Labor Relations in the Public Sector, Third Edition

I teach collective bargaining & labor relations in the Master of Public Administration (MPA) program at the University of New Hampshire. Kearney's book is the sole comprehensive text on public sector labor relations available at this time. Its thorough coverage includes the history of public sector labor relations, the ins & outs of collective bargaining, the impacts on budgets and personnel policies, and much more. I've used it as the primary text in a graduate-level course, supplemented by journal articles and case studies. Several students remarked that the book was detailed yet readable, as well as realistic (students often catch on when an author has never been a practitioner of the subject matter). I recommend this book for courses in public sector labor relations, and it would be useful in most Public Administration programs. A good complement to this text is Najita and Stern's Collective Bargaining in the Public Sector: The Experience of Eight States, a reader of case studies that illustrate most of the concepts described by Kearney.