to their jobs.
Wednesday, February 14	The major delivers a back-to-work ultimatum for 7 A.M. Feb. 15. Police escort the few garbage trucks in operation. Negotiations between the city and the union break off. Newspapers say more than 10,000 tons of garbage is piled up.
Saturday, February 24	Black leaders and ministers form citywide organization to support the strike and the boycott. City obtains court injunction to keep union from staging demonstrations or picketing.
Tuesday, March 5	Ministers announce the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. will come to Memphis, as 116 strikers and supporters are arrested for sitting in at city hall.
Thursday, March 14	National NAACP leader Roy Wilkins addresses meeting of 10,000 or more and expresses support for a firm, peaceful protest. Six pickets are arrested and charged with blocking the Democrat Road sanitation depot entrance.
Thursday, March 28	March from Clayborn Temple, led by Dr. King, is interrupted by window breaking. Police move into crowds with nightsticks, mace, tear gas and gunfire. A 16-year old boy, Larry Payne, is shot to death. Police arrest 280, report about 60 injured, mostly blacks. State legislature authorizes 7 P.M. curfew and 4,000 National Guardsmen move in.
Friday, March 29	Some 300 sanitation workers and ministers march peacefully and silently from Clayborn Temple to City Hall – escorted by five armored personnel carriers, five jeeps, three huge military trucks and dozens of Guardsmen with bayonets fixed. President Johnson and AFL-CIO President George Meany offer assistance in resolving the dispute. Mayor Loeb turns them down.
Wednesday, April 3	Dr. King returns to Memphis and addresses rally, delivering his “I’ve been to the mountaintop” address.
Thursday, April 4	A sniper, later captured and identified as James Earl Ray, assassinates Dr. King as he stands on the balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Hotel.
Friday, April 5	Federal troops and Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark are in Memphis as FBI begins international manhunt for assassin. President Johnson instructs Undersecretary of Labor James Reynolds to take charge of mediation to settle the strike.
Saturday, April 6	Reynolds meets with Mayor Loeb in the first of a long string of meetings – first with one side, then the other, rarely together.
Tuesday, April 16	AFSCME leaders announce that agreement has been reached. The strikers vote to accept it. The strike is over.

^{Source: Excerpts from AFSCME Local 1733 pamphlet. http://www.afscme.org” (1970)}

               

 

Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech was to the city of Memphis the night before his assassination.

 

Lecture 2: Defining the Public Sector

The public sector consists of a myriad of levels and jurisdictions of governmental units providing basic government services. The three levels of government are federal, state, and local.

The United States has a federal system of government with a national government and subnational entities officially called states. Local governments include cities, counties, towns, and villages, and such entities as local school boards and public utilities.

All three levels of government have two roles as it relates to collective bargaining:

1. In the private sector as creator and protector of collective bargaining rights
2. In the public sector as employer

The Federal Government is divided into three main branches:

These branches have the same basic shape and perform the same basic roles defined for them when the Constitution was written in 1787. A system of checks and balances prevents power from being concentrated in any one of the three branches.

A State Government is the governing body of 1 of the 50 states. State governments and the federal government are legally dual sovereigns. The sovereign nature of government explains why collective bargaining in the public sector differs from the private sector.

State governments share power with the federal government and under the U.S. Constitution, all governmental powers not granted to the federal government are reserved for the states. All states have a written constitution and a three-branch government modeled on the U.S. federal government. The executive branch of every state is headed by an elected governor, and the legislative branch is typically a bicameral legislature made up of a senate and a house of representatives (except Nebraska which has a unicameral body). Most states are subdivided into counties, which are considered subsets of state government and share in the state’s sovereignty.

States rely primarily on sales and/or property taxes, but also on grants from the federal government for administering programs such as retirement, unemployment compensation, and other social insurance systems, and fees such as tolls, lottery ticket sales, and income from college tuition.

Local Governments: A municipal corporation is the legal term for a local government. A municipal corporation is a political creation of a state that is composed of the citizens of a designated geographic area and which performs certain state functions on a local level.

In many local government structures, the legislative body also serves as an executive body, directing the day to day operation of its activities. Some local government separates the executive and legislative duties with a mayor or a “chief executive” who manages the government. The governing members of the local government are elected by voters who live within the voting boundaries of the municipality. The local body has the power to pass ordinances, or local laws.

 

Lecture 3: History of Public Sector Labor Relations

In the early 1800s, citizens were scandalized by the use of party patronage in federal, state, and local governments. This spoils system caused a turnover of government workers on the basis of their political affiliation, not on their ability or dedication.

In 1883, Congress passed the Pendleton Act, which provided for a bipartisan three-member Civil Service Commission to draw up and administer competitive examinations to determine the fitness of appointees to federal office.

Early Public Sector Unions

Two early federal employee organizations, the New York Letter Carriers (1863) and the National Association of Letter Carriers (1890), engaged in intense lobbying for improved salaries, better working conditions, and greater security for letter carriers and their families. In 1895, the Postmaster General prohibited postal employees from visiting Washington to influence legislation. President Theodore Roosevelt followed in 1902 with his infamous “gag order,” forbidding postal and federal employees, either individually or through associations, to solicit members of Congress for wage increases or for other legislation. In reaction, Congress enacted the Lloyd-LaFollette Act of 1912 with the intention of conferring job protection rights on federal employees and a restriction on the authority of the executive branch of government to discharge a federal employee for talking to Congress.

The Push for Public-Sector Collective Bargaining

During the 1930s and 1940s, private-sector unionization flourished under the protection of the National Labor Relations Act. Unionization grew later and more slowly than the public sector for a number of reasons:

• Unions held less attraction for many public employees because they already enjoyed some of the protections sought by private employees-job protection through the civil service system, benefits such as sick and annual leave days (1893) and an eight-hour day (1888).
• The nature of government employment was predominately white collar, whereas unionization in the 1930s and 1940s was by and large a blue collar activity.
• The sovereign issue, discussed in more detail below, and a legal environment that was highly unfavorable to public employee collective bargaining, kept employees at all levels of government from being able to approach government employers and engage in collective bargaining.

Hatch Act (1993 Amendment)

In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed a bill amending the Hatch Act and removing restrictions on federal workers’ partisan political activity that had been in place for more than 50 years.

Lecture 4: Public Sector Labor Laws and Unions

In the public sector, governments, backed by judicial decisions, were able to resist collective bargaining for many years by relying on the sovereignty doctrine.

Sovereignty is defined as “the supreme, absolute, and uncontrollable power by which an independent state is governed.” The sovereignty doctrine requires that the government exercise its power unfettered by any force other than the people – all the people.

Federal Employees

President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order (E.O.) 10988, which recognized the rights of federal employees to join or to refrain from joining labor organizations, granted recognition to those labor organizations, and detailed bargaining subjects. What is important about Kennedy’s original order of 1962 is the lightning effect it had on organizing drives among federal, state, and municipal employees. An initiative of the Nixon Administration was the passage of the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 that made the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) an independent agency of the executive branch.

The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, Title VII, also known as the Federal Labor Relations Act, and Reorganization Plan No. 2 of 1978, govern federal employee labor relations. The act is modeled after the National Labor Relations Act; it gives federal employees the right to join or not join unions and to engage in collective bargaining; and it places central authority in a three-member panel, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, who are appointed by the president of the United States.

In 2002, President George W. Bush, in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The new department consolidated under one agency several federal agencies with a central mission to protect America from terrorists. The DHS and the Department of Defense (DOD) were given their own personnel system, which included some civil service law provisions, except the president was given the authority to “exclude federal agencies, subdivisions and units… from relevant labor subsections.” The National Security Personnel System (NSPS) was to oversee about 760,000 federal government civilian employees.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 repealed the statutory authority for the NSPS and directed the Secretary of Defense to provide for the conversion of all NSPS employees and positions back to their original status by January 1, 2012.

State and Local Government Laws

The Federal Labor Relations Act doesn’t cover state and local employees. The state legislature usually covers wages, hours, terms of employment and working conditions, unfair labor practices, and right to strike. Forty-two states have passed laws covering some aspect of union recognition. Laws fall into 3 categories:

1. Comprehensive laws grant all public employees collective bargaining rights.
2. Targeted laws grant rights to groups such as teachers, firefighters and police.
3. Restrictive law either prohibit collective bargaining or are silent and has been interpreted as not available.

National League of Cities v. Usery, confirms state has sovereignty over own employees.

The 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision gave states new authority to regulate public sector unions.

Public Sector Unions

Public Sector unions today fall roughly into three categories:

1. Associations or fraternities
2. Public sector – only unions
3. Mixed unions.

The National Education Association (NEA) is the largest professional organization in the world with more than 3.2 million members and affiliates in every state as well as in more than 14,000 communities.

A Mixed union is an union that represents both public and private sector employees

 

Lecture 5: Contrasting Public and Private Sector Labor Relations

Federal and state statutes covering public sector collective bargaining may be modeled after the NLRA, there are still laws or practices that differ greatly from the act and from one another.

Bargaining Differences in the Public Sector

Multilateral bargaining generally refers to negotiations in the public sector where the authority to commit to a collective bargaining agreement may be shared by the executive and legislative branches, and thus three parties are involved in negotiations.

Open negotiations:

Sunshine laws may require that collective bargaining sessions be open to the public, often thwarting the parties’ ability to compromise. Media coverage may be harmful to negotiation but it is necessary because ultimate decision rests with the public. As in Case 3-1 on page 100 of your text, some sessions may be held in closed session however the final agreement to be negotiated is subject to an open session.

Supervisors in Bargaining Units

Under the NLRA and the Federal Labor Relations Act concerning federal employees, “supervisors” are not given collective bargaining rights. In the private sector and, presumably in the federal government, a supervisor is seen as a vital part of management so collective bargaining with supervisors makes no sense.

Size of Public Sector Bargaining Units

The size of a public employee bargaining unit can give a strategic advantage to either management or labor. The public employer may encourage a larger unit, hoping the diverse interests and backgrounds of a larger unit will prevent the union from gaining majority status. Larger units prevent or reduce the possibility that multi-union negotiation will be used against the employer.

The Right to Strike

The right to strike is usually denied in the public sector. The arguments for allowing public employees to strike are:

• Probably do it anyway, focus on strike, not problems.
• Needed to equalize bargaining power.
• Test the union’s strength.
• Nonessential employees should have same rights as private sector.

The arguments against allowing public emplyees to strike are:

• Essential services can’t be held hostage to negotiations.
• Elected officials would not have enough control.
• No competition for services means elected officials would be at the mercy of strikers.

Some state and local governments allow workers to strike (see Table 3-4, pages 103-104 in the text). Air traffic controllers followed PATCO’s call for a strike and those who did not follow President Reagan’s order to return to work were fired. Twenty-two illegal strikes in the public sector proceeded the PATCO strike.

Resolving Impasse in the Public Sector

Because most public employees are not vested with the right to strike, reaching an impasse in the public sector follows a slightly different path.

Alternative Dispute Resolution Services

Legislation that allows public-sector collective bargaining but prohibits strikes often details the procedures available to resolve an impasse. Mediation provisions are provided in most states with collective bargaining in the public sector. Fact-finding and advisory arbitration can be far more successful in the public sector than in the private because of political pressures. Interest arbitration usually allows an arbitration panel to make a final and binding decision on a negotiation dispute.

Enforcement of Collective Bargaining Rights

The Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) and many state created labor authorities perform the same role in public-sector labor relations as the NLRB provides in the private sector.

Lecture 6: Current Public Sector Challenges

Privatization refers to a process in which governmental employees are replaced with private sector workers through a contract with an outside employer for the purpose of reducing overall costs.

Advocates of privatizing government services contend that contracting out public services does the following:

• Produces better management of programs by bringing sophisticated cost-cutting techniques.
• Frees public administrators from managing day-to-day operations, allows government to focus on its “core activities.”
• Provides specialized skills otherwise too costly for government to recruit and hire.
• Reduces capital outlays for facilities and equipment, which enables government to be more flexible in revising programs.
• Motivates private-sector managers to perform well because they are motivated by opportunities for financial gain.
• Private firms can provide goods and services “better, faster, and cheaper” than government.
• Spur economic growth by opening new areas of activity to entrepreneurs.
• Dispels criticisms with government’s performance as a provider of services.
• Addresses concerns over “waste, fraud, and abuse.”
• Budget deficits require government to develop new sources of revenue and to reduce costs.

Opponents of privatization cite the following downsides to contracting out public services:

• Savings are often illusory because the costs for government to bid, administer, and monitor the results of outside contracts are not considered.
• Depending on outside contractors for facilities and equipment makes government vulnerable to cost increases because it is unable to step in and provide the service.
• Private contractors expect to earn a profit and must also make enough to pay taxes.
• Laying off public employees costs the government unemployment compensation, a loss of tax revenues, and low employee morale.
• Contracting out lowers the quality of services provided because the private contractor’s goal is to maximize profits, which often leads to overburdening its employees.
• It’s a union-busting strategy intended to weaken unions by decreasing the number of unionized government employees.
• Adversely affects women and minorities.
• Shift of functions to the private sector may transfer governing discretion into the hands of private parties.
• Contracting out can promote conflict of interest relationships between government employees and the private sector.
• Competitive markets can fail, especially if there are too few firms to compete for government contracts. For example, when a company operating charter schools in California became defunct in August 2004, the parents of 10,000 children had but a few weeks to locate new schools for their children.
• Overseeing outside work creates management challenges for government administrators.

 

School Vouchers

Both the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) have cited “school voucher” programs as a major concern for the public employee. Critics of public schools have advocated tuition voucher programs, which provide families with public funds that could be used for private school tuition, including religious-based school tuition. Advocates of school vouchers contend that giving families a choice will force public schools to improve to stay competitive.

Taxpayer Revolt

When the Great Recession of 2008 caused a drop in tax revenues, cash-strapped state and local governments were forced to find ways to cut costs while continuing to provide the services taxpayers had come to expect.