摘要：This Article explores the majoritarian implications of collective bargaining for public employees, focusing in particular on teachers. To critics, collective bargaining supplants the ordinary legislative and administrative processes for determining public policy such as the length of the school day, teacher personnel policies, class size, and many other topics. Critics argue that bargaining thus allows teacher unions to exert disproportionate control on these issues at the expense of the broader public. This Article first questions this critique of public sector collective bargaining. A robust system of collective bargaining need not empower unions to override the preferences of the public. Local legislatures must approve and fund labor agreements, and state laws have long defined a broad class of topics as “permissive” for bargaining, meaning that the parties can bargain on the topics only if both consent. Although governments and unions often bargain over permissive topics, the designation gives the government wide latitude to cease bargaining when mutually beneficial compromise appears unlikely, thereby shifting policy questions into the normal political process.
