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A new paper from James N. Foster, Jr., Brian C. Hey, and Allison J. Hartnett provides context to the controversy over HB 1413 with a historical overview of public-sector union law in Missouri.

To read the entire essay, click on the link below.

The post New Public-Sector Labor Law in Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

One big problem, however, is that many of these agreements are effectively unknown to the public, and to date there hasn’t been a concerted effort to gather these local agreements and their variations, including memoranda of understanding and other, less-formalized agreements between labor organizations and government. Hundreds of these agreements could be out there, and yet research in this area is surprisingly sparse.

That’s where the Show-Me CBAs Project comes in. By gathering these bargaining agreements, we hope to make it easier for the public to see what their elected representatives have committed taxpayers to in the past, In addition, the Project can also make compliance with HB 1413 an easier undertaking both for government workers and for government regulators charged with implementing HB 1413’s reforms. This project is ongoing, and to date, the Institute has already gathered over a hundred bargaining records, available here. But more are on the way. Stay tuned.

The post Introducing the Show-Me CBAs Project appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

THE SOLUTION: Regular public union recertification elections.

Regular public union elections would give workers the right to elect union representation to fixed terms. Regular elections would help keep union actions in line with worker interests and lead to competition among unions. It would also help prevent backlash from union leadership in response to decertification petitions.1

WHO ELSE DOES IT? Currently, Wisconsin and Iowa require regular public union elections.

THE OPPORTUNITY: The Commonwealth Foundation recently gave Missouri a letter grade of ‘D’ regarding its public labor laws. Show-Me Institute research indicates that regular union elections need not be prohibitively expensive and offer a way to ensure that unions serve workers—not the other way around.

KEY POINTS

• Public workers in Missouri should have the right to choose who represents them.
• Regular elections would make unions more accountable to those they represent, just as regular government elections pressure politicians to be accountable to voters.
• Regular elections can be held at a reasonable cost to taxpayers.

SHOW-ME INSTITUTE RESOURCES

Policy Study: A Primer on Government Labor Relations in Missouri

Essay: The Low Cost of Labor Reform

For a printable version of this article, click on the link below. You can also view the entire 2018 Missouri Blueprint online.

The post 2018 Blueprint: Public Union Recertification appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

THE SOLUTION: Right to work.

Right to work ends forced unionism and lets workers decide whether joining a union best serves their interests. This means that being a member of a union cannot be a requirement for employment, and gives employees the final decision about whether they want to give money to a union that may or may not have their best interests at heart.

In 2017, Missouri passed Right to Work, but in 2018, the state will hold a referendum on that law.

WHO ELSE DOES IT? Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Guam, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

THE OPPORTUNITY: If the state’s Right to Work law is put into full effect, Missouri will join the majority of American states that already have right to work laws, finally placing Missouri employers and employees on a level playing field with other states.

KEY POINTS

• Missouri will be better able compete with neighboring right-to-work states in attracting businesses.
• Existing unions will be more responsive to the concerns of members, thanks to the credible threat of members leaving the organization.
• Employees will have greater control over their representation in negotiations with their employer.
• Employers will have greater flexibility in managing their businesses and making their operations more successful.
• Private employers are the focus, but similar laws in the public sector, like paycheck protection, should be pursued by policymakers as well.

SHOW-ME INSTITUTE RESOURCES

Policy Study: A Primer on Government Labor Relations in Missouri

Op-Ed: Rise of the Roosevelt Law: Is Reform in Government Unions Coming to Missouri?

For a printable version of this article, click on the link below. You can also view the entire 2018 Missouri Blueprint online.

The post 2018 Blueprint: Right to Work appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Its passage was also long overdue, as many of the state’s geographic peers have long crossed that bridge of worker choice. Before Governor Eric Greitens’ signed the bill into law, Missouri was surrounded on all sides by Right to Work states here in the Midwest, with the exception of Illinois. Or, if you view Missouri as a southern state, Missouri was the lone holdout among the members of the NCAA’s Southeastern Conference. Missouri becomes the 28th Right to Work state, joining the majority of states who have adopted this common-sense reform.

Right to Work is a victory that empowers workers, but legislators should not rest on their laurels while the list of other opportunities in labor reform remains long. I look forward to the upcoming debates about Paycheck Protection, prevailing wage, project labor agreements and union transparency. 

The post Done: Missouri Becomes 28th Right to Work State appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

There are cases for both sides. Graduate students are Mizzou students working toward a post-graduate degree, such as a Master’s or PhD. Many graduate students also receive a stipend so they can focus on their scholarly duties. In addition, many grad students assist the university in teaching undergraduate students. If grad students are employees, this stipend is pay for the teaching assistance they provide.

If grad students successfully redefine themselves as employees, then they can unionize and collectively bargain. Through collective bargaining and the threat of collectively withholding labor, grad students might be able to force the university to pay them a larger stipend. If their effort is successful, this will be the first time that graduate students at a public university in Missouri have unionized.

Successful grad student unionization could turn out to be another headache for a university that’s already laying people off to cope with declining enrollment. This could affect everyone; Mizzou is a government institution, and taxpayers ultimately foot the bill.

The post Group of Mizzou Graduate Students Attempting to Unionize appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In 1937, Roosevelt wrote to the President of the National Federation of Federal Employees, a government union, and gave his opinion that employee organizations have a “logical” role in government. Roosevelt believed that government employees should organize in order to ensure “fair and adequate pay, reasonable hours of work, safe and suitable working conditions . . . and impartial consideration and review of grievances.”

However, Roosevelt was careful to clarify that “meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government.” In particular, he believed that collective bargaining agreements were incompatible with public sector work:

The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.

FDR’s issue with government collective bargaining is that in our system of government, “we the people” set public policy through the democratic process. Binding the people to a collective bargaining agreement takes authority away from the people.

FDR applies similar logic to the topic of strikes:

. . . a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. 

The issues FDR was concerned about affect us today. For example, the Monarch Fire Protection District is still bound by the terms of a collective bargaining agreement signed years ago, before voters put a new, pro-taxpayer board in charge of the district. And in University City, unrest with the firefighters union has caused a couple of incidents imperiling public safety. Now the University City firefighters union is using a collective bargaining agreement to try to limit the city manager’s discretion in contracting out for basic services and managing public safety.

Regardless of whether we should go as far as Roosevelt and prohibit collective bargaining in our government, it is important to craft labor relations laws in light of the important differences between the public and private sectors. Laws ensuring that government remains accountable, even when government workers are unionized, could be called Roosevelt laws in honor of FDR’s legacy.

The post What Was FDR’s Stance on Government Unions? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Last year the Missouri legislature considered a few bills that would’ve done this. Unfortunately the fiscal notes associated with these bills (basically a price tag for a new law) indicated that the elections would cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. One of the problems with these analyses was the assumption that elections would have to be conducted by traditional ballots, manned by hundreds of temporary employees hired just for elections. Modern technology makes this unnecessary.

With traditional voting, paid or volunteer workers need to be on location working polls. Moreover, specialized voting equipment needs to be at every polling location. Telephone- and internet-based voting solve these issues. With telephone and internet voting, personnel do not need to be at every polling location, and the voting equipment is nothing more than a telephone or personal computer. A voter just dials a number or goes to a website, enters a PIN or password, and votes at his or her convenience.

Telephone- and internet-based voting give voters greater flexibility. Not only can you vote from anywhere with an internet connection or mobile phone reception, but polls can remain open longer without significantly increasing costs. Imagine having a week to vote and being able to vote late at night or early in the morning. Much better than heading to a poll, parking, standing in line, and then rushing back to the office.

Security is an issue with telephone- and internet-based voting, just as it is with traditional voting, but internet voting can be encrypted. 256-bit encryption, the same encryption many major banks use, is as cost effective as it is secure.

Price doesn’t have to stand in the way of a policy that would empower government workers. If we’re forward thinking and embrace technological innovation, union elections can held at a reasonable cost.

The post Using Technology to Provide Low-Cost Union Elections appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

At this forum, Policy Researcher John Wright discusses some of the key labor issues affecting government workers. He highlights many of the loopholes, oversights, and ambiguities in existing law that harm the transparency of our public institutions and make it harder for citizens to hold their government accountable.

The post Show-Me Forum: Government Unions: Restoring Accountability appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I previously wrote about the government union transparency gap and a bill addressing it, but if you are a government worker subject to union representation, not knowing where your dues go is only part of the problem. In many cases, you also have very little say in who represents you, and you have no recourse to ensure that your voice is heard. That’s why we need reform that would give all unionized public employees the ability to vote in regular union elections.

Consider the example of personal care attendants enrolled in the state’s consumer-directed health care program. Attendants get paid out of a state-managed program to take care of home-bound Missourians. In 2009, the attendants had an election to determine whether they would all be represented by the Missouri Home Care Union, a joint local union affiliated with both AFSCME and SEIU.

Out of 13,151 eligible voters, only 2,085 voted for the union. According to the state board running these elections, 294 ballots were challenged and 1,405 voters voted against the election. The challenged ballots plus the number of votes against the union were not enough to affect the outcome of the election. So in a low-turnout election with hundreds of challenged ballots, less than 16 percent of personal care attendants were able to force union representation on every other person enrolled in this program.

You might think, “Well, that’s just democracy. If you don’t vote, you deserve the representation you’re given.” The problem is that after a one-time election there will not be another election unless workers organize and go through a notoriously difficult decertification process. Depending on how a union contract is written, the union may even sue workers for trying to decertify the union or supporting another union. There’s nothing democratic about voting for a representative once and then being stuck with the results indefinitely.

If public employees are going to be subject to union representation against their will, then they at least should get a regular vote so that they can hold their union accountable. The Missouri Legislature has a bill, SB 549, that would require these regular elections. Regular union elections could help ensure that public employees, like teachers, police, and firefighters, are only subject to unions that work for them.

The post Bill Would Give Workers a Vote appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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Read the essay: The Power to Lead.

The post James Shuls, Ph.D., on Teacher Tenure Reform appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In 1947, the Missouri Supreme Court, in City of Springfield v. Clouse, held that the city of Springfield, Mo., could not collectively bargain employment contracts with public employee unions. The reason was twofold. First, the Missouri Constitution’s clause guaranteeing the right to collectively bargain did not apply to public employees. Second, public entities such as cities act on behalf of the general public and therefore, only elected legislators, as the people’s representatives, may set the terms of employment for public employees. Non-elected public officers lacked the requisite authority to collectively bargain with labor unions.

Fast forward to 2007. In Independence-NEA v. Independence School District, the Missouri Supreme Court partially overruled Clouse and held that the Missouri Constitution’s collective bargaining clause extended to public school teachers. The court rested its opinion in large part on the modern trend recognizing a legislature’s power to delegate its decision-making authority to administrative agencies. Because a legislature “may” delegate its power to negotiate and agree to the terms of public employment, the constitution’s collective bargaining guarantee was held to extend to all public employees, including teachers.

If due respect is to be paid to the legislature, then the following question naturally arises: Did the Missouri General Assembly in fact delegate this authority to public school districts? And how can one reconcile the majority’s broad recognition of the power to delegate with its stern rejection of the legislature’s discretionary choice to exclude public school teachers from its grant of collective bargaining rights?

Specifically, the Missouri General Assembly enacted the Public Sector Labor Law in 1965. The Act empowers certain public employees to join labor organizations for the purpose of negotiating terms of employment. But the legislature expressly excluded school teachers from its provisions. By exercising its power to delegate, the legislature “selectively” delegated its powers by withholding statutory collective bargaining rights from teachers. One may ask whether the power to delegate implies the power to withhold.

For now, the law regarding a school district’s legal obligation to collectively bargain is in flux. The trial court in Ledbetter held that school districts had no duty to bargain. The court in Independence clearly supported the constitutional right for teachers to collectively bargain, but further held that school districts are under no obligation to agree to contractual terms that the teachers’ bargaining agent proposes. If the Supreme Court in Ledbetter adds a good faith requirement, school districts will suffer a diminished right, a right recognized in Independence, to reject union proposals.

In light of the current state of flux, and the importance of this issue for Missouri taxpayers and schools, the Show-Me Institute has begun gathering and reporting collective bargaining agreements and related agreements between school districts and certified staff governing the terms of employment for teachers.

We sent letters to the largest 100 districts in Missouri requesting all such agreements. Agreements include formal collective bargaining agreements and other agreements such as closure documents. The common denominator, however, is the written expression of the terms of employment between a district and its certified teaching staff.

The responses we received are searchable below. Moreover by simply double-clicking on a document the entire document is viewable. We welcome your feedback.

The post Teacher Collective Bargaining Agreements in Missouri’s Public Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

After all, the government is well-equipped to bust some proverbial knee caps of their own, and it looks like the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Labor Department are taking out the big bats. First, it was Boeing’s decision to move some of its operations from Washington state to South Carolina, which the NLRB is now trying to block. This week, it’s the Labor Department’s turn to do some damage, tightening requirements on employers to report their anti-unionization activities. And today, the National Review editorial board lays out the NLRB’s latest plan to help organized labor and make employer attempts to dissuade employees from unionizing that much more difficult.

It is truly worrisome that the small, ideological leadership of these bureaucracies can so easily, and unilaterally, craft American labor law and interfere with the movement of labor without even a contemporaneous, affirmative act of Congress compelling these fresh rule-making activities. We already know that Obamacare didn’t empower the administration to offer waivers to the law. We know that the Obama administration wants to enact gun control through administrative procedure. Is there anything federal bureaucrats can’t do? If not, isn’t that an enormous problem?

National Review‘s Kevin Williamson puts the problem this way (emphasis added):

If you are an entrepreneur thinking about starting a large industrial enterprise, or an incumbent firm thinking about building a new factory or launching a new line of production, you want to know that your tax and regulatory environment is livable — and that it is not going to change at the whim of one or two or three people in Washington, D.C. The NLRB has five seats (and four members serving; there’s a vacancy at the moment). The fact that such a tiny group of unaccountable political appointees can just wake up one fine morning, have some Pop-Tarts, and then decide to rewrite the nation’s union-election rules is terrifying. Such changes ought to require an act of Congress.

Roll out of bed, toast a pastry, pass a rule. Maybe a bat isn’t necessary after all.

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