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One major factor in making government workers more and more restive is the obvious difference between the rewards in the private sector and those in the public. Government pay scales often run below those paid by private industry. In Detroit, for instance, the median private hourly wage was $2.04 in 1955—against $1.79 for government workers. By 1967, the gap had widened: $3.49 to $3.09. Not many employees any longer consider it a privilege to work for the government. The job security of civil service has lost considerable point in a boom economy, where the demand for labor outstrips the supply. The effect of all this is evident in one statistic. Although union membership nationally has increased only 15% since 1956, it has increased 60% in the field of government.
Once they are in a union, public employees immediately see further differences. Thus in Manhattan, drivers on the buses operated by the public Transit Authority are covered by the no-strike law, while those driving for the privately owned Avenue B and East Broadway Transit Co. are under no such restriction. Fired by the Washington Suburban Sanitation Commission after a 1966 strike, garbage men in suburban Washington savored the immense satisfaction of going back to work—at the higher wages they had demanded—for the private contractor to whom the commission had let the new refuse-collection contract. Amid such contradictions, organized public workers are increasingly taking the position that collective bargaining is meaningless without the ultimate weapon of the strike which, used or not, brings gains to private employees.
State and local laws have attempted the difficult task of defining the essential difference between the public and the private sector. Differences undeniably exist, and many of them describe the problem that is generating strikes. Governments are monopolies that do not operate in response to the profit motive and that, unlike private industry, cannot go out of business. Raising commodity prices to meet the rising costs of labor is certainly easier than raising taxes. In private industry, management and its power are readily identifiable. But this is more complicated in representative government, where both power and management develop from the citizen but are distributed down a lengthy chain of delegated command. All too often, public unions argue their case before officials who lack the authority—or the will—to negotiate solutions. Public employees are also aware that, while their opponent across the negotiation table supposedly represents the public weal, his bargaining stance is frequently determined by political expedience—and the sheer desire for political survival.
Search for Solutions
The most hopeful aspect about the rash of public strikes is that they have injected new and sorely needed urgency into the search for solutions. Investigation proceeds in a wide range. Some suggestions have been heard that existing strike penalties are not severe enough to deter strikes and should be increased. Advocates of this position refer to the example of John L. Lewis' 1946 coal miners' walkout, in which a $700,000 fine, imposed by the U.S. Government, effectively throttled the strike.