Reference no: EM133330912
The Air Traffic Controllers Case
At 7.00 A.M on August 3, 1981, the members of the professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) went on strike. The strike was called after over 95 percent of the members had earlier rejected a contract negotiated between the union and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The union sought a USD 10000 increase across the board in base pay, a reduction in the work week of its members to thirty-two hours, and retirement after twenty years of service at 75% of the member's highest gross salary. The FAA negotiators offered an average wage increase of USD 2300 in addition to the USD 1700 that all federal employees were scheduled to receive, and retirement after twenty five years or at age of 50 after twenty years, at 50 percent of average base salary for the three years of highest pay. The controllers were federal government employees; hence, their salaries and the agreement had to be approved by Congress.
In the past airline pilots had gone out on strike. Their strike was legal and ethically justifiable, despite the harm done to the traveling public. The pilots, however, were employees not of the government but of the airlines. In contrast, the air traffic controllers were federal employees, governed by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which prohibits strikes by those subject to it. In 1981 William Clay (Missouri Democrat) had introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that would have permitted the air traffic controllers to strike. Thus, although illegal, their right to strike was not beyond consideration.
Nonetheless, on August 3, the PATCO strike was illegal. On August 4, President Ronald Reagan issued a statement warning the controllers that if they did not report for work within fourty-eight hours, they would be terminated. He added, "I respect the right of workers in the private sector to strike... But we cannot compare labor management relations in the private sector with Government." Moreover, he noted that each had taken an oath:" I am not participating in any strike against the Government of the United States or any agency thereof, and I will not participate while an employee of the Government of the United States or any agency thereof." Lane Kirkland, president of the AFL-CIO, responded that air traffic controllers, just as other workers, had " a basic human right, the right to withdraw their services, not to work under conditions they no longer find tolerable." Ultimately, 875 air traffic controllers returned to work before the deadline; the 11301 who did not return were terminated. In addition, the Federal Labor Relations Authority decertified PATCO.
The strike inconvenienced many travelers, but it did not cause a shutdown of all flights. In fact, with the controllers who did not walk out or who returned, as well as with supervisors and military controllers, about 50 percent of scheduled flights took off, and they gradually moved back to normal. The strike was a failure. The government had refused further mediation and showed its resolve. The move to permit federal government employees to strike has yet to gain the momentum it had prior to the strike. Moreover, some saw the Reagan administration's decertifying of PATCO as setting an example of what has been termed "union busting" in the private as well as the public sector.
The PATCO strike was not the first strike by government employees. U.S. postal workers, who were government employees at the time, had gone on strike under the Nixon administration and had not been fired, just as employees of various states had gone on strike even though they were legally prohibited from doing so. Reagan's action was legal, but it was not mandatory. Was it fair, all things considered? Should air traffic controllers and other (even though perhaps not all) government employees have the same right to strike that workers have in the private sector? Is it fair for the government to prohibit strikes by government employees and not to be required to bargain or submit to some independent mediation process?