WHEREAS:

Public sector workers are excluded from the National Labor Relations Act and their right to organize has not been recognized in federal law; and

WHEREAS:

Public sector workers help make America happen and ensure that vital public services, public goods, infrastructure and benefits to individuals and communities are delivered effectively, efficiently and equitably across our nation; and

WHEREAS:

AFSCME is the largest public sector union in the country and has fought for the right of public service workers to organize and win a strong voice through collective bargaining; and

WHEREAS:

Public sector workers do not enjoy the same rights to form a union and collectively bargain as private-sector workers do under the National Labor Relations Act. State and local government employees in just 24 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, have comprehensive collective bargaining rights that apply to most employees; and

WHEREAS:

Most recently, AFSCME mobilized to win collective bargaining in Nevada covering 20,000 state workers, won a repeal of a nearly 30-year ban on local government collective bargaining affecting over 300,000 workers in Virginia and enacted collective bargaining legislation covering more than 36,000 county workers in Colorado; and

WHEREAS:

Over 60 years after Wisconsin passed the first collective bargaining law for public sector workers at AFSCME’s urging, there are still millions of public sector workers in the United States who are denied the right to collective bargaining; and

WHEREAS:

Hundreds of thousands of workers in the child care, home care and interpretation fields are independent contractors who are paid with public funds to provide services to our communities and yet are not recognized as public employees; and

WHEREAS:

Private sector employers routinely interfere with workers’ right to organize, coerce employees against supporting unionization and flout the law because there are no meaningful penalties for undercutting the right to organize in federal law; and

WHEREAS:

The right to organize is not meaningful unless workers are free from the coercive influence of their employers and that freedom is assured through vigorous enforcement.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:

AFSCME will support efforts at the federal level to enforce the right of workers to organize, such as the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, which would recognize the right of all public sector employees to collective bargaining; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED:

AFSCME will fight for public sector collective bargaining legislation on the state and local levels and will also expand the right to organize to excluded workers who provide public services, such as independent providers in the child care, home care, interpretation and other fields; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED:

AFSCME will continue highlighting and publicizing the many contributions made by public sector workers who demonstrate the importance and value of public sector service delivery; and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED:

AFSCME will fight for unorganized private sector workers by demanding that private sector contractors uphold their workers’ right to organize free of union-busting tactics and engage in good faith bargaining toward a first contract with their workers.

SUBMITTED BY:
International Executive Board