Unions press bill to allow review of management titles they say strip workers of bargaining rights

Theresa McGoldrick, national executive vice president for the National Association of Government Employees, and other union witnesses asked the Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development to advance legislation (H 20-68 / S 13-06) that would require the Division of Labor Relations to review certain management classifications (M1–M5) and determine whether they should remain outside bargaining units.

McGoldrick described a pattern she calls “backdoor union busting,” saying that positions historically in bargaining units have been reposted as “management” with “maybe 1 slight difference” and that the statutory definition of manager is narrower than employers use in practice. “Under current law, if a union asks for clarification on a management title, the division simply refuses to review it regardless of the actual job description,” she said.

A second witness who spoke at length explained the history of Chapter 150E (the public sector collective-bargaining law) and said when the law was implemented in the 1970s there were fewer than 2,000 managers and more than 80,000 bargaining-unit employees. The witness said the executive-branch workforce has shrunk while the number of management titles has grown, producing a current ratio the witness estimated at about one manager for every 10 employees rather than the earlier one-to-40 ratio.

Lindsey Kenny of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO also testified in support of S 13-06 / H 20-68 and said the bill “ensures that workers misclassified as management are still protected under the provisions of chapter 150E unless DLR finds an employee or job was properly classified.”

Supporters asked the committee to report the bill favorably; the hearing recorded testimony but included no committee votes on the measure during this session.