New York's Taylor Law: public employee rights and collective bargaining

Taylor Law: Overview

Employee rights

According to Section 202-203 of the Taylor Law, all public employees in the state of New York have the right to form, join and participate in, or to refrain from forming, joining, or participating in, any employee organization of their own choosing. The wording of the Taylor Law suggests that employees have the right to unionize -- but also possess the right not to belong to a union. However, it should be noted that according to Section 201-2a, while all public employees have a membership fee deduced from their paychecks, non-members are penalized by an agency shop fee deduction according to Section 201-2b. This serves to incentivize membership. Employees are also entitled to collective bargaining rights through a union. However, under Section 210, New York state public employees are prohibited from striking. This also means that binding arbitration agreements can be imposed upon unions and employers if negotiations reach an impasse after a certain duration of time.

Employer rights

Public employers in the state of New York (including state and local governments, schools, and other public works and benefits organizations) are allowed to recognize employee organizations for the purpose of collectively negotiating grievances pertaining to employment. They are also given the right to negotiate and enter into written agreements with employee organizations when determining the terms and conditions of employment under Section 204.

Administrative agency

To administrate the Taylor Law, under Section 205, the governor of New York is given the ability to appoint three persons to the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) for a six-year term. The PERB has the right to establish procedures regarding the negotiation of public employee-employer disputes and to foster conditions that minimize such disputes. The agency can also conduct hearings and engage in fact-finding regarding allegations of misconduct in employee and employer relations.

Unit determination

The Board is further permitted according to 205g "to conduct studies of problems involved in representation and negotiation, including, but not limited to (i) the problems of unit determination." Unit determination refers to what constitutes the 'unit' [union] of labor that is negotiating with a particular employer. For example, police officers and fire officers unions cannot unite with sanitation workers to negotiate a better contract with the city of New York.

Recognition procedures

According to Section 204-2, an employee organization must be certified or recognized as the exclusive representative of all the employees in the appropriate negotiating unit. The public employer is required to negotiate collectively with such employee organizations "in the determination of, and administration of grievances arising under, the terms and conditions of employment of the public employees as provided in this article, and to negotiate and enter into written agreements with such employee organizations in determining such terms and conditions of employment."

Scope of bargaining

The Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) is given the right to determine the appropriate scope of collective bargaining between representatives of employees and employers during negotiations, as part of the provisions of Section 205.

Union security

Public employees are allowed to unionize by law (and, indeed, it could be argued that the financial terms of the Taylor Law encourage them to do so).

Unfair labor practices

The PERB has broad authority over the recognizing, organizing, and negotiations process, and can step in at any time to counteract what it sees as improper labor practices by employers or employees. While it cannot determine the final settlement that is reached, it can determine what the mandatory bargaining issues are, and step in if it believes either side is negotiating in bad faith.

Question: What is the difference between states that have no collective bargaining policies, states that have non-comprehensive collective bargaining policies, and states that have comprehensive collective bargaining policies? Draw your answer from the text, and use examples in your answer.

According to the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) employees have the right to collectively bargain with employers and join unions. States have the right to define what constitutes collective bargaining. Recently, the state of Wisconsin gained a great deal of negative press because of its decision to strip most state workers of their collective bargaining rights. Policies vary between states as to the right to have 'closed shop' or mandatory union membership and dues within certain professions, and also the right of all classes of public employees to engage in collective bargaining.

For example, in New York State, public employees have collective bargaining rights, but certain classes of employees deemed to be essential personnel, such as police and firefighters must submit to mandatory arbitration before other classes of employees must. New York State employees, although they are not allowed to strike, are allowed to engage in comprehensive collective bargaining on most workplace issues and also to extract what effectively amounts to a penalty for non-membership. This is in contrast to other states, where the rights of unions to bargain may be quite limited and where unions may not be permitted to enforce workers to belong to a union or to extract a penalty for non-membership.