Street-level bureaucrats won unprecedented control over their own working conditions through unions.

Evidence

In recent years public employees have benefitted considerably from the growth of public spending on street-level bureaucracies. 12 Salaries have increased from inadequate to respectable and even desirable. Meanwhile, public employees, with street-level bureaucrats in the lead, have secured unprecedented control over their work environments through the development of unions and union-like associations. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 96

Categorization

• XREF: Relevant to the reader’s speed-differential question: unions insulate discretionary routines from exogenous cultural change. — connects to: Public workers since 1960 traded client advocacy for higher pay and bargaining power — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 600; Worker political gains came at the expense of client-oriented service; Street-level bureaucrats are frontline workers exercising substantial job discretion