Public workers win right to bargain

Overturning a 60-year legal precedent, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that teachers and other public employees have a constitutional right to engage in collective bargaining with their government employers.

Although governments aren't bound to reach work agreements with labor unions, once they do, they cannot simply back out of the contracts, the Supreme Court said.

The court's 5-2 ruling overturned a 1947 Supreme Court decision that had construed a constitutional right to collective bargaining to apply only to private-sector employees. The court, by a unanimous decision, also overturned a 1982 decision that governments were free to disregard agreements made with employee unions.

The decision came in a labor dispute involving the Independence School District. But representatives for teachers' unions and school boards agreed it will have much broader implications.

Missouri has 68,500 teachers in 524 public school districts who could more effectively band together in unions to negotiate salaries, benefits and workplace rights with local school boards. All told, Missouri has more than 390,000 public-sector employees to whom the ruling could grant expanded collective bargaining powers, according to figures from the Department of Economic Development.

The ruling should have little impact in Southeast Missouri, where many public employees work without collective bargaining contracts. Dean Lynn, a captain in the Cape Girardeau Fire Department and president of the firefighters of Cape Girardeau Local 1084, said his is the only union among Cape Girardeau employees and firefighters work without a formal contract.

"Right now we don't have any organized groups, labor-type groups within the city," Lynn said. "I don't know where this might lead."

Jackson has no contracts and no unions, city administrator Jim Roach said. The most recent attempt to unionize any city workers in Jackson took place in the 1990s among electric utility workers, he said.

Despite having no unions, a ruling that political subdivisions must honor their contracts doesn't seem radical, Roach said. "If you have a contract, I would certainly think that both sides would want to honor it."

The president of the Missouri National Education Association, which represents about 33,000 teachers and school employees, praised the ruling as a "historic decision."

"What this decision does basically is lift the ban on collective bargaining for public employees," said Greg Jung, a fifth-grade teacher on leave from the Ritenour School District to serve as president of the union. "We believe it will result in a better school environment for our children."

Some school administrators, however, fear collective bargaining could drive up costs for salaries and benefits, potentially leaving less money for the classroom.

"This ruling has the potential to have drastic and expensive consequences for school districts and other public entities," said Brent Ghan, a spokesman for Missouri School Boards' Association.

Republican Gov. Matt Blunt decried it as "a terrible ruling" and "reckless decision" that could force cities and school districts to raise taxes and open the door to the threat of strikes by public-sector employees.

"This is yet another example of judicial activism, where a court's action oversteps the bounds of prudent constitutional interpretation," Blunt said in a written statement.

Staff writer Rudi Keller contributed to this report.