DE State Employees Win Collective Bargaining Rights

August 06, 2007

The tide cannot be stopped. Slowly but surely, public employees across the country are gaining a voice at the bargaining table. In Delaware, nearly 13,000 state workers won collective bargaining rights. Their fight to gain a voice at their job culminated when a bipartisan majority passed a bill in the state Senate and Gov. Ruth Ann Minner (D) signed the initiative into law. As AFSCME Council 81 Pres. Michael Begatto explains in this radio interview, this triumph marks the culmination of a 20-year struggle to win the right to bargain for a better future. Delaware is but the latest among a streak of recent wins for state workers nationwide. In Oregon, the state legislature passed a bill allowing public employees to join a union via card-check. Gov. Ted Kulongoski (D) signed it into law along with legislation codifying an executive order to grant bargaining rights to child care providers. New York, Kansas and Pennsylvania providers won collective bargaining shortly thereafter. In New Hampshire, majority sign-up for state workers became law while both the Massachusetts House and the Vermont House passed card-check bills earlier this year.