Unions came to government later than to private industry. Many early leaders, including Franklin Roosevelt, doubted that collective bargaining as practiced in private business could work in public service, where the employer is the public and pay is set by law. That view gave way in the 1960s and 1970s as states and the federal government granted bargaining rights, and public-sector unions became some of the largest labor organizations in the country.
This guide covers how government unions work at each level, the limits that set them apart from private unions, the strike ban, the recent legal and political changes, and the arguments on both sides.
President John Kennedy's Executive Order 10988 in 1962 first allowed federal employees to bargain collectively, and the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 wrote the system into law. The Federal Labor Relations Authority oversees elections and disputes, and mediators help resolve impasses. Unions may negotiate over schedules, telework, safety, and grievance procedures, but not over pay or benefits, which are set by Congress, often through the General Schedule. Membership is voluntary, and unions must represent all workers in a bargaining unit, members or not.
The 1978 law lets the President exclude agencies whose primary work involves national security. An executive order of March 27, 2025, used that authority to end bargaining at agencies covering roughly two-thirds of unionized federal workers, and later orders added more. Agencies including Veterans Affairs and the TSA canceled union contracts. Unions sued, and appeals courts allowed the orders to take effect while cases continued. The moves came alongside large workforce reductions and efforts to reclassify career jobs.
About a third of government workers belong to unions, a rate several times higher than in the private sector, and local government workers, especially teachers, police officers, and firefighters, have the highest rates of all. Government unions represent nurses at veterans hospitals, airport screeners, prison officers, Social Security claims workers, and many others. Most union members in the United States now work for government rather than private employers.
Supporters of government unions say they protect workers from political pressure and arbitrary discipline, help retain experienced staff, and give employees a voice in improving services. Critics say unions bargain with officials they help elect, drive up pension and labor costs, and make it harder to remove poor performers or carry out policy changes. Unions are also major political actors, spending heavily on campaigns and lobbying, which makes their role a recurring partisan issue.
State law governs unions for state and local workers, so rights differ sharply. Wisconsin began public-sector bargaining in 1959, and many states followed, while others, mostly in the South, bar or sharply limit it. Wisconsin's Act 10 in 2011 curtailed bargaining for most public workers and touched off mass protests and a recall election. In Janus v. AFSCME in 2018, the Supreme Court held that requiring nonmembers to pay fees violates the First Amendment, ending such fees in about two dozen states. Teacher strikes, illegal in many states, have nonetheless occurred in places such as West Virginia and Chicago.
Federal law makes it illegal for federal employees to strike. In March 1970 tens of thousands of postal workers walked off the job, and Congress responded with the Postal Reorganization Act, which let postal unions bargain over wages under the National Labor Relations Board, with binding arbitration instead of strikes. In August 1981 the air traffic controllers union struck, and President Ronald Reagan fired more than 11,000 controllers who refused to return, a moment that reshaped labor relations across the economy.
Learn more about the workforce these unions represent in civil servants vs. elected officials, see who keeps working in a funding lapse in who gets furloughed in a shutdown, or explore the fight over job protections in Schedule F and the fight over the civil service.