12
Can Public Employee Strike
Be Avoided?
For 50 days, Detroit, “The Motor
.^C'ity,” /was stalled.
During thattime, the*3,700 dity em
ployees who operate Detroit’s ground
transportation system were out on
strike for higher pay, and not a bus-
wheel turned.
As a result two million citizens of
Detroit found out hdw badly too many
private cars can choke a city’s streets,
how business suffers when shoppers,
are forced tb stay away, and what a
staggering problem it is to get 230,000
production workers to work.
Detroit’s citizens did Jhave one small
consolation, however: The strike was
illegal.
Michigan’s Hutchinson Act, not yet
tested in the courts, was designed to
punish striking municipal workers
with immediate dismissal. If re-hired,
they faced a loss of seniority and pen
sion rights. Despite this, the law
proved no deterrent, and the willing
ness of municipal employee groups to
buck stringent legislation is not con
fined to Detroit; j
In 1950, city employees in Yonkers,
New York, defied the state’s Condon-
Wadlin act 3 probably the most dras
tic of its kind on the books. New York
City’s 44,000 transport workers went
Yonkers employees one better: with a
token strike of 8,000 non-operating
workers, they refused to recognize its,
existence, and for a time threatened
a complete work stoppage. Behind the
backing and filling,- however, and the
bargaining between New York City
officials and union leaders are these
very real facts that have little to do
with legal issues;
H Invoking the law and thus dis
missing 44,000 transit workers would
not provide transportation' facilities
for the TV2 million people in and
around New York who rely on daily
service. I
2; Municipal jobs are becoming in
creasingly difficult to fill, even under.;
the most favorable conditions. There
are, for example, 10,000 provisional
id
employees among New York’s trans
port workers, and there is no reser
voir of skilled candidates. Stern anti
strike legislation, coupled with low-
take-home pay and other problems of
civil service employees, will not im
prove the recruiting picture.
Yet, against this background, an in
creasing number of states are outlaw
ing strikes by public employees in
well-meaning attempts to prevent ci
vil servants from destroying the
framework of orderly government.
Many of these laws, though, are pat
terned after New York’s Condon-Wad-
lip act, which misses the basic point
in labor ;— and human — relations:
employee relations is the responsibili
ty of the supervisor. It is a manage
ment skill and one that cannot be leg
islated. The law may prevent a few
strikes, but being prohibitive, will not
solve basic issues. Sound administer
ing will.
Since, one after another, the anti
strike laws designed to keep public
employees on the job and performing
their vital services have proved in
effective, and at times have seemed—
as in the case of the New York trans
port workers — an invitation to chaos,
the question arises, can these damag
ing and potentially dangerous strikes
be avoided? ,
They can, if along with legislation
that protects the public welfare, ma
chinery is set up for handling em
ployment problems before they reach
the crisis stage.
This idea of catching problems at
their source, which is so well under
stood in industry, is invariably for
gotten by legislative groups who feel
that passing a law is enough- The re
sults are exactly the opposite of what
the legislators hoped for: often public
employee disputes develop to the
point of “ crises” before an effort is
made to solve it. Frequently, the ef
fort at a solution comes too late.
As far back as 1946 the National C i-
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