Major Project Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words - 1

Major Project - Essay Example However, there are arguments favouring and opposing the need to preserve the public employee union strength. The debate remains unsettled. The problem needs to be treated based on the peculiarities of the public sector and the implications of preserving the bargaining power of the union in an organization. In this essay, the debate in this regard is discussed based on the existing Wisconsin debate. This essay is organized as follows. In section 2 the history of public employee union is discussed. In section 3,the ongoing debate in Wisconsin is discussed based on the debate between the Unions and the state, parties, media, President of USA etc. Section 4 concludes the essay. 2. History of Public Employee Unions The first public sector collective bargaining started in the years between 1955 and 1965 along with the civil rights movement. Both of these were based on the principle of the need for granting the rights and freedom of all citizens equally. There were many acts granting the ri ghts of private sector workers like Wagner Act 1935 and Social Security Act while the public sector workers were not covered by these acts. This unequal treatment between both workers became more intense with the private sector workers achieving lifestyle of the middle class (Mc Cartin, 2011). This was intensely criticized by many including the special committee of the American Bar Association. The legislation for the public sector bargaining rights was first started in Wisconsin in 1959.Starting from this, many laws were passed here like the one in 1962, 1968 Meyers-Milias Brown Act in California, the one passed by Richard Nixon in 1969 etc. Consequently, there had been significant rise in the membership of public sector employee unions. However from 1970 onwards the public sector employee unions were seen to influence the political system of nations which resulted in the antiunion voices to a great extent like in Madison. According to the antiunion arguments by the Public Service Research Council in the 1970, the public sector employee unions will result in strikes that stop the works of many government institutions. Other argument includes possibility of unions controlling government. In spite of these arguments, practical experience showed no strikes that paralyzed government institutions and no control of the unions over the government. There are many arguments for and against preserving the bargaining power of workers. These include union strength as very important in protecting the rights of individual workers. The estimates show greater percentage of workers in public sector as unionized compared to the workers in private sector. Thus weakening of the union strength means weakening of union strength in the public sector. Weakening of the union strength results in weaker protection of non unionized workers for getting their rights (Halliday, 2011). The arguments against preserving the public sector bargaining rights include the huge disparity in the wag es and compensation benefits of public and private sector workers. However, the recent estimates show the disparity only at the national level while at the state and local level the disparity is not very much significant(Freeman,1988).Moreover arguments also are based on the adverse effects on the finances of government. The estimates by the Centre for Budget and Policy Priorities, shows no significant