Public Strikes Explained:
Why There Aren't More of Them
By Melissa Maynard
Stateline
Sept. 24, 2012
http://www.pewstates.org/projects/stateline/headlines/public-strikes-explained-why-there-arent-more-of-them-85899419275

The recent seven-day teacher strike in Chicago captured
the nation's attention for a host of reasons: the
high-profile personalities driving the standoff, the
size of the school district and sheer number of
inconvenienced families involved, the broader questions
about education reform that were at the core of the
dispute.

But the most remarkable thing about the strike may be
the fact that it happened at all. It was not only the
first strike by teachers in Chicago in a quarter of a
century, but the first big-city classroom strike
anywhere in the country since Detroit teachers struck
in 2006.

Public sector labor conflicts over collective
bargaining have been a mainstay of state politics in
the last couple of years. Still, the word strike hasn't
even been used as a threat in most of those clashes.

In this Explainer, Stateline examines the politics and
legal issues behind strikes by teachers and other
public employees.

How common are teacher strikes? According to a database
maintained by Mother Jones magazine, there have been
827 teacher strikes in the United States since 1968,
but they've become increasingly rare in the last
decade.

Pennsylvania alone accounts for the vast majority of
teacher strikes -- 740 of the total 827 -- but even
there, few strikes have occurred since 2007. A
Pennsylvania law passed in 1992 that provided
incentives for contract resolution has reduced the
prevalence of strikes: Before the law, the state
experienced an average of 27.6 teacher strikes per
year, but after the law, the average dropped to 8.6 per
year between 1992 and 2007.

Why aren't they more common? Public employees,
including teachers, have the formal right to strike in
only 11 states. In the other 39, strikes are against
the law, although they occasionally break out. Concerns
about strikes have long been used as a reason to
discourage public sector employees from unionizing and
obtaining collective bargaining rights.

This is in large part because of a massive 1919 police
strike that took place in Boston after the police
commissioner prohibited members of the force from
joining unions. "It led to anarchy in Boston," says
Martin Malin, director of the Institute for Law and the
Workplace at the Kent College of Law in Chicago. "There
was a massive crime wave. The specter of the Boston
police strike has dominated public policy on labor
relations ever since." President Ronald Reagan made
reference to the Boston Police Strike when he famously
fired 11,345 striking air traffic controllers in1981.

Concerns about public employee strikes thwarted the
development of collective bargaining statutes until the
1960s and 1970s. When Wisconsin became the first state
to allow collective bargaining for public employees in
1959, it included strong prohibitions on strikes. Other
states followed suit, outlining alternative processes
to strikes in cases of bargaining stalemate, including
mediation, fact-finding and interest arbitration.
Through these mechanisms, independent outsiders are
drawn into the disagreement to hear the facts and weigh
in, with varying degrees of authority. In the case of
interest arbitration -- which is particularly common for
police and firefighter unions -- the arbitrator is
allowed to make the final decision unilaterally after
hearing from both sides.

Even where strikes are illegal, they happen. State
statutes prohibiting strikes aren't always an effective
deterrent unless they include penalties or allow judges
to order strikers back to work. As it became clear
through illegal public sector strikes in the 1970s and
1980s that not all strikes would be as disastrous as
the Boston police strike, states such as Pennsylvania,
Illinois and Ohio began including a broad right to
strike in their collective bargaining statutes for
public employees.

Why don't public employee strikes happen more often in
the places where they are legal? Strikes often end
without an agreement but come with significant costs
for both sides. They can damage public opinion toward
both elected leaders and the public employees involved,
and bring real financial consequences for the strikers.

Strikes have been especially rare in the budget-cutting
environment that has been the reality in most states
for the past few years. This isn't because labor
relations are generally rosy -- far from it. But
striking public workers tend not to fare well in the
court of public opinion because the public expects them
to share in the widespread economic pain. "Strikes tend
to be won or lost on public support more than anything
else," says Joseph Slater, professor at the University
of Toledo College of Law. "[Workers] may rightly feel
put upon, but they have to be very leery of alienating
the public." Few politicians have been thrown out of
office for supporting cuts to public employee pay and
benefits in recent years, despite the toll those cuts
have taken on labor relations.

Many public sector union contracts include "no strike
clauses" as a condition of employment, even in states
where strikes are legal. In some cases, the terms of
the prior agreement remain in force even after a
contract expires until a new agreement is reached,
giving workers little incentive to negotiate but also
little motivation to strike.

How do public sector strikes differ from strikes by
private sector workers? The right to strike in the
private sector is governed by federal law and allowed
in all 50 states, while the right to strike exists in
the public sector only if granted by state law. The
conditions under which strikes are permissible and the
procedures required before a strike can actually happen
vary widely among states.

In private sector strikes, the motivations and
consequences for both parties are economic. The bottom
line will suffer for companies if employees don't get
back on the job -- and for employees if pay checks stop
showing up.

But in public sector strikes, the most powerful
consequences are political rather than economic. The
government will still be able to continue collecting
taxes if employees strike, but elected officials may
suffer at the polls if strikes make them seem like
incompetent leaders. If parents are personally
inconvenienced by a teacher strike, their reaction at
the voting booth may be even more dangerous to
incumbents.

Why do teachers strike more often than other public
employees? If most state agency personnel were to
strike, the public outcry wouldn't likely be strong
enough to force the government into concessions. At the
other end of the scale, police, firefighters and other
public employees whose strikes could have life-or-death
consequences aren't legally allowed to strike because
it is too dangerous.

Teachers occupy a middle ground on the spectrum of
"essential" to "nonessential" employees. If they stop
showing up to work, they will significantly
inconvenience a large number of voters to gain real
political traction. The Chicago teacher strike affected
350,000 students and their families -- a significant
proportion of the voting public. But neither public
safety nor public health was endangered.

Also, teacher strikes generally create cash-flow
problems rather than permanent financial damage for
striking teachers. Because of state requirements
governing how much time children have to spend in
school each year, days are usually tacked onto the end
of the school year as they would be for snowstorms or
other cancellations. In the end, teachers risk less of
their salaries through striking than other public
employees do. Even for teachers, however, the
confluence of political forces nearly always makes
striking a gesture of last resort.

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