TO SUPPORT THE PASSAGE OF PUBLIC EMPLOYEE COLLECTIVE BARGAINING & IMPROVEMENT OF LEGISLATION

TO SUPPORT THE PASSAGE OF PUBLIC EMPLOYEE COLLECTIVE BARGAINING LEGISLATION AND TO SUPPORT THE IMPROVEMENT OF CURRENT LEGISLATION

WHEREAS, many states throughout the country continue to prohibit public employee collective bargaining or in some cases exclude particular groups of public employees, i.e., state employees, county employees, municipal employees, or educational employees; and

WHEREAS, many states have failed to enact meaningful collective bargaining laws for all public employees and instead have chosen to burden employees with meaningless "meet-and-confer" statutes or "collective bargaining" laws with no effective impasse resolution; and

WHEREAS, the absence of meaningful collective bargaining statutes has denied state employees, county employees, municipal employees and educational employees the rights and benefits enjoyed by public employees covered by collective bargaining agreements; and

WHEREAS, there are organized efforts in all non-bargaining states to defeat any collective bargaining legislation; and

WHEREAS, there are anti-union efforts in states that have collective bargaining to take away public employee collective bargaining rights and to hamper their enforcement; and

WHEREAS, the absence of collective bargaining legislation for public employees has an adverse effect upon all organized workers and since attacks upon current collective bargaining rights do harm to future efforts on behalf of public employees:

RESOLVED, that the American Federation of Teachers increases its efforts on behalf of all public employees in non-bargaining states to gain enactment of favorable collective bargaining legislation and to work on behalf of public employees in states that have collective bargaining to maintain and improve their rights to bargain collectively.