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What is now painfully clear is that the antistrike laws do not work. In their new attitude, public employees are weighing the results of abiding by the law against those of defying it—and they are opting for defiance. "We are beyond abstract lessons in legality," says Albert Shanker, the onetime math instructor who led New York City teachers out of the classroom last September—and won a pay boost of 20%, largest in the city's history. "Perhaps it is a bad lesson to be learned, but the city has convinced us that striking brings us gains we cannot get any other way." Worse than not preventing walkouts, the punitive laws actually appear to be provoking them.
"Knowing that we would not strike," says William D. Buck, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, "officials have taken advantage of us, almost daring us to strike."
In all its aspects, public labor law at the state and local level can only be described as chaotic. A few states, notably Wisconsin, Michigan and New York, recognize public unions and some form of collective bargaining. But some recognize neither, and a few have no public-employee laws at all. Ambiguity is common. Colorado lets public workers join unions but bars them from bargaining. In what can serve as a textbook example of legal sidestepping, Ohio does not recognize the existence of public-employee unions, prohibits these nonexistent unions from striking—and yet permits the public employer to deduct union dues from paychecks.
The federal picture is clearer, though not without some fog. Employees of the national Government still prefer to exert their power through the techniques they have used for years in applying political pressure to Congress. Thus the United Federation of Postal Clerks has lobbied a cumulative 36% wage increase for its 165,000 members since 1961—without once threatening a strike. There are, however, new factors at work on the federal level. In 1962, President Kennedy issued an enlightened executive order formally recognizing the Government worker's right to join a union—and the duty of federal agencies to bargain with unions in good faith. As an inevitable result, the pace of unionization took a dramatic spurt. Since 1961, the number of exclusive bargaining contracts signed by federal employees has risen from 26 to 600; the number of workers covered by such contracts has gone from 19,000 to more than a million.
While this suggests new areas of stress between the national Government and its employees, it is unlikely that there will soon be the kind of trouble that is now plaguing lesser government subdivisions. For one thing, all people starting to work for the Federal Government must sign a pledge not to strike, not to advocate strikes and not to join any association that does. For another, the majesty of the national Government and the office of the President continue to provide a far stronger deterrent than exists in state and local situations.
Essential Differences