What developments have occurred in the area of public sector

What developments have occurred in the area of public sector unions in the past 50 years? What has helped unions advance? What has been viewed as detrimental to unions?

Solution

The major changes that has happened in the public sector unions is that there has been a dramatic increase in the membership of the public sector unions. Also the composition of the union has changed with more number of educated people joining the union ranks. Also the composition of the union has changed in terms of the job that is done by the majority of the workers. Today most of the union members are white collared workers rather than the blue collared factory worker. Moreover the gender composition of the union has also changed from them being predominantly male dominated to having a more equitable distribution.

The growth in public sector unionism has resulted from an increase in government workers post the war years. Also due to the weakening of party machines and political compulsions, people who worked in government jobs were often patronized by local political parties and had their tenure linked to the local government in place. With the implementation of reform, this tenure based system went away and the government workers could get lifelong employment and then they unionized to express themselves. Also the formation of alliance between labor which was organized and the Democrat party helped in this regard. With Franklin Roosevelt signing of the Wagner Act implied a protection of rights of workers to form unions and indulge in collective bargaining.

The main detrimental thing to public unions has been the fact that public service is something of a monopoly because of government’s control over it and thus courts have time and again held that the right of the public workers to indulge in collective bargaining is a violation of the concept of sovereign immunity.