Is it treasonous to go on strike against your employer? Most reasonable people would say no. But, given the opportunity, most Bosses would make it illegal for their employees to strike for better wages and conditions. The government, as employer of many thousands of public sector employees, is the only employer that has the ability to outlaw strikes by its employees. Al Shanker, who led New York City’s school teachers on a number of strikes between the early 1960s and the late 1970s, grumbled that the illegality of strikes and the steep fines and penalties incurred by city unions that strike anyway were a holdover from monarchistic thinking, and that there isn’t even the slimmest pretext of arguing for public safety or welfare in making them illegal. Shanker would point out that teachers at private schools would face no penalty if they chose to strike, even though such a strike would create the same kind of disruptions for parents as a public school strike.
Shanker’s point should be made again in the case of the Transport Workers Union, who are in court trying to get their dues checkoff reinstated, after it was canceled as a part of the hefty fines and penalties that were levied against the union after its 2005 strike. Even though the MTA, the technical employer of New York’s bus and subway workers, supports the union’s efforts to return to regular operations (apparently, the union’s inability to handle a backlog of grievances is harming the Authority’s ability to run the system), the Bloomberg administration is opposing it, demanding that union leaders “once and for all time declare unequivocally that they may not, and will not, ever again engage in a strike.”
What gall! TWU was actually the first union to be recognized and sign a contract with the city of New York. That’s because the union was first organized in the 1930’s when the city’s bus and subway lines were owned and operated by private corporations. The union struck for and won greater wages and benefits back then, and the strikes were 100% legal. The New York City Transit Authority took over in the 1950’s, and the transit workers became public sector employees and lost their “right” to strike. Same workers, same job, same union, same contract. First legal, then illegal, but not because the idea of a transit strike became “unsafe” or more of a disruption, but simply because the new Boss had the ability to set the laws that made the strike illegal. Good for TWU President Roger Toussaint for refusing to submit to Mayor Bloomberg’s monarchistic thinking.