WHY COLLECTIVE BARGAINING IS IMPORTANT...

What is collective bargaining?

Collective bargaining as contemplated by the National Labor Relations Act is a procedure looking toward the making of collective agreements between employer and accredited representatives of employees concerning wages, hours, safety, and other conditions of employment. This process requires that both parties deal with each other with open and fair minds and sincerely endeavor to overcome obstacles existing between them to the end that employment relations may be stabilized.

Now collective bargaining, as described here, is available to any group of employees that are employed by a private employer. The situation for public employees is quite different.  In the state of Texas, the only public employees who have the right to bargain collectively with their employer are Firefighter and Police Officers who are employed by a political subdivision of the state. This gives Firefighter and Police Officers, who are employed by a municipality, the possibility to collective bargaining. You see, the right to collective bargaining is not automatic. The right must be given to the Firefighters and Police Officers by a vote of the citizens, through a special referendum election held in accordance with Chapter 174 of the Texas Local Government Code. This is also known as the Fire and Police Employee Relations Act. This Act was enacted by Texas legislation in 1973. Provisions of this Act have been adopted by 17 Texas cities, wherein it applies to Firefighters.

Ok so what? Why do we need it and why is it so important?

Simply put, a union is really powerless unless it can collective bargain. The whole idea of a union is for the group of workers to use their power as a group or "collectively" to negotiate for better benefits, competitive wages, safer work conditions (including man power), a retirement that earned and promised upon initial hiring. An individual firefighter is powerless to negotiate with a city or state for anything better for him/herself.  Now a group of hundred, thousands, even hundreds of thousands of firefighters collectively have much more negotiating power. These larger groups could collectively change the minds of city governments and state governments as well. Especially when they have the support of the public behind them. It is the theory that there is strength in numbers. Without collective bargaining unions are nothing more then another social club for workers to join.

This is why what is happening right now in Wisconsin is so important. Just as important is what is slowly building here in the state of Texas, with a group of wealthy business men wanting to do away with public pension systems all together.

If you are not familiar with what is happening in Wisconsin, and what may eventually happen here, let me quickly catch you up. The Gov. of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, believes public unions are trying to hold onto unsustainable wages and benefits that they have gained through collective bargaining negotiations in the past. Gov. Walker is attempting to push legislation through that would require public employees to contribute a much larger portion of their wages towards their pensions, while at the same time changing an already proven and successful pension system to a 401(k) wall street dependent style pension system. He is also asking the people of the public unions to pay more into their health insurance plans, while not adding any benefits to their plans. He states this will lessen the burden on his state and help balance his budget. Gov. Walker's legislation would also permanently strip the unions of their collective bargaining rights. So in the future public employee unions would not be able to negotiate benefits and could only ask for pay raises at the rate of the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Can you imagine, you are a Firefighter with no collective bargaining power, and basically a powerless union, so you must go and try to see your city manager to sit with him/her to ask for a raise for yourself. How do you think that ends up? Right, just the way we do.

The issue here is not pay cuts or benefit cuts or balancing a budget. The issue is trying to get rid of unions and collective bargaining all together. The public employee unions of Wisconsin agreed to all the financial aspects of Gov. Walker's budget repair bill, as long as their collective bargaining right was maintained. This would have balance the state of Wisconsin's budget. Despite these concessions Gov. Walker insists on stripping the unions of all collective bargaining power. So as you can see, it had nothing to do with budget cuts and balancing a budget. If you look a little closer and think about it for a second, collective bargaining has no effect on revenue at all.

With all this going on try and remember why unions and collective bargaining were first implemented. To provide the workers fair wages, safer work environments, to keep the employer from discriminating against the employee due to age, sex, or creed, to keep employers from forcing employees of working outrageous hour, and to provide employees access to benefits such as a retirement and health insurance. Unions and collective bargaining also help keep both the employer and the employee honest to each other, since there must be a give and take in order for a agreement to be reached.

Without collective bargaining and a union, the members would have to rely on the economy to determine when they would or could receive a raise and increase in any benefits. If you know anything about politics and politicians, you know their economy or their budgets are never good enough for those increases. 

We must support all public unions, public pensions, and collective bargaining rights. It is the members of these organizations and the procedures that make up the middle class of America and provide the backbone of this great country.