New York City has kept a covenant with its workers: your wages will be modest — lower than those of your counterparts in the suburbs or the private sector — but as a full-time employee you will be entitled to health care coverage without premiums.
Thousands of municipal workers have won the right to form unions, but a new collective bargaining law stops short of allowing them to strike and the number of public employees now eligible to join a union falls well below what unions ultimately seek.
Across the University of California, teaching assistants and tutors are unionized, but graduate student researchers are not. That could soon change, after organizers filed more than 10,000 signed union authorization cards last month.
Through their work in public education, public transit and public health, millions of African Americans have been able to provide for their families and strengthen their communities. But without federal aid now those jobs are on the chopping block.
One New York public employee union —the New York State Nurses Association—is advocating for the abolition of the Taylor Law's no-strike rule. Other unions recognize that labor needs offensive weapons. Yet most are ambivalent or opposed.
The Oregon lawsuit was supported by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which is handling some 200 other cases across the country, including a class-action lawsuit in California by 30,000 state employees.
For generations of Americans, working for a state or local government — as a teacher, firefighter, bus driver or nurse — provided a comfortable nook in the middle class. But they are now finding themselves financially downgraded.
The southern victory could be a blueprint for defending the public sector.
The Supreme Court case Janus v. AFSCME is poised to decimate public-sector unions—and it’s been made possible by a network of right-wing billionaires, think tanks and corporations.
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