SALT Statement on the Attacks Against Public Sector Employees

SALT condemns the attacks on public employees in Wisconsin and nationwide as a challenge to democracy and the human right to freedom of association and collective bargaining.  We urge legislatures in each state where these bills have been introduced to consider seriously the profound implications that the denial of collective bargaining will have on all public employees and the threat it poses to the academic freedom of university and law teachers in their states.

In 1948, the United States cast a vote in the UN General Assembly to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).  The UDHR is now generally accepted on its own terms: as a “common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.”  That instrument provides that everyone has the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of their interests.  The United States, as a member of the International Labor Organization, is obligated to follow the core ILO Conventions on freedom of association “without any distinction whatsoever” (Convention 87) and to “encourage and promote” the practice of voluntary collective bargaining (Convention 98).  State legislatures should also conform their laws to the UDHR and other international obligations.

The climate in Wisconsin and in those other states that are attempting to roll back decades of successful and peaceable resolution of labor disputes through collective bargaining has already led to threats to academic freedom.  Using state public records laws, various attempts have been made to obtain private communications that contained the words “union” and “collective bargaining,” among others.  These fishing expeditions are patently overbroad and a waste of the very state resources that are supposedly imperiled by collective bargaining.

SALT has many members at public law schools in states where collective bargaining is under threat and where law faculty are also unionized.  While many of the protections for security of employment and academic freedom may exist for tenured faculty at state institutions, SALT also counts those on long term contracts and adjunct faculty in its ranks.  Indeed, in this age of threats on tenure and public employee free speech, collective bargaining represents an important protection to maintain and improve the quality of legal education.

Download the statement here.  April 18, 2011

May 26, 2011 Update:  The New York Times reports: "Wisconsin's law taking away nearly all collective bargaining rights from most public workers was struck down Thursday by a circuit court judge but the ruling will not be the final say in the union fight that brought tens of thousands of protesters to the Capitol earlier this year.

The state Supreme Court has scheduled arguments for June 6 to decide whether it will take the case and Republicans who control the Legislature could also pass the law a second time to avoid the open meeting violations that led to the judge's voiding the law Thursday."