Wikipedia: Public-sector trade union history in the US - The
first strikes by government employees took place in the 1830s,
but the unions generally bypassed government employees because
they were controlled mostly by the patronage system before the
arrival of civil service. After the fiasco of the Boston Police
Strike in 1919, which was suppressed by Governor Calvin
Coolidge, and the opposition of President Franklin D. Roosevelt
to labor unions in the federal government, unionization remained
uncommon among government employees. Roosevelt once described
that: The Wagner Act of 1935, and subsequent legislation,
applied only to employees in the private sector, since the
federal government could not interfere in state government. The
major exception was the emergence starting in the 1920s of
unions of public school teachers in the largest cities; they
formed the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). In suburbs and
small cities, the National Education Association (NEA) became
active, but it insisted it was not