Collective Bargaining Laws Research Articles

Capital, Labor, and State: The Battle for American Labor Markets from the Civil War to the New Deal. By David Brian Robertson. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. 320p. $75.00 cloth, $22.95 paper.

This important new study argues that American labor markets have been and are governed by employers to a degree unique among Western capitalist democracies; that this pattern of governance is the outcome of crucial struggles among unions, employers, and middle-class labor reformers from the Civil War to the New Deal; and that American political institutions strongly shaped the struggles and their outcome. In the nineteenth century, all Western countries largely protected employer control of hiring, firing, wages, hours, and working conditions, but in the twentieth century nations other than the United States began to curb employer prerogatives and extend worker protection in the form of labor regulations, trade union and collective bargaining laws, public management of labor supply and demand, and work insurance (the four major types of policy in Robertson's framework). In the United States, fewer such protections were established, and the fragmented federal and state labor policies that were enacted were often undermined by lax enforcement or court rulings. On the eve of the New Deal, Robertson shows, U.S. employers had a degree of autonomy in labor markets unparalleled in European and other industrialized countries.

Public sector union democracy: A comparative analysis

A congressional subcommittee held “union democracy” hearings in 1998 and 1999 to debate the impact and effectiveness of the union-democracy protections provided by the Land rum-Griffin Act which provides union members in the private sector and U.S. Postal Service certain democratic rights and protections. What was not resolved at that hearing was whether state sector or public employee union members should also enjoy the same democracy protections. We survey the existing 28 state sector collective bargaining laws and find that the majority of state legislation falls considerably short of the protections provided by the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act. Moreover the consequences of limited state-enacted union-democracy protections are discussed and assessed to determine whether LMRDA jurisdiction should also cover public sector union members.

From “Porkchoppers” to “Lambchoppers”: The Passage of Florida's Public Employee Relations Act

This study suggests an historical explanation for Florida's enactment of a statewide public sector collective bargaining law in 1974. Florida has characteristics that, in other states, have tended to militate against the passage of such a law: a weak statewide labor movement, low interparty competition, active business opposition, and the long-term incumbency of conservative southern Democrats. Using interviews and historical documents, the authors identify events and conditions that, they argue, account for the 1974 legislation. Notably, federal court-ordered reapportionment led to the election of urban progressives; a revision of the state's constitution gave public employees collective bargaining rights; and the Florida Supreme Court, responding to a suit filed by a local teachers' union, took actions that forced the legislature to enact a collective bargaining law.

Collective Bargaining Laws, Threat Effects, and the Determination of Police Compensation

This article demonstrates that state collective bargaining laws are important determinants of union and nonunion public employee compensation. State laws that provide stronger bargaining rights and ensure closure to the bargaining process increase the direct effect of police unions on compensation. Moreover, indirect threat effects on the pay of nonunion police also increase with stronger bargaining laws. In each law category investigated, nonunion police receive most of the compensation premium enjoyed by unionized police. Previous studies that have not adequately controlled for these effects of bargaining laws have therefore underestimated the full effect of public-sector unions on compensation.

The Law and Union Membership in US State and Local Government

State and local government workers in the United States are covered by a wide variety of collective bargaining laws, thus providing a rare opportunity to analyse the effects of the law on union membership. Analysis of a large micro-data sample shows that several aspects of bargaining laws, particularly provisions relating to exclusive jurisdiction and union security, have a pronounced effect on the probability that a worker will be a union member. An individual covered by the right to strike is less likely to be a union member than an individual covered by a compulsory arbitration law. Estimates indicate that deregulation of an industrial relations system that provides incentivesfor unionism similar to those that exist in Australian policy would produce a dramatic decline in membership.

Collective Bargaining Law in Canada. Second edition by A. W. R. Carrothers, E. E. Palmer and W. B. Rayner. [Toronto and Vancouver: Butterworths. 1986. clii + 785 pp.

Collective Bargaining Law in Canada. Second edition by A. W. R. Carrothers, E. E. Palmer and W. B. Rayner. [Toronto and Vancouver: Butterworths. 1986. clii + 785 pp.

The effects of regulation on public sector labor relations: Theory and evidence

This paper assesses the effects of public sector collective bargaining laws on employee unionization, the bargaining process and bargaining outcomes, including pay, benefits and nonmonetary aspects of employment. Although several specific effects — positive and negative, direct and indirect — of regulation in this area have been reported by researchers, most studies do not deal adequately with the issues of model specification or simultaneity, thus calling their validity into question.

Labor Law as Ideology: Toward a New Historiography of Collective Bargaining Law

* © Copyright 1981 by Karl E. Klare. t Professor of Law, Northeastern University School of Law. This article is a revised text of a paper presented to the Tenth Annual Meetings of the American Society for Legal History (ASLH), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 25, 1980. 1. See generally Atleson, Work Group Behavior and Wildcat Strikes: The Causes and Func tions of Industrial Civil Disobedience, 34 Ohio St. L.J. 750 (1973); Cloke, Political Loyalty, Labor Democracy and the Constitution, 5 San Fern. Valley L. Rev. 159 (1976); Klare, Judicial Deradi calization of the Wagner Act and the Origins of Modern Legal Consciousness, 1937-1941, 62 Minn. L. Rev. 265 (1978) [hereinafter cited as Judicial Deradicalization]; Lynd, Government Without Rights: The Labor Law Vision of Archibald Cox, 4 Indus. Rel. L.J. 483 ( 1981); Lynd, Investment Decisions and the Quid Pro Quo Myth, 29 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 396 (1979) [hereinafter cited as Investment Decisions]; Lynd, Reindustrialization: Brownfield or Greenfield?, Democracy, July 1981, at 22; Lynd, Employee Free Speech in the Private and Public Workplace: Two Doctrines or One?, 1 Indus. Rel. L.J. 711 (1977) [hereinafter Employee Free Speech]-, Lynd, Workers' Control in a Time of Diminished Workers' Rights, Radical America, Sept.-Oct. 1976, at 5; Lynd, The Right to Engage in Concerted Activity After Union Recognition: A Study of Legislative History, 50 Ind. L.J. 720 (1975); Stone, The Post-War Paradigm in American Labor Law, 90 Yale L.J. 1515 (1981) [hereinafter cited as Stone]; Atleson, Values and Assumptions in Labor Law (forthcoming) [hereinafter cited as Values and Assumptions]; Klare, The Quest for Industrial Democracy and the Struggle Against Racism: Perspectives on Labor Law and Civil Rights Law (forthcoming in Ore. L. Rev. 1981); Klare, The Bitter and the Sweet: Reflections On the Supreme Court's Yeshiva Decision (forthcoming in Socialist Rev. 1981). See also Feinman, The Development of the Employment at Will Rule, 20 Am. J. Legal Hist. 118 (1976); Freeman, Legitimizing Racial Discrimination Through Antidiscrimination Law: A Critical Review of Supreme Court Doctrine, 62 Minn. L. Rev. 1049 (1978). In addition to the works cited, I have learned much from discussions with, and the unpub lished work of, James Atleson, Alan Hyde, Howard Lesnick, Staughton Lynd, Theodore Lieverman, Ira Sills and Katherine Stone. In its original conception, this paper was intended to be a report to ASLH on the critical labor jurisprudence, and I wish to acknowledge that some of the ideas and approaches to collective bargaining law presented here derive from the work of the people listed. However, the scholars I have associated with the critical labor law hold a widely divergent spectrum of views on legal and political questions. Readers are therefore advised that I assume sole responsibility for the formulations contained herein, and that the presentation of critical labor law in this paper is heavily oriented toward my own approaches and research priorities.

Coalition Bargaining in Municipal Government: The New York City Experience

This paper analyzes the emergence and development of two-tier coalition bargaining in the municipal government of New York City from the late 1960s through the 1980 negotiations. The reduction of interunion rivalries, growth of pattern bargaining, and enactment of the city's Collective Bargaining Law in 1967 were important precedents to formal coalition bargaining, but it was the fiscal crisis of the mid 1970s that provided a major thrust to the adoption of this type of bargaining structure. Through it, management and union officials were able not only to reach master and subsidiary agreements covering wages and conditions of employment, but to bargain broader fiscal rescue agreements with representatives of the federal and state governments who, in the wake of the fiscal crisis, acquired greater political control over the nation's largest city. The empirical findings are linked to theories of bargaining structure and provide the basis for predicting the continuance of coalition bargaining in New York City during the 1980s but only limited adoption of this bargaining format elsewhere in the American public sector.

Collective Bargaining Laws in Education

This author discusses the five elements in the pattern of emerging education legislation. As more states develop laws governing collective bargaining, they will look to the states that have blazed the way, as outlined here.

Chapter 766 and the Professional Educator

Chapter 766, Massachusetts’ new special education law, has far reaching implications for all professional educators. From the perspective of a teacher organization negotiator, many questions arise when this new statute and the regulations pertaining to it are considered in relation to the state's new collective bargaining law and existing collective bargaining agreements. Several elements of this law create new demands with respect to the regular classroom teacher's time and professional expertise. On the other hand, the regulations seem to establish a truly professional role for educators in determining the educational plan for a child with special needs. Several aspects of the regulations are bound to foster considerable controversy, especially insofar as the relationships between local school committees and Core Evaluation Teams are concerned. Finally, it is conceivable that Chapter 766 could become an important source of change for improving the education of all children in the Commonwealth.

Collective Bargaining Law in Canada, by A.W.R. Carrothers, Butterworths & Company (Canada) Ltd., Toronto, 1965, 553 pages.

Collective Bargaining Law in Canada, by A.W.R. Carrothers, Butterworths & Company (Canada) Ltd., Toronto, 1965, 553 pages.

Book Review: Collective Bargaining Law in Canada, by A. W. R. Carrothers

Book Review: Collective Bargaining Law in Canada, by A. W. R. Carrothers

Collective Bargaining in Postwar France

The labor movement in France since 1944 has had a hectic his tory. The unions, especially those united in the General Confederation of La bor (CGT), played a strong role in the resistance movement and gained great political influence. By 1946, labor had won a place on the boards of directors of all the nationalized services and industries and had gained influence in other industries. After 1946, Communist politics split the CGT and in the process a considerable number of workers simply left organized labor. The author dis cusses the resultant disorganization and strife, the attempts of the state to regu late collective bargaining, the introduction of a new collective bargaining law in 1950, the initiative of some managements, public and private, in introducing plant bargaining rather than industry-wide or area-wide bargaining, and the forces making for change in industrial relations and those holding back change.—Ed.