Public Sector

Human resource professionals in the public sector face many specialized issues foreign to the private sector arena. For example, public employees enjoy a unique panoply of constitutional and civil rights against their employers, supervisors, and co-workers. Moreover, the fastest growing area of unionization in the United States is in public employment. Up to 50% of public employees are now covered by collective bargaining agreements. This is a vastly greater percentage than in private employment. Labor relations in the public sector presents novel questions not faced in private sector collective bargaining, because the public good and other public interests are at stake. The contours of public sector bargaining are still being developed as the landscape of public sector bargaining continues to be explored by state legislatures, administrative agencies and the courts.