Collective Bargaining

History

Collective bargaining in the United States had a limited history in the private sector dating back to before the industrial revolution. Even so, a major development, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935, also known as the Wagner Act, which guaranteed the rights of private citizens to organize, form unions, and bargain collectively in the private sector and established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to oversee unionization and labor relations in the private sector. In 1947, Congress enacted the Taft-Hartley Act and in 1959 the Landrum-Griffin Act, each amending the NLRA. These acts served to clarify which groups fell under the auspices of the NLRA's authority, allowed the federal government through the judicial system the ability to issue injunctions [Page 96]against prohibited union and management activities, and established requirements for union governance. Collective bargaining in the public sector began a generation after the passage of the NLRA.

Public sector collective bargaining is subject to state laws and is not regulated by the NLRA. As of 2009, 34 states require collective bargaining, while at least 3 expressly prohibit the practice. Individual states set requirements for the recognition of the exclusive representatives for employees for the purpose of collective bargaining. States may also identify specific areas that are subject to mandatory bargaining, such as terms and conditions of employment; areas that are prohibited from bargaining (referred to as management rights); and permissive areas that may be bargained subject to mutual agreement. Of course, as with bargaining in K-12 educational systems, faculty, nonprofessional employees on the support staff, and maintenance workers cannot be members of the same bargaining unions, insofar as they do not share a common community of interest. Accordingly, this entry focuses on the rights of faculty and, as noted, teaching assistants and researchers.

Federal employees gained the right to form unions and engage in collective bargaining after President Kennedy authorized the practice in 1962 via Executive Order 10988. Unionization of public school teachers began about the same time but made great strides starting in the 1970s. Employees in public colleges and universities began collective bargaining in the late 1960s with the majority of the movement in two-year community colleges. While collective bargaining and union membership have been in decline in the private sector largely due to the loss of manufacturing jobs, in education, public and private, K-12 and postsecondary, there appears to be growth in union representation and collective bargaining where the practice is not prohibited by law.

...