Looking Out for Ourselves: Collective Bargaining in NC

Many UNC-Chapel Hill employees are big Tar Heel fans. They wear clothing and buy all kinds of consumer goods that are imprinted with our University logos. So here’s a trivia question for all you Tar Heel fans:

What is one important difference between a worker in the overseas factories where all this merchandise is manufactured and a state employee at the University? One big difference is that the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees has said that all of that merchandise must be manufactured in places where the workers who make it have the right to engage in collective bargaining, yet state employees in North Carolina who buy that merchandise are forbidden by law (N.C.G.S. 95-98) to do the same thing.

The summer of 2006 the workers at The University Of North Carolina composed an article as part of its yearly Employee Forum contribution and it spelled out basic information and education on collection bargaining. Administrators at the state-run school censured and stopped the article from appearing in the magazine.

In November of this year , students and workers protested - Barbara Gear, a transit worker and member of North Carolina Public Service Workers Union (UE Local 150), said, “We’re here to speak up. A lot of people don’t even know what collective bargaining is. Where I work, everyone is afraid. We live in fear that we’ll get fired for union talk, for being around union organizers. Things are real bad, but everyone’s afraid, no one wants to lose their job.”

The ILO (International Labor Organisation) had filed a complaint in Oct.06 - and now Mexico's government has called for immediate answers to questions on the progress in gaining collective bargaining rights for public sector workers in the US state of North Carolina.

The US, Mexico, and Canada share the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), in which a side accord, the North American Agreement on Labour Cooperation (NAALC), is being used to challenge the lack of labour rights in North Carolina.

All this because State Law NCGS 95-98 (which grew out of efforts to stop the Teamsters from organizing police and transportation workers in Charlotte in the late 1950s.) prevents any government agency—state, county, or local—from negotiating with an organized group representing its employees. This prevents these agencies from engaging in business practices as they see fit, and it prevents workers from joining forces to protect their rights.

House bill 1583 introduced by Dan Blue(D-Wake) , which would have repealed the longstanding prohibition on collective bargaining in the public sector in NC. , has come and gone without passing .