Law Commons^™

A Few Observations About The Curious State Of Massachusetts Labor Law: Public-Sector Unions After Janus, Maria O'Brien

Faculty Scholarship

This essay focuses on this hurried, even panicked response to Janus in Massachusetts and evaluates the likely outcome that encouraging a public union to treat member employees in one way and non-member employees in a distinctly less generous way will have for employees and the unions. I begin, in Part II, by noting (and explaining) the first and most apparent oddity in this story: why is an employer - i.e. the state - rushing to help its putative, arms-length bargaining partners? In Massachusetts, there are many different public-sector unions. School teachers, ¹³ firefighters,¹⁴ clerical workers, ¹⁵ state and local …