who worked for the government and what they did. Many states even had laws on the books that forbade government workers from joining unions. Even in places where joining a union was legal, union rights were highly restricted. Over the course of the 1960s and early 1970s, however, there was a largely unnoticed “rights revolution.” Public-employee unions won the right to organize and bargain collectively — a legally enforced process that determines binding contractual agreements for the terms and conditions of employment — with various units of government. Today, all but 12 states have collective bargaining for at least some public servants (usually those in the protective services, such as police and firefighters), and in only five states is public-sector collective bargaining completely proscribed. The growth of public-employee unions surged. By 1980, 36 percent of public employees belonged to unions — a figure that has remained roughly stable ever since. Yet disparities in state and local laws mean that the percentage varies widely from state to state. New York is at the top of the heap with 69 percent of its state employees in unions, while many Southern states have membership rates below 10 percent.
