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First, the right of the growing millions of public employees to organize and bargain collectively must be recognized. Second, urgent and continuing work should be undertaken to develop bargaining procedures and machinery aimed at preventing strikes, rather than banning them and punishing strikers. While situations will differ widely from one state and city to another, some forms of fact-finding, conciliation, mediation, arbitration and injunction to work in the public sector must be devised. Third, despite all the complications involved, it must be recognized that there are differences among various kinds of public service —that some are more essential than others. Certainly no strike of policemen, firemen or prison guards can be tolerated. But a strike of clerical workers in a state accounting office, for example, can be considered in an entirely different context.
Whatever new laws are enacted, the public will have to accept the principle that government employees should have a right to participate in the determination of their working conditions—in other words, to collective bargaining. And organized government workers, given the assurance that they will get a fair and full hearing, must be made to recognize that they have no right to jeopardize the public safety.