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50 Years Ago, JFK Opened Door for Federal Employees to Join Unions
Fifty years ago today, President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order opening the door for 2 million federal employees to join unions. His action set the stage for expanding these rights under Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter—a bipartisan recognition that federal employees should have a voice on the job.
Executive Order 10988 “might be the least known of the string of significant events that made the 1960s such crucial years in American history,” writes Georgetown University history professor Joseph McCartin—but it contributed to a wave of public-sector unionization that grew tenfold between 1955 and 1975, topping 4 million by the early 1970s.
It’s fitting that on this key anniversary, when we acknowledge the decades-long efforts of public employees to work for passage of laws such as EO 10988, that public employees and workers across Wisconsin have today sent a strong signal that they will never give up the struggle for their rights to bargain collecitvely for a middle-class life.
Read McCartin’s full op-ed here.
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4 Comments
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Nice way to win a election. Bad for taxpayers.
Government employees are taxpayers. But I guess you are right, everything would work so much better if all Federal, State and local government employees were minimum wage drones.
Let’s see, there were 2 mil federalemployees and about 200mil citizens, of which at least 50 mil could vote. If the 50 mil were dissatisified, how come they voted D in 60 and 64? I dunno.
Federal Employees are all citizens of the United States. The deserve democracy in the work place as much as anyone else. When EO 10988 came out it was predicted to be a desaster – especiall by the federal managers. What is never said publically is that through collective bargaining works suggestions as saved billions of taxpayer dollars and made the work places better everywhere there was a union. Federal workers still had to vote to accept their union but many federal workers were in unions before 1900. In fact Philadelphia Naval Shipyard was one of the first of the naval shipyards in the country to organize.
Over the years unions and management have worked pretty well together overall. Though 10988 allowed unions to have bargaining rights it was very limited it was later expanded to allow arbirtation of disputes which made a big difference to fairness in the workplace. It is something to celebrate.