Question

Contrast the rights of public employees with private sector employees to organize and bargain collectively. What authority do the unions have in each sector? Do you feel there is a tendency in your home state to favor the rights of public employees or the private sector? Are unions celebrated, or is the emphasis on the right to work? Share your rationale in at least 200 words.

Answer 1

Private sector is flexible to reduce the labor cost according to business conditions but that is not the case with public sector and the collective bargaining is strong in case of public sector. The increased labor cost through negotiation in public sector is managed mostly by increasing the taxes. The tax payers cannot opt out from paying tax which makes the public sector unions and collective bargaining more strong. But in case of private sectors if the labor cost is increased, the product price also increases and the customer may change the product or reduce the consumption which may lead to business loss. Hence private sector collective bargaining is weak which makes the authority of unions in both sectors unequal. The bargaining power of private unions is less compared to public unions. Moreover the public sector employees have the freedom to strike due to the job security offered by public sector and also their relationship with the political parties. But private sector employees enjoy less job security and hence are afraid of striking. I feel my home state have a tendency to favor public sector employee rights because the parties ruling states are in direct tie up with the public sector labor unions. They always favor the public sector employees and mostly forget to protect the rights of private sector employees. In my opinion nowadays the emphasis on right to work is celebrated and many employees prefer to work without getting enrolled in any of the unions. The competition in the job field helped this transition and the employees are more interested on working independently by utilizing the right to work principle which allows the employees to work with equal rights as union members without representing any unions.