by James Parks, May 31, 2007

After a 60-year fight, public employees in Missouri finally regained the right to bargain collectively with their employers. In a historic decision, the state Supreme Court on Tuesday voted to throw out a 1947 ruling that granted collective bargaining only to workers in the private sector. The justices also overturned a 1982 decision that allowed public employers, such as school districts and police departments, to ignore written agreements with employees.

Herb Johnson, secretary-treasurer of the Missouri AFL-CIO, says workers are “absolutely delighted,” with the decision. 

This decision rights a wrong that was created in 1947, just two years after the state constitution was ratified. This more or less frees the slaves and gives public employees equal status with their brothers and sisters in the private sector. It’s good for Missouri. It was good in 1945 when it was put in the state Constitution and things have finally been set right. We couldn’t be happier. 

“It’s a pretty exciting day for us,” Dee Ann Aull, spokeswoman for the Missouri National Education Association (MNEA), told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The MNEA filed an appeal with the state Supreme Court on behalf of employees of the Independence (Mo.) School District.

For 60 years, we fought to win back that right. From here on out, this means that districts no longer only have to voluntarily negotiate with us. This gives teachers an absolute right to sit at the bargaining table.

Missouri has more than 390,000 public-sector employees who could be affected by the ruling. Jeff Mazur, political director for AFSCME Council 72 in Missouri, says the ruling is

 …a common sense reading of the state constitution, which we have been lacking for 60 years. We finally have a pro-employee, pro-worker reading of the constitution. Our position all along has been that the constitution protects the right of workers to bargain, whether they’re in the private or public sector. The Supreme Court decision vindicates that view.

The 1945 Missouri Constitution, under a heading of “organized labor and collective bargaining,” states: “That employees shall have the right to organize and to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing.” In 1947, the state Supreme Court ruled that provision applied only to the private sector.

Chief Justice Michael Wolff, who wrote Tuesday’s opinion, said the constitution’s guarantee that workers have the right to bargain collectively “is clear and means what it says.” 

Agreements that the school district made with employee groups are to be
afforded the same legal respect as contracts made between the district and individuals, although public employees—unlike their private-sector counterparts—are not permitted to strike.

The decision makes Missouri the 28th state to allow collective bargaining for public employees.

The right of public employees to bargain received a boost in April when the U.N. International Labor Organization (ILO) issued an unprecedented ruling that the United States failed to uphold its obligations, as a member state of the ILO, to protect the internationally recognized rights of public employees in North Carolina to freedom of association and collective bargaining.

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