Strike Back. Joe Burns
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