Public Workers: Government Employee Unions, the Law, and the State, 1900-1962

by Slater, Joseph E.

• ISBN13: 9780801440120
• ISBN10: 0801440122
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-02-01
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr

Summary

From the dawn of the twentieth century to the early 1960s, public-sector unions generally had no legal right to strike, bargain, or arbitrate, and government workers could be fired simply for joining a union. Public Workers is the first book to analyze why public-sector labor law evolved as it did, separate from and much more restrictive than private-sector labor law, and what effect this law had on public-sector unions, organized labor as a whole, and by extension all of American politics. Joseph E. Slater shows how public-sector unions survived, represented their members, and set the stage for the most remarkable growth of worker organization in American history. Slater examines the battles of public-sector unions in the workplace, courts, and political arena, from the infamous Boston police strike of 1919, to teachers in Seattle fighting a yellow-dog rule, to the BSEIU in the 1930s representing public-sector janitors, to the fate of the powerful Transit Workers Union after New York City purchased the subways, to the long struggle by AFSCME that produced the nation's first public-sector labor law in Wisconsin in 1959. Slater introduces readers to a determined and often-ignored segment of the union movement and expands our knowledge of working men and women, the institutions they formed, and the organizational obstacles they faced.

Author Biography

Joseph E. Slater is Associate Professor of Law, University of Toledo.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction	1	(12)
1. The Boston Police Strike of 1919	13	(26)
2. Yellow-Dog Contracts and the Seattle Teachers, 1928-1931	39	(32)
3. Public Sector Labor Law before Legalized Collective Bargaining	71	(26)
4. Ground-Floor Politics and the BSEIU in the 1930's	97	(28)
S. The New York City TWU in the Early 1940's	125	(33)
6. Wisconsin's Public Sector Labor Laws of 1959 and 1962	158	(35)
Conclusion	193	(12)
Notes	205	(36)
Selected Bibliography	241	(12)
Index	253