Regulation of Public Sector Collective Bargaining in the States

While the unionization of most private-sector workers is governed by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the legal scope of collective bargaining for state and local public-sector workers is the domain of states and, where states allow it, local authorities. This hodge-podge of state-and-local legal frameworks is complicated enough, but recent efforts in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and other states have left the legal rights of public-sector workers even less transparent.In this report, we review the legal rights and limitations on public-sector bargaining in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, as of January 2014. Given the legal complexities, we focus on three sets of workers who make up almost half of all unionized public-sector workers: teachers, police, and firefighters, with some observations, where possible, on other state-and-local workers. For each group of workers, we examine whether public-sector workers have the right to bargain collectively; whether that right includes the ability to bargain over wages; and whether public-sector workers have the right to strike

State of New York Public Employment Relations Board Decisions from March 26, 2002

3_26_2002_PERB_BD_DecisionsOCR.pdf: 170 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Labor Law: General Electric’s “Overall Approach” to Bargaining Held a Violation of Good Faith

Inspectera AB är ett företag som erbjuder tjänster i flera olika områden. Ett av dessa områden är utbildning som ges på webben. De erbjuder i nuläget webbutbildningar gjorda i Flash men söker andra alternativ där de kan redigera utbildningar samt integrera webbutbildningarna i deras webbtjänst Inspectera Online. Den här rapporten handlar om skapandet av en prototyp för en webbutbildningsmodul som implementerats på Inspectera Online. Fokus ligger främst på presentationsverktyget i modulen och en jämförelse med liknande verktyg som finns tillgängliga på internet. I resultatet presenteras för- och nackdelar för respektive presentationsverktyg med avseende på funktionalitet och vilka möjligheter till integration som finns

Wage Bargaining under the National Labor Relations Act

Sections 8(a)(3) and 8(a)(5) of the National Labor Relations Act prevent a firm from unilaterally increasing the wage it pays the union during the negotiation of a new wage contract. To understand this regulation, we study a counterfactual negotiation model where the firm can temporarily increase compensation to its employees during wage negotiations. Comparing this to the case where the firm does not have this option, we show that the firm may strategically increase the union's temporary wage to upset the union's incentive to strike, decreasing the union's bargaining power, and shrinking the set of permanent wage contracts that may arise in a perfect equilibrium. As the union becomes more patient, the best possible equilibrium contract to the union gets worse. In the limit, the uniqueness and hence the full efficiency of the perfect equilibrium are restored. We also demonstrate that allowing the union to refuse the firm's temporary compensation does not affect the set of perfect equilibrium outcomesBargaining, Negotiation, Good Faith Bargaining

Alt-Bargaining

Reflections on the modern labor movement tend to take a bad-news/good-news approach to the future: yes, unions are down, but a new trend suggests they are far from out. The framing is optimistic, but also right. What’s “new” has often involved innovations in unionizing, and over the past three decades organized labor has gotten creative, taken risks, and every once in a while—for the first time in a while—started winning. The new wave campaigns were variously “comprehensive,” legally canny, sometimes global, and usually movement-esque in their approach to traditionally underrepresented constituencies and sectors. Less discussed is that the trends developed counterparts: hot takes in unionization became new normals in negotiation. If exposing dirty directors weakened corporate resolve in union drives, C-suite exposés became a regular feature in contract drives. If union organizers learned that an employer’s fiercest anti-union weapons could be traded away during a campaign, contract organizers realized that a collective bargaining agreement could do the same for future campaigns. And if fighting for a union became less about money and more about morality, so did fighting for a contract. The current trend is “alt,” short for “alternative-labor,” and invoked where unions or non-profits mobilize workers for better working conditions but not necessarily collective bargaining. As its name implies, the efforts have varied origins, tactics, and aims, making the category hard to define with specificity. But if the alt-labor innovations of today signal how more mature entities—alt-, traditional, or otherwise—will push for workplace benefits tomorrow, clarifying what the present advance is, exactly, is useful foreshadowing. That definitional project is one goal of this article. Alt-labor is incredibly diverse, but through-lines exist. Its constituent groups are repeatedly marked by three non-standard relationships to law that generate exceptional conceptions of group membership, challenge organizing’s presumptive outer-bounds, and prove how even bad organizing doctrine can be harnessed for good. The major goal, though, is to argue that alt-labor isn’t foreshadowing anything because alt-bargaining is here. Over and over, the unconventional legal orientations that facilitate alt-labor’s inclusive approaches to membership, fluid conceptions of which workers or what entities are organizable, and optimistic spins on employment rights can be spotted in recent campaigns where the activists are already assembled and scrutiny instead surrounds how the group is negotiating. The innovative legal perspectives that make up alternative organizing practices, in other words, can now be found in situations where labor and management are actually passing proposals

State of New York Public Employment Relations Board Decisions from September 25, 1996

9_25_1996_PERB_BD_DecisionsOCR.pdf: 129 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020