They amount to a form of theft from the taxpayers.
I wrote a piece today arguing that public-school teachers’ strikes should be illegal. It was prompted by the ongoing strike in Portland, Ore., where the entire district of 45,000 students has been closed since Wednesday. Just as Calvin Coolidge said there is no right to strike against the public safety, there is also no right to strike against the public education, and 37 states already prohibit teacher strikes by law.
Even in those states, however, the government actually has to enforce the law. States often don’t. Teacher strikes are illegal in West Virginia, for example, but teachers there nonetheless went on strike in 2019.
Ronald Reagan’s firing of the striking air-traffic controllers in 1981 was seen as extraordinary, but federal law clearly states that federal employees are not permitted to strike. Reagan was simply upholding the law as written. In fact, the federal government would have been within its rights to prosecute and, upon conviction, imprison the striking air-traffic controllers. Reagan was being nice by only firing them.
As William F. Buckley Jr. wrote in his August 6, 1981, column after the air-traffic controllers were fired, illegal strikes by government workers commonly go unpunished. Strikes by public employees are prohibited by New York State law, yet “New York City has been a sanctuary for illegal strikes for over a decade.” He wrote, “Even the police and the firemen have struck there, and of course the Transit Union strikes on leap years and other commemorative occasions.” Politicians there didn’t care, so the strikes happened anyway.
Public-sector strikes are not legitimate because there’s no competition in the market for government services in a particular jurisdiction. When workers at GM, Ford, and Stellantis were on strike, Toyota, VW, Hyundai, and other carmakers were still operating as usual. The presence of those other firms also chastens the demands that any one union can make. The competitive pressure and the threat of bankruptcy places limits on how much a union can demand.
That’s not true in the public sector. There’s one Portland public-school system, and it can’t go out of business. Portland students can’t choose to go to a different school system while the labor dispute is worked out. They’re stuck without school.
Public-sector unions can demand whatever they want so long as they have political support. That’s why public-sector unions spend millions of dollars and supply armies of volunteers in state-level elections to make sure their preferred candidates win. When it comes time to negotiate a new contract, the politicians they’ve helped elect stand on the other side of the bargaining table. That’s not a negotiation; it’s a payoff.
Citizens are required to pay the same taxes whether government services are provided or not. A strike by public employees amounts to a form of theft from the taxpayers. They paid their taxes to fund public services as stipulated in state law. Taking money in exchange for promised services and then not providing those services is stealing.
There’s no room for strikes in the public sector. They’re already prohibited for all federal employees, and they should be prohibited for all state and local employees as well. And those in positions of leadership must enforce the law on behalf of the citizens under their jurisdiction. That means providing public services as promised, whether a union decides to pitch a fit or not.