Strikes Worked. Entering the 1960s, public employee unions were weak, engaging in “collective begging” rather than “collective bargaining.” But then public workers rose up in one of the great upsurges in U.S. labor history. Public workers marched on school board meetings. They conducted slowdowns. And they struck, by hundreds of thousands over the next two decades, to win union recognition. The civil rights movement inspired sanitation workers’ strikes throughout the South. Teachers in Florida and Utah pulled off statewide walkouts. Postal workers struck nationwide, in a wildcat conducted against the wishes of union leaders. Police and firefighters contracted “blue flu” and “red rashes” to demand what private sector workers already had: the right to bargain. This wave of militancy won both contracts and changes in labor law. And in the process, public employee union membership surged from 400,000 in the late 1950s to 4 million by the mid-1970s. Strikes, it’s safe to say, created the public employee labor movement. The Power of Example. Just as today’s activists look to the 2012 Chicago Teachers strike for inspiration, teachers back then looked to a one-day strike in New York City schools, in 1960. According to one scholar, that single, short strike not only spurred the organization of teachers in New York state but also became “the watershed for teachers’ strikes in the twentieth century.” Teachers around the country followed the trail blazed by New Yorkers and struck for union recognition, too. In 1968 teachers struck 112 times—up from zero a decade before. Of course, not every local struggle will start a prairie fire. The Republic Windows factory takeover in 2008 did not prompt an outpouring of plant occupations. But we never know where a particular struggle may lead and how it may give others the courage to act. MADE TO BE BROKEN Don’t Let Repressive Laws Stop You. Today we face a web of legal restrictions specifically constructed to force unions to fight small, pointless battles. Public employee strikes are illegal in most states. Private sector strikers can be permanently replaced with scabs. Simply put, the rules are rigged. Figuring out how to break free of these rules is a practical necessity. Until the late 1960s, public employee strikes were illegal in every jurisdiction in the U.S. Yet when the idea took hold and the context was right, hundreds of thousands of public workers struck anyway, violating state laws and court injunctions. And they generally won—achieving recognition and good contracts, and forcing lawmakers to amend state laws to permit public employee bargaining. - See more at: labornotes.org/2014/06/inspiration-look-history-public-worker-strikes#sthash.ZMpv49Mp.dpuf
Posted on: Sun, 22 Jun 2014 03:20:07 +0000
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