Public Sector Labor Relations & Collective Bargaining

In USA in the age of Corporate Globalization

Public Sector Labor Relations & Collective Bargaining

In USA in the age of Corporate Globalization

Introduction

Public sector labor relations are referred to the practice of organizing and managing the unionized situations of employment. In United States, public sector labor relations are regulated by Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 whereas, National Labor Relations Act regulates private sector labor relations. But there are many other significant pieces of legislation that are required to be considered in order to comply completely.

In United States, Labor & Employment Relations Association is another important association of United States' practitioners and scholar of labor relations. Labor relations tend to influence strongly from external environment. The external environment affects the process, structure and outcomes of the public sector labor relation and bargaining. Furthermore, environmental context's impact amplified in public sector, because the public employers are in due course answerable to electorates and public employees.

In public sector the power of management is diffused across diverse government branches and public bureaucrats. In United States the bargaining responsibility of public sector's management is shared and the official responsibilities frequently differ from the actual. This report focuses on the public relation and collective bargaining in United States and depicts different faces of labor relations. It will be focusing on different aspects that influence public relation in United States.

Discussion

In United States, the government organized operations at the federal, state and local level with the help of three branches that are Judicial, legislative and executive. Government branches have created various authoritative bodies and agencies that are responsible for making and implementing policies. This means that the negotiation agreements between union and public agencies are required to be subsequently approved by the legislature and executives. Compulsive approval need of the bargaining agreement from legislature and executive often make the public officials ineffective and disable.

Involvement of absolute number of agencies and officials make the bargaining process very complex. Public employees constitutes a large number of electorates, this makes the public employers to be answerable. It also enables public employee to choose the boss and authoritative officials of their own choice, which reflect their political power that can lead them towards bargaining gains. Other labor relation s' interest groups attempt to weaken the political power of public employees especially when the situation favored public employees demand raise in taxes.

Yet, this is the fact that labor relations strategies that are approved by the public employers can be influenced and affected by the votes of public employees. These are the factors that create the complexity and difficulties in the public sector bargaining and fragmentation of government leads to inconsistency and confusion. Public employers' decisions also have propensity to influence by the self interest decisions of union members.

History

In American public sector accumulates the experience of thirty three years with modern collective bargaining. In this period unionism become stronger to the extent that today 45% of full time and approximately one third ...