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3. THE BACKLASH AGAINST PUBLIC EMPLOYEE UNIONISM AND THE DECLINE OF THE STRIKE

As the US economy sputtered in the post-Watergate era, a backlash developed against public employee unions. With workers continuing to press wage demands and strike repeatedly while the economy suffered, unionized employees were now being painted as overpaid and taking advantage of taxpayers. In this anti-union climate, many politicians—both Democrat and Republican—realized that political gain could be had by getting tough on public employee unions. As Joseph McCartin explains, “By the mid-1970s, government officials at all levels dealt with the growing fiscal crisis through budget cutbacks, hiring freezes, and hardline union negotiations. As often as not, the austerity programs were instituted by Democratic administrations once allied to the public sector union movement.”¹ Pollster Louis Harris told the US Conference of Mayors in 1975 “that the way to get elected was to get tough on public workers.”² Some mayors even tried to goad public workers into striking in order to create fights with unions they were now confident they could win. For example, the mayor of Utica, New York complained to Business Week in 1975 that “I can’t get anyone to go on strike against me. I think city government needs a showdown with the unions.”³

The shift in the bargaining climate is best demonstrated by the changing fortunes of sanitation workers in the South. During the 1960s, the struggles of southern sanitation workers were embraced by the civil rights movement. In cities such as Memphis and Charleston, civil rights leaders were arrested on the picket lines while supporting striking workers. Even as late as 1970, when the white mayor of Atlanta threatened to replace striking sanitation workers, civil rights organizations lined up to oppose the move.⁴ With the civil rights movement still strong, and the memory of urban rebellion fresh in the minds of local officials, compromise was the preferred method of settling disputes. Joseph McCartin writes about how the sanitation strikes that erupted between 1968 and 1972 in cities such as Cleveland, Miami, Washington DC, Lubbock, Texas and Atlanta “were typical of a new pattern of municipal labor-management conflict…During each of these strikes, officials had the power to replace striking sanitation workers. Yet in each case officials either decided not to use this tactic or, after attempting to replace strikers, dropped the effort under pressure.”⁵

By the mid-1970s, however, with the country facing a fiscal crisis, “‘standing up to’ public sector unions became the litmus test of a politician’s sense of fiscal responsibility.” This was particularly true for Democratic politicians, “who had to fight the charge that they would ‘give away the store’ to their labor allies.”⁶ As an example, former civil rights activist Maynard Jackson had been elected Atlanta’s first black mayor in 1973. Facing reelection in 1977, Jackson wanted to win over middle class whites and the business community. Like many cities during this period, Atlanta faced a budget shortfall. When primarily black sanitation workers struck on March 28, 1977, Jackson took a tough stand, firing the workers and declaring the strike over. Jackson then began hiring replacement workers, rebuffing an offer by the union to end the strike if the fired workers could get their jobs back. Unlike in previous strikes, the major organizations in the African American community lined up against the striking workers. Isolated from allies in the civil rights movement, and with no strong labor support behind them, the union surrendered and ended the strike. While most of the striking workers managed to get their jobs back at their old rate of pay, the union had been dealt a crushing defeat.⁷

Following the failure of the sanitation strike in Atlanta, other Democratic mayors followed suit, with striking sanitation workers fired in San Antonio, Texas and Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Even Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, a former union organizer in a union stronghold city, threatened to fire striking sanitation workers if they did not end a wildcat strike.⁸ After workers represented by AFSCME struck in August 1978 despite a court injunction, Young ordered city officials to draw up termination papers for the 3,500 employees. Under threat of termination, the striking workers relented and ended their walkout. Half a decade before Ronald Reagan fired air traffic controllers in a move that put the government’s stamp on union-busting, Democratic mayors were already firing public employees for striking.

Union Busting and the PATCO Strike

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan famously fired over 11,000 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) for conducting an illegal strike, an action that is seen as signaling the federal government’s support of union-busting. Reagan’s firing of PATCO workers initiated a tougher approach to public employee strikes by the federal government, and helped dampen strike enthusiasm among public sector workers in the decades to come.

The experience of PATCO from the mid-1960s through the 1981 strike in many ways tracks the trajectory of the public employee labor movement. The union traces its origins to employee efforts in the aftermath of a December 1960 midair aircraft collision over Brooklyn, New York that killed 134 people. Concerned that the Federal Aviation Authority was deflecting blame from fundamental problems with the nation’s air traffic system, the air traffic controllers began networking and organizing. Initially turning to a federal employees union, the National Association of Government Employees, in the mid-1960s the controllers took a more militant turn and began looking to form their own organization. Aided by legendary trial lawyer F. Lee Bailey, the controllers formed PATCO in 1968.

At the core of PATCO’s formation were militant job actions, including slowdowns and sickouts. Joseph McCartin writes that, “Between 1972 and 1977, PATCO emerged as the most militant, most densely organized union in any bargaining unit of the nation’s largest employer, the U.S. government.”⁹ In 1968, the union engaged in a slowdown dubbed “Operation Air Safety.” The following year, frustrated by the FAA’s refusal to follow through on commitments made in the wake of the slowdown, the controllers conducted a sickout. In response, the FAA cracked down on the union, cancelling dues check-off and leaves of absences for union officials and engaging in retaliatory transfers. Choosing to fight rather than back down, one-quarter of the nation’s air traffic controllers participated in a strike in the spring of 1970, thinly disguised as a sickout. Despite incredible pressure, including threats of termination, lack of support from the pilot’s union, and injunctions, the strikers held out for nineteen days. The strike did not end well, with the firing of eighty controllers and none of the union’s demands met (the workers were later rehired in a deal with President Richard Nixon).

Despite this setback, PATCO rebounded and managed to negotiate its first collective bargaining agreement in 1973. This contract was in many ways the high water mark for PATCO, as with many public sector unions, bargaining became increasingly difficult as the 1970s wore on. By the late 1970s, the union was increasingly bumping heads with the Carter administration, which had been taking provocative action against the controllers, including canceling an early retirement program, rescinding a safety immunity program, and refusing to address pay, which was the number one issue for the union membership.¹⁰ Frustrated and angered by the government’s actions, support for a strike began building within the organization.

During the negotiations for a new contract, Ronald Reagan took office in January 1981. By threatening to strike, PATCO was able to reach an agreement with Reagan, “winning approval from a conservative president for a contract that far exceeded anything the federal government had offered a union before.”¹¹ Although federal law does not permit negotiations over wages, PATCO was able to secure a pay increase, night differential and other improvements. The level of hostility against the government was too high among union members, however, and the contract was rejected by 95 percent of the membership. Even though the settlement contained impressive gains, opponents focused on the failure to win some of the more ambitious demands, such as a thirty-two hour work week.

On August 3, 1981, PATCO workers began the first officially sanctioned national strike against the federal government. Previous federal worker strikes had been local affairs or wildcat actions, such as the 1970 postal strike, which had not been supported by the national union leadership. The PACTO strike, in contrast, was an undisguised strike called by the national union which directly challenged the authority of the federal government. Unfortunately, PATCO leaders failed to understand that the ground was shifting beneath the feet of public employees, with an increasingly vocal conservative movement declaring war on public employee unions. In fact, many conservative organizations complained that Reagan had gone too far by agreeing to the terms of the rejected PATCO contract in the first place. Drawing a line in the sand, Reagan set a deadline for the strike to end, and when the striking PATCO workers failed to meet that deadline, he fired over 11,000 air traffic controllers.

Today, many point to the PATCO strike as the root cause of the employer offensive against workers in the 1980s. This is not accurate. While PATCO greatly contributed to the union-busting atmosphere, management’s war against labor was going to happen regardless, as employers had become increasingly aggressive in the late 1970s against both private and public sector workers. The falling rate of corporate profits, pro-management labor law, and the growth of right-wing ideology all developed independent of the PATCO strike. The firing of the PATCO strikers was a dramatic indicator of the new terrain, rather than the creation of it.

Cooperation Instead of Confrontation

As the bargaining climate continued to worsen for public workers in the 1980s, many public employee unionists decided that a policy of cooperation was the best way to move forward. With most public employee unions now favoring participation in electoral politics and behind the scenes lobbying over the confrontational tactics of the previous two decades, public employee strike levels dropped dramatically. Public sector strike activity reached its peak in 1979, with 593 strikes nationwide. Those levels quickly plunged, however, dropping to a mere seven strikes in 1982.¹² In sharp contrast to the hundreds of public employee strikes during the 1970s, from 1988 to 1998 there were an average of only 6.5 public employee strikes per year.¹³ None of this is to say that the strike completely disappeared during this period. State workers struck in Minnesota in 1981 and 2001. Transit workers continued to strike, in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, among other cities. Although at lower levels, teachers continued to strike in states such as Pennsylvania and Vermont. However, for the most part, the confrontational tactics of the 1960s and 1970s were over.

In addition to unions’ newly found belief in cooperation over confrontation, there are several other reasons for the decline of public employee strike activity in the 1980s and 1990s. First, the decline of public worker strikes tracked the overall decline of strikes in the private sector. Historically, public employee strike levels have been highest when other workers were striking as well. During the 1980s, private sector strike activity plummeted. Second, a more aggressive employer response made many unions think twice about striking, with President Ronald Reagan’s firing of PATCO workers the most well-known example of this new hardline approach. Finally, in response to the illegal strike wave of the 1960s and 1970s, laws in many states improved the collective bargaining process. As a result, as of 2011, thirty-one states provided some form of interest arbitration for public workers.¹⁴ Under interest arbitration, a neutral arbitrator makes the final decision of what is included in a contract. By providing a mechanism to settle contracts, interest arbitration reduced strike levels.

Furthermore, in response to the strike wave of the 1960s and 1970s, many states passed laws regulating bargaining by public workers. By 1999, thirty-four states had laws on the books providing for collective bargaining, while another six states authorized some form of representation.¹⁵ These laws varied widely in terms of which workers were covered, the subjects of bargaining that were permitted, and whether or not workers could strike or utilize binding arbitration. In general though, these laws helped regularize labor relations in the public sector. Whereas in the early days of collective bargaining, unions were free to bring forward matters of policy and issues of concern to the community such as classroom size, under the new framework, bargaining was often restricted to wages and other narrow working conditions. In addition, unlike the heady days of the 1960s and 1970s, negotiations were often conducted behind closed doors with little membership participation. Bargaining became routine, and many unions embraced the concept of labor-management cooperation.

This seeming stability, however, masked increasing problems for public sector workers. Just as a segment of the right-wing never accepted bargaining in the private sector and worked for decades to gut the right to strike, similar opposition focused on undermining public sector bargaining. Spurred by libertarian law professor Sylvester Pestro and his anti-public employee Public Service Research Council, these anti-public employee union organizers merged with the tax revolt movement to help propel Ronald Reagan into office in 1980.¹⁶ Bashing public employee unions was very much part of their message.

This ascendant conservative movement attracted the support of powerful funders who over the course of the next two decades built up a network of right-wing foundations and think tanks. Years before he was propelled onto the national scene during the upsurge in Wisconsin, far-right billionaire David Koch was funding and building his own conservative empire. The son of one the founders of the far right-wing John Birch Society, Koch ran for vice president in 1980 on the Libertarian Party ticket. Over the next two decades, Koch would help create a web of right-wing organizations which increasingly targeted public employees.

By and large, public employee unions attempted to temper this conservative onslaught by moderating their demands and avoiding confrontation. Initially, this strategy of lying low and engaging in politics produced acceptable results, as public employee unions for the most missed the vicious anti-employer assault of the 1980s and 1990s. While the percentage of private sector workers covered by collective bargaining agreements dropped from 23.3 percent in 1977 to 7.3 percent in 2012, public employee levels remained fairly constant during the period, dropping only from 40.1 percent to 39.6 percent.¹⁸ And while most private sector unions have lost defined benefit pension plans and seen increased healthcare costs, public sector unions have largely maintained better retirement and healthcare benefits.

However, this period of seeming stability for public sector unions was, in reality, the calm before the storm. In 2003, Richard Hurd of Cornell University perceptively sounded the alarm in a series of articles about the coming crisis of public employee unionism, arguing that it would be a mistake “to conclude that public sector unions are strong, stable, and immune to the external and internal influences that have brought private sector unions to their knees.”¹⁹ In the decade since the publication of these articles, Hurd has proven to be correct and then some, as public sector unions have faced an all-out assault on multiple fronts, including attacks on their collective bargaining rights, wages and pensions.

The Future of Public Employee Militancy

The legislative attacks on public employee bargaining in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and elsewhere over the past few years have clearly demonstrated that the ideology of cooperation adopted by many public employee unions over the past thirty years does not work.

Joseph Slater, who has extensively studied the attacks on public employee unions, offers a sampling of the public employee bashing currently popular with many conservative pundits and politicians:

Thus, for example, a Wall Street Journal editorial last spring made the remarkable claim that ‘America’s most privileged class are public union workers.’ The New Republic titled an article, ‘Why Public Employees are the New Welfare Queens.’ Republican politicians began echoing these sentiments. ‘We have a new privileged class in America,’ said Indiana Governor, Mitch Daniels, who rescinded state workers’ collective bargaining power on his first day in office in 2006. ‘We used to think of government workers as underpaid public servants. Now they are better paid than the people who pay their salaries.’²⁰

This rhetorical attack against public employee unions has been matched by a concerted legislative war on public employee bargaining, the most high-profile of which have been in Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan. Despite the protests of tens of thousands of Badger State residents, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed a restrictive public employee bargaining law in 2011 eliminating bargaining rights for certain groups of public workers such as University of Wisconsin employees, barring interest arbitration, limiting bargaining to wages, limiting dues collection, and requiring union re-certification. In Ohio, similar legislation was signed into law, but rescinded by a referendum. Michigan passed a controversial law allowing emergency managers to be appointed and other statutes barring union dues collection and limiting the subjects of bargaining for school employees.

These were not the only states where public employees have faced restrictions on their bargaining rights. In Massachusetts—a “blue” state—legislators passed a law which “makes it easier for local government employers to make changes in health insurance”; Indiana legislation “limits the scope of bargaining for teachers to wages and benefits”; legislation in Illinois limits the subjects of bargaining for teachers and imposed onerous rules on teachers for strike votes; and Nebraska changed the rules on interest arbitration to be more favorable to employers.²¹ Public employees in Idaho, Nevada, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Tennessee also saw legislation weakening their bargaining rights. While these attacks have been primarily sponsored by Republican politicians, the attack on Illinois teacher bargaining rights and the Massachusetts legislation came from Democrat-controlled legislatures.