A better bargain for state employees
by Michael Schwalbe
Raleigh News & Observer, 29 May 2007
William Faulkner’s line about the past—it’s not dead; in fact, it’s not even past—aptly applies to North Carolina General Statute §95-98, which bans collective bargaining by public employees. A vestige of a bygone era, this law remains a force in the present, to neither our credit nor benefit.
NCGS §95-98 grew out of efforts to stop the Teamsters from organizing police and transportation workers in Charlotte in the late 1950s. Even after city officials thwarted this organizing effort, two Mecklenburg legislators, Reps. Frank Snepp Jr. and Ernest Hicks, wanted a law that would quash public sector organizing across the state.
Snepp and Hicks drafted a bill that would make it illegal for public employees to join unions and for any unit of government in North Carolina to engage in collective bargaining. Their bill was backed by legislators beholden to textile bosses who feared that unionized police would be less willing to put down strikes by textile workers.
Some legislators criticized the bill for being too broad, saying it should apply only to police. One legislator noted the anti-labor hand of the textile industry behind the bill. But, with only minor changes, the bill passed both houses of the General Assembly and became law in June 1959. It has not gone unchallenged.
In 1969, public employees in Charlotte sued the city in federal district court, charging that NCGS §95-98 was unconstitutional. A three-judge panel ruled in Atkins vs. the City of Charlotte that it was indeed unconstitutional to forbid public employees from joining unions. But the court upheld the ban on collective bargaining.
In 1974, the law was challenged again in federal district court in the case of Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Unit of North Carolina Association of Educators vs. Phillips. Plaintiffs argued that NCGS §95-98 violated public employees’ First Amendment right to freedom of association.
The court agreed in Phillips that the law impeded employee organizing, but ruled that it was not unconstitutional for government units to refuse to bargain collectively with employees, because public employees were not entitled to special access to government policy makers.
A third challenge came in December 2005, when the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America and its North Carolina affiliate, UE 150, filed a complaint with the International Labor Organization (ILO), a branch of the United Nations. The complaint alleged that NCGS §95-98 violates international labor law conventions to which the U.S. is a party, and that it also violates international human rights standards.
Last month the ILO upheld the complaint. The ILO’s investigating committee found that NCGS §95-98 violates basic principles of freedom of association by frustrating the main objective of employee organizing: to bargain collectively about wages, benefits, and local conditions of employment.
The courts erred in the Atkins and Phillips cases, according to the ILO, by failing to distinguish between government as employer and government as policy maker. Public employees must be free, the ILO decision said, to negotiate with government in its role as employer. The report thus called for repeal of NCGS §95-98 and the creation of a framework for public sector collective bargaining in North Carolina.
We now have compelling reasons to put NCGS §95-98 behind us.
There is, first, the matter of principle. Being able to organize and bargain collectively with one’s employer are basic human rights, as stressed by the ILO decision. A law that infringes on these rights is also an affront to American principles of justice and fairness.
There are practical reasons, too.
Workers in states with public sector unions earn about 5-8% more than comparable workers in states without collective bargaining.
Yes, this can mean a higher wage bill in some cases. But it also means better lives for public workers at the low end of the pay scale. And putting more money in the pockets of workers is one of the best ways to create an economy-boosting multiplier effect.
Collective bargaining can also save money. Research on the effects of public sector collective bargaining shows that it reduces training costs by reducing turnover, reduces corruption in government by making people accountable to contractually defined rules, and reduces the costs of handling complaints arising from bias and discrimination.
Several bills to repeal NCGS §95-98 are now being considered in the legislature. Of these, HB1583, sponsored by Wake County Rep. Dan Blue, best hits the mark. HB1583 would scrap NCGS §95-98 and give local units of government the option of using collective bargaining if they so desire.
A product of a less than shining moment in North Carolina’s history, NCGS §95-98 is overdue for repeal. It’s a law that tarnishes the image of our state and denies the rights of over 500,000 North Carolinians who are public employees. The past may be ever with us, but in the case of NCGS §95-98 we can nullify its power to haunt the present.
Michael Schwalbe is a professor of sociology at N.C. State University. This article has been reprinted here with his permission.
