Teamsters Local Union No. 214

o organize. Local 214 was chartered in 1966 as an exclusive “public sector” Teamster Local, and because of our involvement from the inception of the public sector law, became one of the pioneer public sector unions in the state. Very few other international unions were capable of or interested in representing public employees. It is only in recent years that traditional private sector international unions have become involved in the organization and representation of public employees to make up for their declining private sector membership and shrinking treasuries. In the 1960’s and early 1970’s it was not uncommon for many of the public sector bargaining units to go on strike even though prohibited by law. Many employers purposely provoked confrontations resulting in strikes, which they hoped would benefit them in their attempts to repeal P.E.R.A. Throughout the 1970’s and in the early part of the 1980’s, public employees throughout the country were viewed as second-class citizens. The wage and benefit levels of public employees were considerably below those of employees in comparable classifications in the private sector. The early 1980’s, however, brought about a shift in the economic structure of the middle class. Jobs traditionally held by what had become the “middle class American” in the private sector (i.e. Automation, robotics, and the inception of the computer age resulted in the permanent loss of thousands of jobs. Private sector downsizing continues even today, and has been assisted by federal legislation encouraging big businesses to buy foreign products and utilize cheaper labor in third-world countries. Large international unions, once representing 38 percent of the private sector work force in this country, have shrunk to half their original size and now represent only 11 percent of these workers. During the same period of time, as workers moved from the private to the public sector, membership in the public sector increased dramatically. Initially, the first public sector employees to seek representation under P.E.R.A. were employees working in labor and trade classifications. As the work force shifted from private to public sector, membership expanded to include all aspects of the public sector work force. Today, as a result of organized labor, public sector employees are paid, in most cases, comparable to that of private sector employees performing the same duties, and, for the most part, enjoy a greater benefit package than their private sector counterparts. Because of collective bargaining rights in the public sector, job security has also increased ten-fold. Today, as current trends in economic and governmental strategy promote downsizing governmental services through privatization, public sector membership in unions is growing at a phenomenal pace. Professional and administrative employees, previously uninterested in labor unions, are now seeking professional representation.