Between Legitimacy and Cost: Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining Rights in Global Supply Chains

Collective Bargaining and Police Misconduct: Evidence from Florida

As of 2018, thirty-one states granted collective bargaining rights to police officers that require local government management to recognize and collectively bargain in good faith with police unions. Although scholars have identified factors related to police fatalities, the influence of police unions has gone understudied. Research in other occupational areas shows that union strength is associated with fewer workplace injuries and fatalities. This research analyzes the influence of union strength and collective bargaining rights on police fatalities. Using state-level data from 1990 to 2018, a rare-event analysis of police fatalities indicates that states with strong public employee unions experience fewer accidental line-of-duty deaths of police officers. Further, this analysis shows that states which grant collective bargaining rights to police officers have fewer felonious line-of-duty deaths of police officers compared with those that do not grant police collective bargaining rights. This article concludes with a discussion of the policy implications and the role of collective bargaining in police safety.

We provide quasi-experimental evidence on the effects of law enforcement collective bargaining rights on violent incidents of misconduct. Our empirical strategy exploits a 2003 Florida Supreme Court decision (Williams) conferring collective bargaining rights on sheriffs’ deputies. Using a state administrative database of “moral character” violations over 1996–2015, we implement a difference-in-difference approach in which police departments (PDs; which were unaffected by Williams) serve as a control group for sheriffs’ offices (SOs). Our estimates imply that collective bargaining rights led to a substantial increase in violent incidents of misconduct among SOs relative to PDs. This result is robust to including only violent incidents involving officers hired before Williams, suggesting that it is due to a deterrence mechanism rather than compositional effects. In a separate event-study analysis, unionization is associated with higher levels of violent misconduct, and so appears to be a channel for the effect. (JEL K42, J50, J45).

The chapter provides a critical survey of theoretical and empirical literature on the two-way relationship between freedom of association and collective bargaining (FACB) rights and globalization, specifically international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI). The debates on globalization and labour standards are contentious and venerable yet remain as timely as ever with the growth of labour provisions in international trade agreements. Nonetheless, there are strikingly few empirical studies addressing the relationship between FACB rights and globalization in either direction of causality, which the chapter attributes to the scarcity of credible indicators of FACB rights. Moreover, these empirical studies come to wildly contrary findings, even when using the same indicators of FACB rights. The chapter attempts to shed light on these debates by assessing the different limitations of these empirical studies while advocating further studies more full addressing sectoral breakdowns in FDI and trade and using improved indicators of FACB rights.

British Columbia’s Residential Tenancy Act is premised on an understanding of residential tenancies as individual contractual relationships. Tenants cannot engage in collective action against their landlords for fear of breaching their contractual obligations. However, there was a time when associations of tenants nearly secured collective bargaining rights and the recognition of tenants as a class with significant influence in the municipal regulation of residential tenancies. This paper explores the history of the tenants’ movement, 1968–75, that struggled and failed to obtain collective bargaining rights for tenants. It follows the growth of the tenants’ movement from collectives of tenants in individual apartment complexes to a provincial coalition of tenants’ associations that achieved significant protections for tenants in municipal by-laws and provincial legislation. It then chronicles how the New Democratic Party government of 1972–75 was elected on a promise to grant collective bargaining rights to tenants but instead denied class rights in favour of establishing a provincially-regulated administrative body to mediate individual disputes. The basic shape and structure of today’s Residential Tenancy Act can be traced to the reforms of this period.

Employing an institutional logics framework and critical discourse analysis, this study examines the discourse of participants in a stakeholder-feedback meeting about a proposal by the Denver Public School board to extend collective bargaining rights to teachers in the district's innovation schools. The findings provide insight into the logics that control how teacher unions and collective bargaining agreements are understood by proponents of autonomous schools and portrayed to the general public through media. The analysis explores how connections to power and status allowed some stakeholder groups to influence the board to revise the policy to one more favorable toward market-oriented school reform. In this case, the dominant narrative that emerged from the stakeholder feedback cycle was one in which the collective bargaining rights of teachers were positioned as a threat to autonomous schools’ ability to provide “what's best for kids” in their classrooms.

State Budget Cuts Will Affect Members, Services

The drama unfolding in various state legislatures since early 2011 has reopened debates about the status of public sector collective bargaining rights in the United States. This article critically examines the rhetorical strategies used by opponents of public sector collective bargaining rights. There are two types of political claims justifying these limitations: instrumental and normative. The instrumental argument claims that collective bargaining must be curtailed because of the necessity of economic crisis. The normative argument claims that collective bargaining for public servants is not a right, but rather a “privilege.” I argue that the politics surrounding the passage of the Ohio and Wisconsin laws, including the strategies of proponents and public’s response, reaffirms the residual legitimacy of collective bargaining as a right. However, it is important to note that this conception of right is limited and differs in various US communities. While human rights scholars have theoretically and strategically argued that the indivisible body of human rights represents a broad and overlapping “consensus,” the recent fights inWisconsin and Ohio demonstrate how internationally recognized human rights remain deeply contested in the domestic sphere. Yet there is evidence that collective bargaining maintains significant legitimacy as a human right. This paper argues that the controversy of the 2011 legal changes suggests that collective bargaining rights are still considered human rights by many communities in the US.

This paper examines the positive obligations of States Parties to the European Social Charter (ESC) to secure migrant workers’ collective bargaining rights and analyses their interaction with European Union (EU) law. It sets out the Charter framework, notably Article 5 on the right to organise and Article 6 on collective bargaining, read together with Article 19§4(b) on equal treatment in trade union membership and in the enjoyment of the benefits of collective bargaining, and analyses its interpretation in the supervisory practice of the European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR). The paper addresses both formal legal conformity and effective implementation in practice, with particular attention to discriminatory effects and structural impediments that may undermine the practical and effective exercise of these rights. It then examines the interaction between ESC obligations and EU internal market freedoms, as illustrated by the Viking and Laval judgments, and considers whether subsequent EU instruments, including Directive (EU) 2022/2041 on adequate minimum wages, reinforce collective bargaining as a policy objective. It concludes that, notwithstanding areas of convergence, ESC standards retain autonomous normative force and require practical and effective protection of migrant workers’ collective bargaining rights.

Public‐sector unions are generally thought to increase the size of government through collective bargaining. This article challenges this idea for the case of teacher unions in the United States and argues that while collective bargaining institutions sometimes lead to increased education spending, this is not the norm. Using a new longitudinal data set spanning all states before and after they granted collective bargaining rights to teachers, the article shows that although states that mandate districts to bargain with teachers have higher education expenditures than states that do not, the differences precede collective bargaining. Difference‐in‐differences analyses find no evidence that introducing collective bargaining rights led to average increases in the level of resources devoted to education. Although existing theories cannot explain these null findings, the article shows one reason behind them is that most laws granting collective bargaining rights to teachers were not unambiguously prolabor, but included both pro‐ and anti‐union provisions.

10 | International Union Rights | 23/3 FOCUS | TURKEY Legal Barriers to Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining Turkey’s current legal protection of trade union rights remains a long way from compliance with international norms. Labourers are divided into ‘workers’ and ‘public officers’. The Law on Trade Unions and Collective Bargaining (Law 6356) regulates the trade union rights and freedoms of workers. The Law on Trade Unions and Collective Bargaining of Public Officers (Law 4688) regulates the trade union rights and freedoms of the public officers but provides public officers very limited rights of association, collective bargaining and strike. Besides, the parties to the collective bargaining under Law 4688 do not have to reach an agreement and the final decision is given by the Government. If the parties disagree, the public officers have no right to strike. This legal rule - enacted in 2012 - provides no rights to association, collective bargaining or strike for public officers to protect their interests. Therefore, the following analysis of these rights will focus on the Law on Trade Unions and Collective Bargaining (Law 6356). Freedom of Association: only sector-based unions can be formed The right to form a trade union and freedom of association are assured in Article 51 of the Turkish Constitution. However, Law 6356 was enacted with a limited scope in contrast with international norms. Article 3 says that a ‘trade union is formed to operate in a certain sector’. This regulation contradicts Article 2 of Convention 87 of the ILO Convention 87 which accepts the ‘liberty’ principle on the matter of the freedom of association. Additionally, the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association (CFA) assessed Article 2 of Convention 87 and stated that workers can form a trade union with reference to the sector, profession or regional and other criteria. Moreover, Law 6356 Article 2 does not allow trade unions to organise themselves under umbrella organisations like federations or others, other than confederations. This is also in contradiction with the liberty principle in Article 7 of Convention 87. Collective Bargaining Rights The most important discrepancy in Law 6356 is that while it only permits the formation of trade unions in the sectors, the collective bargaining system is organised on the basis of the workplace or business. Apart from the workplace and business in the collective bargaining, it was not defined on the scale of country, industry and sector (Articles 33-4). This certainly violates ILO norms (Convention 98, Article 4). One of the most important obstacles in Turkey for trade union association and collective bargaining is the legal restrictions and thresholds to have authority for collective bargaining. There are two major problems in Turkey in the system of authorisation. The first obstacle is having the majority in the country and then in the workplace and business, as the law requires. The prerequisite for collective bargaining rights is union membership of 1 percent of workers in respective sector in the country. After the trade union achieves this condition, if more than half of the workers working in the same workplace become members of this trade union, collective bargaining can be signed for the workers in this workplace. If the company has more than one workplace or branches, the union must also organise 40 percent of all the workers in all these workplaces. If a trade union cannot ensure these conditions, it has no authority for collective bargaining. For instance, according to the data from July 2016, there are almost 3,079,761 workers work in Sector 10 (Education and Commerce Offices). A trade union in this sector has to have at least 30,790 members working in this sector for a collective bargaining in any workplace. Otherwise, even if all 20,000 workers from a single workplace of 20,000 workers are in membership this trade union still has no legal power for collective bargaining. The second is that collective bargaining power is given by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security – a political institution. The processes determining if a trade union meets those thresholds are controversial. These are implemented by the Ministry. If an employer or another trade union in the same sector objects to the processes to be performed by...

The study’s main objective is to question the exclusion of domestic workers from freedom of association and collective bargaining rights and to propose possible policy solutions to allow the rights to these workers. The paper focuses in the Canadian and in the Brazilian cases. Even though the Brazilian and Canadian models illustrate two very different approaches towards collective organization, both countries present regulatory challenges to the effective recognition of domestic workers’ freedom of association and collective bargaining rights. The policy solutions to these challenges in the case of domestic work can serve other groups of vulnerable workers, such as migrants, low wage service workers, informal workers. The methodology is developed through bibliographical and documentary analysis.

18 | International Union Rights | 27/4 FOCUS | TRADE UNION RIGHTS IN ASIA Hong Kong’s New Trade Union Movement For a whole year from mid-2019 to mid-2020, Hong Kong was rocked by mass demonstrations and street violence. At its height, two million out of Hong Kong’s population of seven million marched in a huge demonstration against a proposed extradition bill. The international press heavily covered the mass protests; but what the press has not covered is the birth of a new trade union movement from within this political and social movement. The protests, and the new unions, were led by a generation born a few years before and after 1997, the year when China gained sovereignty over Hong Kong, a British colony for 150 years. Hong Kong was to be governed by a constitution known as the Basic Law, which guaranteed that for the next fifty years Hong Kong’s neoliberal capitalist system and civil liberties would not be tampered with by China’s authoritarian regime. It did not turn out this way. In the past two decades China gradually began to intervene in Hong Kong politically, instigating increasing resistance from the Hong Kong populace in the form of mass rallies. This led to the Umbrella Revolution of 2014 in which the central business district was occupied for months by protestors. When it was suppressed, the protesters left behind a huge banner declaring “We’ll Be Back!” In June 2020 they did come back with a vengeance. The young activists had come to an agreement they would be united despite their differences in political beliefs and strategies. It would be a leaderless movement driven by urban guerrillalike spontaneous tactics. There would be no organisational structure. Communication would be by social media platforms. The youth who were willing to engage in physical confrontation with the police could do so. Those who could not or would not do so instead played supportive roles at the rear. But when months of street actions did not extract any concessions from the authorities, part of the protest movement branched off in a new direction that was more formal and organised—the establishment of small independent trade unions. Unions in Hong Kong Hong Kong is a global commercial hub dominated by free-market beliefs with a weak trade union culture. Collective bargaining rights are not recognised. The largest and oldest union federation, established in 1948, is the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions (HKFTU), with 191 affiliates and 426,000 members as of 2019. It is well-resourced and largely controlled by the PRC government as a counterpart of China’s official All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). The second biggest federation is the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU). This has been far more active in organising workers and assisting them in industrial disputes and fighting for collective bargaining rights. It was formed in 1990 and today has 93 affiliate unions and 145,000 members. It is an affiliate of the International Trade Unions Confederation (ITUC) and is situated politically in Hong Kong’s prodemocracy camp, openly criticising the ACFTU. It is one of the main participatory organisations every year commemorating the suppression of China’s Tiananmen Uprising of 1989. The new unions that sprang up during the recent protests of 2019-20 have sought advice and training from the HKCTU. While providing this, the HKCTU has hesitated to intervene in a new spontaneous trade union movement. From Loose Sand to a United Front These new unions did not start out as products of traditional unionising efforts. Their birth was conceived out of a political movement which initially did not propose any economic demands such as better work conditions, higher wages, collective bargaining rights, or affordable public housing. The earliest new unions emerged from white collar professions. Among the first participants were nurses, doctors, paramedics, and journalists who were appalled to witness police violence against protestors, while they themselves were also often tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, and beaten up for trying to help the injured. Two motivating forces drove the initial formation of unions. The first was a desire to hold a general strike and the other was to participate...

6 | International Union Rights | 26/4 FOCUS | CLIMATE CHANGE & TRADE UNIONS The future is public transport How has the ITF’s approach to climate change and public transport developed? At the 2010 ITF Congress, a resolution was adopted on developing a trade union response to climate change in transport1. This set out a number of political principles around the issue and committed ITF to what we call a ‘Reduce – Shift – Improve’ framework: reducing the movement of goods and people, shifting the modes of transport, and improving the energy efficiency of the sector. The resolution contained really important commitments, for instance to take a science-based approach to emission reduction and to contribute to the scale of transformation in transport necessary in order to effectively reduce emissions and address the climate emergency. The ITF’s public transport policy fits within that political resolution. We’ve developed an alternative model of public transport, recognising that we cannot address environmental issues separately from the wider social and employment issues. The core demands of the policy concern public ownership, public financing, decent work, gender equality, more worker control of technology, and transport and energy democracy. We feel it is necessary for unions to go beyond traditional, bread-and-butter workplace issues, and address all of the different aspects of a new model of public transport. Just Transition is not only about reskilling, retraining, numbers of jobs - that’s all important, but it needs to be linked a long-term vision of transformative change in transport. The policy proposals provide a platform for linking current issues in public transport to that long-term vision of change, as well as a platform for building alliances with other organisations that might be able to support this kind of policy and these demands. There is sometimes an assumption – from unions but also outside the union movement – that public transport is an ‘easy’ sector, because it’s a sector that stands to benefit from progressive climate change policies. On one level that might be true, because it’s not controversial that there needs to be a massive expansion of public transport in order to reduce emissions in cities. But how that expansion takes place, what kind of employment it generates, what democratic participation and control it allows workers or citizens or passengers - all of that is heavily contested. The policy paper states that ‘trade unions must contest power not only in workplaces but also in the public sphere where decision-making takes place’. What challenges do public transport sector workers face in exercising collective bargaining rights to pursue this agenda? One of the biggest issues is that, globally, large parts of the public transport workforce are in the informal economy. In many developing countries, in many cities, up to 85 percent of the passenger transport workforce are informal, and are denied fundamental workplace rights: they are not defined as employees, they don’t have a clearly defined employment relationship, labour law doesn’t cover them, there are no clear collective bargaining rights, there are no contracts. One of our main concerns therefore is how to organise informal workers, how to win some of those workplace rights, and in the long-term how to formalise employment in public transport so that those rights are guaranteed through labour law and other institutions that formal workers would have access to. For example, ‘Bus Rapid Transit’ (BRT) systems are being introduced in Africa, Asia and Latin America. These are formalised public transport systems but are developed without consideration for the impacts they can have on the informal workers who rely on providing those services for their livelihoods. The ITF is beginning to look with unions at the labour impacts of these systems and to put together a platform of rights and demands that can be negotiated with local authorities, governments or employers – wherever the power lies. In Kenya and Senegal we’re beginning to see the impacts of this work. We are making visible a large section of the workforce that has been otherwise completely excluded from any formal labour protection or collective bargaining rights. A lot of the funding for these BRT programmes also comes from international financial institutions, and we’ve engaged...

6 | International Union Rights | 26/4 FOCUS | CLIMATE CHANGE & TRADE UNIONS The future is public transport How has the ITF’s approach to climate change and public transport developed? At the 2010 ITF Congress, a resolution was adopted on developing a trade union response to climate change in transport1. This set out a number of political principles around the issue and committed ITF to what we call a ‘Reduce – Shift – Improve’ framework: reducing the movement of goods and people, shifting the modes of transport, and improving the energy efficiency of the sector. The resolution contained really important commitments, for instance to take a science-based approach to emission reduction and to contribute to the scale of transformation in transport necessary in order to effectively reduce emissions and address the climate emergency. The ITF’s public transport policy fits within that political resolution. We’ve developed an alternative model of public transport, recognising that we cannot address environmental issues separately from the wider social and employment issues. The core demands of the policy concern public ownership, public financing, decent work, gender equality, more worker control of technology, and transport and energy democracy. We feel it is necessary for unions to go beyond traditional, bread-and-butter workplace issues, and address all of the different aspects of a new model of public transport. Just Transition is not only about reskilling, retraining, numbers of jobs - that’s all important, but it needs to be linked a long-term vision of transformative change in transport. The policy proposals provide a platform for linking current issues in public transport to that long-term vision of change, as well as a platform for building alliances with other organisations that might be able to support this kind of policy and these demands. There is sometimes an assumption – from unions but also outside the union movement – that public transport is an ‘easy’ sector, because it’s a sector that stands to benefit from progressive climate change policies. On one level that might be true, because it’s not controversial that there needs to be a massive expansion of public transport in order to reduce emissions in cities. But how that expansion takes place, what kind of employment it generates, what democratic participation and control it allows workers or citizens or passengers - all of that is heavily contested. The policy paper states that ‘trade unions must contest power not only in workplaces but also in the public sphere where decision-making takes place’. What challenges do public transport sector workers face in exercising collective bargaining rights to pursue this agenda? One of the biggest issues is that, globally, large parts of the public transport workforce are in the informal economy. In many developing countries, in many cities, up to 85 percent of the passenger transport workforce are informal, and are denied fundamental workplace rights: they are not defined as employees, they don’t have a clearly defined employment relationship, labour law doesn’t cover them, there are no clear collective bargaining rights, there are no contracts. One of our main concerns therefore is how to organise informal workers, how to win some of those workplace rights, and in the long-term how to formalise employment in public transport so that those rights are guaranteed through labour law and other institutions that formal workers would have access to. For example, ‘Bus Rapid Transit’ (BRT) systems are being introduced in Africa, Asia and Latin America. These are formalised public transport systems but are developed without consideration for the impacts they can have on the informal workers who rely on providing those services for their livelihoods. The ITF is beginning to look with unions at the labour impacts of these systems and to put together a platform of rights and demands that can be negotiated with local authorities, governments or employers – wherever the power lies. In Kenya and Senegal we’re beginning to see the impacts of this work. We are making visible a large section of the workforce that has been otherwise completely excluded from any formal labour protection or collective bargaining rights. A lot of the funding for these BRT programmes also comes from international financial institutions, and we’ve engaged...