UNITED STATES
Members of the Democrat Party in both Houses of the US Congress are pushing legislation that will give all Government employees the right to join unions.
House and Senate Democrats have introduced the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Bill, which would give PS employees collective bargaining rights for the first time under Federal law.
Unlike employees who work for private businesses, the nation’s 21 million Government employees have no automatic rights to unionise under Federal law.
Millions of PS employees live in States that do let them organise — and millions do not.
The new Bill would require all States to let Government employees organise and negotiate wages, hours, and working conditions.
If passed — and the legislation is sure to run into Republican opposition — this would represent a major shift in US labour laws, essentially making the right to organise a fundamental right for all workers.
The Bill is a direct response to last June’s US Supreme Court ruling which banned unions from collecting fees from teachers, firefighters, police and other Government employees they represent, unless those workers were card-carrying union members.
That meant workers who paid dues were subsidising union benefits for their co-workers who chose to pay nothing, which strained unions’ finances.
Teachers in West Virginia started a national movement when they went on strike in February, protesting that they had not received an across-the-board salary raise since 2014.
The walkout ended in March after the Governor and State leaders granted a 5 per cent raise and a hold on increasing health insurance premiums.
Since then hundreds of thousands of teachers in Arizona, Oklahoma, California, Kentucky and Colorado have gone on strike for better pay and conditions.
Washington, DC, 27 June 2019
