ALEC: 40 Years Of Attacks
For over 40 years, the American Legislative Executive Council (ALEC) has worked hard to take away collective bargaining rights from cops, firefighters, and teachers.
After the recent elections, Republicans will be in control of 23 state governments. That is likely to bode poorly for labor unions, especially those operating in the public sector, which have become a target of conservative state lawmakers in the past few years.
Alex Hertel-Fernandez, a Ph.D. student at Harvard University in government and social policy, writing for The Washington Post, makes the following points:
“In the wake of the Great Recession, state legislators introduced hundreds of bills to curtail the right of public-sector unions to collectively bargain and participate in politics, and Republican governors succeeded in scaling back the organizing ability of public workers in several states. These conservative advances are significant because the public sector remains one of the last strongholds of union strength in the United States.
“Despite the recent victories that conservatives have enjoyed against public unions, it would be a mistake to assume that this is a new offensive by the right. As I show in my research, the conservative movement has long targeted public-sector labor unions. Indeed, it was fear of a rapidly growing public-sector labor movement in the 1970s and 1980s that motivated some conservative leaders to invest in developing new organizations that could match the power and influence that public unions – especially those representing public school teachers – were perceived as having in state politics.”
“There is a broader lesson from this example that is instructive for understanding the dynamics of civic participation. Successful political movements, whether on the left or the right, require long-term investments in organizations that can develop and promote policy ideas over many decades.
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