Roberts Votes No on Bargaining Rights for Public Safety Workers

Another reason Senator Roberts needs to be retired....

Over the opposition of Kansas Senators Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback, the U.S. Senate moved a step closer to approving legislation that would protect the collective bargaining rights of tens of thousands of firefighters, police officers, emergency medical technicians and other public safety officers.

By a 69–29 vote on May 13, the Senate killed a filibuster led by several extreme anti-worker Republican senators against the workers’ rights bill. Eighteen Republicans joined all Democrats in backing the move to end the filibuster.

Some 20 states, including Kansas, do not fully protect the bargaining rights of firefighters, police officers and other first responders. Two states—Virginia and North Carolina—prohibit public safety employees from collectively bargaining. With final passage near certain, the only thing that stands in the first responders’ path to securing the workplace rights most other workers enjoy is a veto threat from the Bush administration.

But the Senate's veto-proof vote, coupled with last July’s 314–97 House vote, provides more than the two-thirds majority needed in each chamber to overturn a veto.

The bill, the Public Safety Employee-Employer Cooperation Act of 2007 (H.R. 980), guarantees first responders: * The right to join a union. * The right to have their union recognized by their employer. * The right to bargain collectively over hours, wages and terms and conditions of employment. * A mediation or arbitration process for resolving an impasse in negotiations. * Enforcement of the bill’s provisions through the courts.