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

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.

About the Author :
Joseph E. Slater is Eugene N. Balk Professor of Law and Values at the University of Toledo.

Review :
"Slater analyzes the legal and historical origins of government employee unions and compares them with the private sector experience... Slater concludes with a comparison of the public and private models. He suggests that employer opposition to workers' organizing activities in the private sector explains much of the divergence in membership levels. Overall, the book is a well-researched contribution to the study of U.S. labor history."-Choice 42:3, November 2004 "Slater produces a rich examination of five critical episodes in the history of mid-twentieth century public labor relations, and, in doing so, demonstrates the complex intersection of law, work, social movements, and the political process... Slater successfully bridges the fields of legal and labor history to present a lucid and compelling thesis about the importance of law for union effectiveness, while also paying careful attention to the vital importance of the social movement organizing process itself."-Jeffrey T. Coster, Maryland Historian, Vol. 29, No. 1-2 (2005) "Thoroughly researched, clearly written, devoid of needless jargon, and soundly organized, Public Workers provides a broader and more historically informed perspective on public employee unionism than any other book. Joseph E. Slater's formal training in the law enables him to write about the legal aspects of the history of public employee unionism with insight and subtlety, shedding light on how the law shaped the history of public employee unionism and why such unions proved exceedingly active politically."-Melvyn Dubofsky, author of Hard Work: The Making of Labor History and We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World "Joseph Slater's illuminating book traces the legal status of public sector unions from the Boston police strike of 1919 to the first comprehensive state bargaining law passed in Wisconsin in 1962. He dissects the arguments for and against extending the rights already won by other workers during this era into the public sector and demonstrates that the question was ultimately resolved on the ground as the unionization of government workers became a reality that lawmakers could not ignore. With over 40 percent of today's union members working for governments, this study of the struggles that laid the 'foundation for the stunning rise of public sector unions in the past forty years' is a must read for anyone interested in the labor movement today."-Jon Hiatt, General Counsel, AFL-CIO "Joseph Slater's book makes a unique contribution to U.S. labor historiography: to date, no other book combines the tale of public employee unionization with an analysis of the unfolding law of public sector organizing. Slater makes a strong case for the failure of scholars in both labor and legal history to take seriously the experience of public employees and their unions. Additionally, Slater's choice of public employees as his subject allows him to offer thought-provoking speculations on such recurrent issues as the nature and extent of American 'exceptionalism' and the meaning of class: as he shows, such issues take on very different and unexpected colorations when viewed through the perspective of public sector workers."-Joseph McCartin, Georgetown University