Inside
MEETING NO TICES
See
Page 4
V olume 108
Number 11
J une 1, 2007
P ortland
Ramifications of ‘81 PATCO strike still being felt
Georgetown professor
tells Pacific Northwest
Labor History Assoc. of
the broad impact the
strike had on labor
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
Historian Joseph McCartin set out to
study the 1981 air traffic controllers
strike, and ended up knee-deep in a his-
torical mystery: What caused the sud-
den death, or near-disappearance, of the
strike?
After 1980, American workers
stopped going on strike. The year be-
fore, there had been 235 major strikes
(strikes of more than 1,000 workers), in
which over a million workers took part.
Last year there were 20, involving just
70,000 workers.
McCartin, associate professor of his-
tory at Georgetown University in Wash-
ington, D.C., is writing a book about the
air traffic controllers’ strike, in which
President Ronald Reagan fired 11,359
federal employees. It was the symbolic
beginning of an era of union-busting
and permanent replacement of strikers.
Though work on his book is still under
way, McCartin shared his conclusions
May 12 with a Portland audience of
amateur and professional labor histori-
ans at the annual meeting of the Pacific
Northwest Labor History Association.
McCartin said overwhelmingly, the
members of the Professional Air Traf-
fic Controllers Organization (PATCO)
were white male ex-military, having
learned their profession in the armed
services. They were among the highest-
paid federal employees, and had skills
that it took at least three years to ac-
quire.
Their union was politically conser-
vative, and backed Ronald Reagan in
the 1980 presidential election. They
wanted the Federal Aviation Adminis-
tration to agree to better working condi-
tions, better pay and a shorter work-
week. Reagan, a former leader of the
Screen Actors Guild, told them he un-
derstood their grievances.
But they came to feel he betrayed
their trust. FAA didn’t budge in contract
negotiations. It is illegal for federal em-
ployees to strike, but others had done so
without repercussions. When PATCO
members struck on Aug. 3, 1981, Rea-
placed by Democratic Mayor
gan told them to return to work
Maynard Jackson after a 48-
within 48 hours or be fired and
hour ultimatum.
permanently banned them from
Looking at the statistics,
federal service.
the pattern is unmistakable.
They thought their strike
From 1947 to 1977, the strike
would bring commercial aviation
had held steady. American
to a halt, and that public opinion
workers were surpassed only
would not tolerate it. But one in
by Italy and Finland in
10 strikers crossed the picket
the number of work-
line, and kept airport con-
days per year lost to
trol towers operating
strikes. The 1950s
alongside managers
were the most
and military con-
strike-prone decade,
trollers. And the public
JOSEPH McMARTIN
with an average of
rallied around Reagan
352 major work
for standing up to so-
called “union blackmail,” McCartin stoppages a year. The 1960s averaged
283 a year, and the 1970s averaged 289.
said.
And then it dropped, dramatically to 83
It was a disaster for labor.
But for McCartin, the PATCO strike a year on average in the ’80s, 35 a year
was not a singular, exceptional event. It in the ’90s, and 23 a year so far in the
was the most prominent example of a ’00s. February 2003 was historic, says
pattern. McCartin found a remarkably McCartin — the first month, since the
similar strike in 1977 in Atlanta, when Bureau of Labor Statistics started keep-
about 1,300 sanitation workers repre- ing track in 1947, that not a single strike
sented by the American Federation of of more than 1,000 workers was begun
State, County and Municipal Employ- anywhere in America.
For McCartin, understanding why
ees (AFSCME) were permanently re-
workers stopped striking is an intrigu-
ing historical puzzle — and may be the
key to reviving labor.
McCartin has come up with several
explanations.
One is the example of the PATCO
strike itself. Every city had an airport. It
was the most widely publicized strike
since World War II. So it was a defeat
felt all over. It showed the impotency of
the labor movement. Workers saw what
could happen, and employers felt that
permanently replacing strikers had been
legitimated by the president of the
United States.
So permanent replacement became
a much more common response to
strikes. The U.S. Supreme Court had
ruled in 1938 that strikers couldn’t be
fired for striking, but could be “perma-
nently replaced.” Of course, that
stripped the hard-won legal right to
strike of much of its meaning. But em-
ployers seldom used the right to perma-
nently replace strikers, because it was
considered unfair and draconian by the
public. Before 1980, employers hired
permanent replacements in less than 2
A strike by air traffic controllers on Aug. 3, 1981 led to a showdown with President Ronald Reagan: He gave them 48
hours to return to work or be fired. The air traffic controllers didn’t blink, and 11,359 were fired. It was the symbolic
beginning of an era of union-busting and permanent replacement of strikers that has continued to this day.
percent of strikes. In the 1980s, they
used permanent replacements in more
than 14 percent of strikes. And adding
to the psychological impact on workers,
permanent replacement was often a fea-
ture of big highly-publicized strikes —
Hormel, Phelps-Dodge, International
Paper, Greyhound. So workers came to
believe that if they struck, they would
lose their jobs.
Their willingness to strike was also
hit hard by the bad economy. Unem-
ployment reached a post-war high of
9.7 percent in 1982, which meant that
in theory, other workers were ready to
take strikers’ jobs. The poorest workers
were more desperate: The minimum
wage was not increased at all from 1981
to 1990.
Deindustrialization and globaliza-
tion picked up speed in the 1980s. Basic
manufacturing — labor’s stronghold
and the birthplace of the mass strike as
a vehicle for workers to get a greater
share of increasing productivity — was
more and more headed overseas. Con-
tainerization was making it much eas-
ier to ship goods, meaning that workers
in different parts of the globe were now
in competition with each other. The cas-
cade of U.S. plant closings and mass
layoffs that began in 1980s have never
stopped to this day.
And deregulation, begun under Pres-
ident Jimmy Carter, had an effect, in-
troducing competition into highly regu-
lated and densely union industries.
Airlines were deregulated in 1978, fol-
lowed by trucking in 1980, which un-
dermined the Teamsters master freight
agreement.
The U.S. had its first trade deficit in
1971, but deficits shot up after 1982,
and even more after 1997.
Finally, McCartin says, there’s been
a shift in the labor movement brought
on by the emergence of public-sector
union power. From 1955 to 1975, the
number of public-sector union workers
rose 10-fold. By the end of the 1970s,
public-sector workers were more likely
to be union than private-sector workers.
And that affected the public’s percep-
tion of strikes.
“Striker replacement was seen as un-
fair and divisive by the majority,” Mc-
Cartin said, “but when it comes to pub-
lic-sector strikes, the public held a
slightly different view. Private-sector
strikes were against profit-seeking cor-
(Turn to Page 6)