Written on May 20, 2015
The Public Sector Union includes teachers, firefighters, police officers, postal workers, and any other employee working for the government at any level. The Public Sector Union focuses on strengthening the workers’ rights and working conditions with security fair wages, buying domestically produced goods, guaranteeing workers’ safety, and elimination business abuse to their employees. This specific union, like all others, has is advantages and disadvantages. Since about the mid-20th century, the organized labor in the United States has dramatically transformed in two categories, affecting our politics: decline in union members, and the change of the unionized work force.
The history of the Public Sector Union may be complex, so let me break it down into three categories, then summarized all with a conclusion: history of the Public Sector Union and the differences between public sector and private sector, how the Wagner Act affected this union in history, and finally, the Public Sector Union in present day.
The first Labor Day was upon creation as a national holiday in 1887, and at that time, there wasn’t a such things as a Public Sector Union. Many people thought the idea of workers going on strike rather than serving their country was absurd, but that’s what Americans did. Even as late as the early 1950’s unions for government workers did not exist, but that changed in just a few short years. At that time, mayor of New York City, Robert Wagner, appealed to the votes of city workers and gave his executive order to unionize the people. Soon, state Democrat legislators followed. The membership after the Wagner Act was signed, grew from under 1 million union members to over 16 million union members between the years 1900 and 1950. The year when the act was signed, membership consisted of 4 million, and shot sky high in just 15 years. Later on in history, between 1973 and 2008, labor changing membership dropped with private employers, and increased with public employers, with both almost equal. Public sector and private sector operate differently in government. Like stated in the introduction, public sector is employees work for the government, while private sectors are privately owned and not apart of the government workforce, e.g. corporations, profit and nonprofit organizations, and charities.
The Wagner Act was signed in to play on July 5, 1935 to establish the National Labor Relations Board and addresses the relations unions and employers in the private sector. The Wagner Act was signed to create a new independent way to enforce employees rights in a calm fashion. It gave employees the right to join unions. Like stated in the above paragraph, union membership did indeed shoot sky high, but did have a decrease of numbers two years before the Wagner Act was signed. During the Great Depression, the rate of unemployment had a high rise and put unions and workers’ rights and brought attention in the political stage. Following World War II, increase of labor strife, union violence, and corruption led to claims that the Wagner Act required minor changes. The Wagner Act also goes by the name Taft-Hartley Act, and the Taft-Hartley Act could also go by Labor Management Relations Act of 1947. Very confusing, I know, but we will get through this together.
The Public Sector Union has had their struggles in the past, but in present day, they are strong as ever. Like stated before, the membership of this union has increased, meaning more and more people have joined the Public Sector Union, and left the Private Sector Union. That’s good news and bad news for all of us. Most reports, essays, and news articles I have read all repeat and emphasize the difference in percentage between public and private sector union. Just last year, “Supreme Court strikes blow to public sector unions” was published by MSNBC on April 2, explaining: “limiting their ability to automatically deduct dues from public workers who nevertheless benefit from union-negotiated contracts.”
To conclude all research, the Public Sector Union has accomplished so much as a union. I have learned a lot in this project and quite enjoyed the research. I learned the past, the present, and the future of the union. I learned exactly what a union was and more specifically what a Public Sector Union is.
This lesson, and this research paper has concluded the year with all our work. I am glad my teacher had us end the this amazing year with the project as I learned a lot. I have brought previous projects into this paper and expanded into research of those projects and learned more than I thought I would. This year I have retained a lot of information about how businesses and industries operate.