Stopping Public-Employee Strikes

"There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, at any time," declared Massachusetts' Governor Calvin Coolidge when he broke the Boston police strike in 1919. "A strike of public employees is unthinkable and intolerable," added President Roosevelt in 1937. On pain of one year's imprisonment, federal employees are forbidden even to belong to a union that advocates strikes; other bans against public-employee strikes are on the books in eleven states, ranging from New York to Hawaii. And even without specific laws, the country's courts have almost universally upheld Government authority and enjoined public-employees' strikes throughout U.S. history.

Despite all these precedents, New York City last week was paralyzed by a massive strike of public-transit workers (see THE NATION). As in other recent New York strikes involving teachers and welfare workers, no official dared invoke the Condon-Wadlin Act, the nation's toughest state antistrike statute. The law requires that all striking public employees be fired, forbids those that are rehired from getting pay raises for three years, and puts them on probation for five years. Since all this virtually guarantees that strikers will never go back to work, the law has rarely been invoked since it was passed in 1947. Meanwhile, the state has suffered more than 22 public-employees' strikes.

Political Pressures. Clearly, New York needs far more savvy in handling public employees; but so does the entire U.S. The country's 10.2 million civilian Government workers (24% of them federal) now comprise the largest single segment of the U.S. labor force. With state and local governments slated to hire 50% more workers, the public sector's share of the labor force will hit an estimated 20% by 1970. Meanwhile, having lost members in private industry, U.S. unions now regard public employees as a prime target--and already represent about 34% of them.

Some labor-law experts would allow strikes by "nonessential" public employees, such as Government clerks, while retaining the strike ban for such essential employees as policemen, firemen and public-transit workers. Indeed, Puerto Rico permits that distinction in its commonwealth constitution. One potential effect, of course, is that strikes might eventually be banned for private "essential" employees, such as defense workers.

Pioneering Steps. The consensus remains: public employees simply cannot strike. All this raises a new problem in labor law--how to bargain effectively with workers who cannot be allowed to walk off the job even though the very nature of public employment tends to spur strikes. In contrast to private industry, public employees deal with administrators who lack full power of the purse, and a strike may be the only way to impress those who control the money--mayors, governors, legislators. When the public employees happen to be vitally needed nurses, teachers, transit workers and the like, they have an unmistakable power to rouse public opinion against a public employer whose inability to settle a dispute casts him in a poor political light--or, conversely, to rouse public opinion against themselves.

So clear and present is the danger of miscalculation by either side that public-labor disputes cry out for improved collective-bargaining techniques--probably accompanied by strike injunctions enforced by whopping fines against defiant unions and their leaders. New York's former Mayor Robert F. Wagner took a pioneering step in what most experts consider the right direction when he ordered city agencies to "promote insofar as possible the practices and procedures of collective bargaining prevailing in private labor relations." New York's United Federation of Teachers, for example, now boasts a potent no-strike contract with the board of education that covers salaries, checkoffs, teaching conditions, grievance procedures and binding arbitration.

In 1962 President Kennedy took a further step with an executive order that bans federal-employee strikes while giving "exclusive" recognition to unions representing the majority of any federal agency's workers. Such unions already represent 700,000 federal employees (mostly postal workers); they bargain collectively with each individual agency --though not over such matters as wages and pensions, which remain congressional prerogatives. One problem, however, is that no one agency can handle all of its unionists' grievances. A postal worker's promotion is controlled by the Civil Service Commission, his wages by Congress, his working conditions by the General Services Administration.

Apart from the public, who is a Government worker's real employer? All this fractionalization persuades some labor lawyers that the real need is a central agency empowered to bargain for all federal agencies.

Facing Reality. Many states still barely tolerate the idea of any public employees' joining unions--and nearly all forbid police to do so. Even so, apart from the privilege of striking, most public employees now have almost the same rights as private employees in at least eight states--California, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Wisconsin. Such states have begun to use many techniques to promote bargaining--for example, fact-finding reports that rouse public pressure for settlement, binding arbitration on grievances arising from signed contracts, and advisory arbitration to settle new contract terms.

Nearly all labor-law experts feel that public employees cannot be handled by simply barring unions or outlawing strikes. To be sure, the presence of unions fosters strikes to some extent. And the federal antistrike law (unlike New York's Condon-Wadlin Act) has proved highly effective. In light of the public sector's enormous labor growth, however, the experts argue that strong laws alone will no longer do. Sound bargaining and judicious injunctions, they say, are the modern way to help political leaders avoid strikes and aid the public weal.

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