Revolt of the Public Workers

...Civil Service Commission recently reported, fiftyfour per cent of Executive Branch employes, or 1,477,000, were represented by unions holding exclusive recognition rights in Federal agencies...

...During 1969, the U.S...

...In Los Angeles, Boston, and Newark, unionized school teachers withdrew their services over frustrated salary demands, adding to the national figure of 131 teachers' walkouts in 1969...

...This revolt of the public workers brightens the prospects for the future of America...

...Significantly, these recommendations would apply to the District of Columbia's police and fire fighting forces...

...By the end of September, 1970, this bill—probably unthinkable fifteen years ago—had nearly forty sponsors in the House...

...the AFL-CIO Metal Trades Councils—75,000...

...It is this kind of leadership and inspiration that the burgeoning organizations of public employes are bringing to our country in this critical hour...

...armed forces from Southeast Asia," AFSCME became the first major AFL-CIO union to take such action and break with the Nixon Administration on foreign policy...

...the National Federation of Federal Employees—58,676...

...In Rapid City, South Dakota, the city's entire fire department resigned after the fire fighters' strike was blocked by an injunction...

...These facts of accelerated growth and the record of contract gains by public employe unions—wage increases as high as $800-a-year, pioneering pension and retirement programs, an impressive variety of medical, hospital, and life insurance plans, and provisions for job security and dues checkoff— have convinced me that the 1970s will be the decade of public employe unionism, just as previous periods have been the decades of craft unionism, industrial unionism, and white collar, clerical, and technical unionism...

...In New York City, the first major strike in the 195-year history of the postal system caused President Nixon to send in Federal troops...

...As in business and industry, white collar organization has always lagged far behind blue collar progress...

...The other major unions with their representation totals in Federal agencies are: United Federation of Postal Clerks AFL-CIO—310,000...

...and the mayor of Atlanta, where 2,600 sanitation workers won a month-long strike, saw such withholding of services as inevitable...

...Official statistics fully verify this...

...It is not likely that this explosion will subside...

...Despite this progress, however, a large body of opinion in public employe unions holds that if treatment of public workers as second class citizens is to be halted, it will have to be done by Congress...

...The revolt of the public workers, it must be noted, has not been confined to labor-management and other domestic questions...

...Of the 416,700 Federal white collar employes eligible, only twenty-nine per cent are organized, although the number is steadily increasing...

...Here, obviously, is a limitless opportunity and challenge for unions in public employment, an opportunity to create a better life for millions of forgotten and underpaid public workers by negotiating higher living standards, stronger job security, adequate health insurance, decent homes, improved educational advantages for their children, and retirement incomes...

...Ten Congressmen spoke on the floor of the House in support of cafeteria workers in the Capitol who left Senators, Representatives, and staff members hungry when they walked off their jobs to demand higher pay...

...The revolt has been characterized not only by strikes— strikes more often than not specifically in violation of law—but also by the phenomenal growth of unions in the public employment field...

...In the impressive Washington, D.C., peace and anti-Vietnam war demonstrations of November, 1969, and May, 1970, organized groups of Federal employes paraded behind their own banners and placards, with District of Columbia municipal employes also participating...

...Adding new members at the rate of 1,000 a week, AFSCME has doubled its size in the last six years...

...The revolt of the public workers .. . has now become a fact of life . . ." The major turning point in the right of public workers to bargain collectively and to strike came in 1970 with enactment of precedent-setting statutes in Hawaii and Pennsylvania...

...By demanding "immediate and total withdrawal of all U.S...

...In recent years, union after union in the fire fighting and law enforcement fields has repealed union constitutional prohibitions against work stoppages...

...But forty states prohibit public employe strikes, either by statute, court decisions, or opinions by attorneys-general...

...Today, the public worker is likely to proclaim his union membership proudly, and to speak openly on national and international issues...

...the results showed a surprising sixty-one per cent sympathizing with the strikers and only twenty-five per cent with the Government...

...Contracts negotiated and signed by unions with Federal agencies totaled 1,340 in 1969, a healthy thirteen per cent increase over 1968...

...From 1958 to 1968, the net increase in membership for all unions was 1,800,-000—with more than one million of these joining public employe unions...

...Adequate expenditures for many sorely needed domestic development programs—housing, food for the hungry, education, manpower training, pollution prevention, model cities, medical care, and research—are all being precluded by the costs of warfare in Southeast Asia...

...only fifteen states make it mandatory for public employers to bargain with unions...

...A first big step in the direction of Congressional legislation was taken earlier this year with the introduction in the House of the Public Employes Relations Act (PERA), legislation designed to serve as a Magna Carta for state, county, and municipal employes just as the National Labor Relations Act did for millions of workers in private employment...

...The poll found that sixty-one per cent of Americans say "yes" to teachers in unions with only thirty per cent saying "no...

...and the National Association of Government Employees—58,239...

...The decade of public worker unionism is already underway because of the revolution, both in theory and practice, establishing for the first time the basic rights of public employes to organize in unions of their own choosing, to bargain collectively, and to determine the conditions of their employment...

...an unprecedented slowdown by police disrupted public services...

...AFSCME stepped out at its convention to grapple with the most pressing of all issues facing the world and mankind today...

...Large as it already looms, the revolt of the public workers may take on far greater dimensions in the future...

...Nor is he any longer (except in rare cases) intimidated by union-hating supervisors or foremen...

...Perhaps the most significant point of agreement between the AFL-CIO and the Twentieth Century Fund studies is the conclusion that anti-strike laws have not worked...

...What about the delicate and still controversial question of the right of police and firemen to strike...

...What is even more startling is this union's huge organizational potential: more than seventy-six per cent of today's 12,500,000 public workers are employed in state, county, and city governments...

...Thousands of American young men have given their lives and blood in a seemingly endless military struggle that is an undeclared war...

...Three days and mountains of uncollected trash later the men won a thirty-five-cents-an-hour pay raise and a written agreement that racial discrimination would be abolished...

...Where representation was allowed, bona fide unions have frequently been barred, and state, county, and local employes have been encouraged to join "associations" which, more often than not, proved to be company unions in the traditional and most notorious sense...

...In San Diego, city firemen and bus drivers left their jobs in a wage dispute...

...it is now the fastest growing union in the country...

...At least some of these needs in the public sector will be met...

...The memorable 1968 strike of AFSCME sanitation workers in Memphis, and the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr...

...Within state, county, and municipal governments, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees has achieved what no other major union has done during the past six years—increased its membership by 100 per cent...

...As a nation we have been, and still are, apathetic about the desperate need for the ten-year housing goal Congress set for the nation, the $25 billion needed to end, or at least reduce, air and water pollution, and the $30 billion required to improve our decrepit public transportation system...

...Six—When an impasse develops, first the technique of mediation be applied, then the process of fact-finding...

...The nationwide withdrawal of postal services and the slowdowns by the Post Office workers earlier in 1970 also contributed greatly to the shift in public sentiment...

...Much of the change in the public's attitude has been achieved, I believe, by AFSCME's successful collective bargaining in state after state and city after city...

...The result, in the past few years, has been a surge of public workers toward unionism and away from "associations" and feckless professional societies...

...If the public and city officials have a right to expect unfailing police and fire protection, they also have the responsibility to prevent conditions that leave policemen and firemen no real alternative but to go out on strike...

...His career has been devoted to labor union affairs...

...Five—Agreements be reduced to writing...

...But the question of whether public employes have the moral right to strike is steadily declining as an issue which only a few years ago raised legislative hackles and editorial tirades...

...Versions of the Pennsylvania law, signed by Republican Governor Raymond P. Shafer and termed "an emancipation proclamation for public employes" by AFL-GIO leaders, will soon be introduced in other state legislatures...

...Among other provisions, PERA would outlaw strikes only during the sixty days following expiration of an agreement...

...been second class citizens because: One—For the most part they have been denied the right to be represented by bargaining units of their choice...

...Other government unions, particularly in the Federal jurisdiction, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), AFL-CIO, and the postal labor organizations, are also experiencing extraordinary growth...

...More than three million public workers have chosen unionism, and the trend continues strongly within city, state, and Federal governments...

...while preparing to lead a march in support of that strike, changed the attitudes of countless Americans...

...These are only a few of the hundreds of strikes, slowdowns, and demonstrations that have rolled in unprecedented waves against state, county, and municipal administrations, and even the Federal Government, during the last two years...

...Municipal pay scales as low as $4,400-a-year shocked many citizens who had always assumed that their cities had paid a "decent living wage...

...By 1969, the number of strikes had skyrocketed to 414 (including three stoppages by Federal employes) with 161,000 walking out...

...In mounting frustration, therefore, public workers have turned increasingly to militant unionism as the only instrument with which to win economic justice and to combat the gross discrimination they have discerned between the rewards of public employment and the rewards negotiated b" workers in comparable jobs in private business and industry...

...Congress should repeal the no-strike oath, including the oath on not asserting the right to strike...

...The outstanding growth of public worker unionism has been reflected in the rapid burgeoning of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees which syndicated labor columnist John Herling has called the "hottest union" in the AFL-CIO...

...Two—Where bargaining was permitted either by an "association" or a union with tightly circumscribed powers, nearly all contract benefits and protections lagged far behind those written into private labor-management agreements...

...The historic fact is that ever since the Boston AFL police strike of 1919 was broken at the instigation of Governor Calvin Coolidge, law enforcement officers and firemen have been agonizingly aware that the moral and legal prohibitions against their right to strike have served less to protect the public than to deny them the economic benefits and protections won by other employes through collective bargaining...

...Moreover, the majority of these laws were obviously devised to prohibit concerted action by public workers rather than to encourage effective and harmonious labor-management relations...

...Several other public opinion polls and surveys have confirmed that public sentiment now supports the position that state and municipal employes are not second class citizens and should have the legal right to organize and bargain collectively...

...And back in Washington, D.C., the daily Congressional Record reached Senators and Representatives days late after ninety per cent of the 1,200 union typesetters at the Government Printing Office "called in sick...

...In strong support of this trend toward abolition of no-strike clauses in union constitutions was a 1970 report by the Washington, D.C...

...The government employe who is a union member is no longer an oddity, no longer an isolated "radical" risking job and livelihood as he did not many years ago...

...chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union which urged that "Congress should repeal legislation imposing penalties of dismissal, fines, and imprisonment on [Federal] public employes who strike...

...Three—The public employer has the duty to meet and negotiate with the union...

...Largest of the Federal unions is the AFGE, which exclusively represents 482,000 Government employes, not all of whom are AFGE members...

...When the Harris Poll asked the question, "In the recent strike of postal employes, did you sympathize more with the demands of the employes or with the Federal Government...

...Undoubtedly a major change has occurred in the last few years in the climate of public opinion regarding government employes...

...Like the NLRA, the law would make it possible to cite an employer for various unfair labor practices...

...In San Francisco, a three-day strike of nearly 20,000 city employes ended with a new agreement and higher wage scales...

...but in addition, the union will have the right to seek quick injunctive relief against an employer's unfair labor practices...

...These figures do not include the remarkable expansion—an increase of 465,000 new members to a total of more than two million—of the National Education Association, which has increasingly taken on the attributes of a union, even to the point of collective bai gaining and strike authorizations...

...The American Federation of Government Employees AFL-CIO, representing several thousand law enforcement officers and firemen in Federal employment has also amputated from its constitution a long-standing prohibition against strikes...

...Some state laws apply only to one or more specific groups, such as teachers or employes of the state government, and do not touch municipal or county employes...

...By the end of 1970, AFSCME expects its present membership of approximately 500,000 to total nearly 600,000, making it the sixth largest affiliate of the AFL-CIO...

...The American people and their elected leaders have moved gradually toward the position that public workers do have the moral right to strike when other remedies have been exhausted...

...five state laws provide only for the employer to meet and confer with unions of state workers...

...Four—Grievance machinery be established providing for final adjudication of grievances by impartial arbitration...

...National Association of Letter Carriers AFL-CIO— 203,000...

...Consequently, the most significant fact about employment in the 1970s is that six out of every ten new jobs created in the United States will be in some form of government...

...One of the first of these, the International Association of Fire Fighters AFL-CIO, with 146,000 members, voted unanimously and vociferously at its 1968 Toronto convention to erase its constitutional ban on strikes...

...The answer must come in large part from the unions that represent the rank-and-file firemen and policemen...

...While the number of jobs in private business and industry has climbed forty-one per cent over a twenty-year period, employment in state and municipal governments has exploded by 145 per cent...

...One reason is that today approximately one out of every three public employes is a union member...

...The number of strikes by unions against Federal agencies soared from 254 in 1968 to 414 in 1969, even though the number of strikers dropped from 201,-000 to 161,000...

...This widely-praised report offered evidence that state anti-strike statutes have failed—the frequency of news headlines on strikes by public employes underscores that fact—and recommended two immediate steps: the repeal of stringent anti-strike laws, and the enactment of sound collective bargaining legislation in their stead...

...The convention resolution also flatly opposed "expansion of the Vietnam war into Cambodia...

...Moreover, in terms of the nation's long - neglected priorities—housing, schools, clinics and hospitals, recreation facilities, expanded welfare and anti-poverty programs—the need for more, not fewer, public employes is indisputable...

...Both laws encourage public employe unionization and collective bargaining...

...Aware that it was speaking for nearly 500,000 members and as one of the AFL-CIO's largest affiliates, the convention declared: "Our nation's interests command that no further blood and resources be wasted in Southeast Asia...

...despite Federal and local Hatch Acts, more and more public employes are running for public office...

...One of these was a Gallup Poll in January, 1969, on whether teachers, police, and firemen should be permitted to join unions...

...AFSCME has nearly 10,000 policemen in its membership...

...Certainly one of the principal reasons public employe strikes have proliferated from fifteen to 414 in eleven years is the fact that labor law in the fifty states is so fragmented and contradictory...

...The relatively small number of government unions has outpaced the growth, over a decade, of the nearly 200 AFL-CIO and independent unions...

...Seven—An agency independent of executive control and subject only to court review be created where none exists in each state (or locality) to assure compliance with these provisions and to administer a code of public employe relations...

...Throughout the nation in 1958 there were only fifteen work stoppages involving 1,720 public workers...

...A recent major study of the union rights of public employes, published by the AFL-CIO Maritime Trades Department, concluded with a call for "a Federal minimum standard bargaining law—a Federal labor law for public employes...

...Like the NLRA, PERA centers on the legally guaranteed right of public employes to join a union and choose their own exclusive bargaining agent...

...Conference of Mayors...

...Other strikes of public employes, notably those in Atlanta and Cincinnati in 1970, demonstrably altered popular attitudes in those cities toward strikes by government workers...

...The growing militancy among Federal workers is manifested not only by their streaming into unions, but in two other areas: negotiated agreements and strikes...

...AFSCME's 1970 convention unanimously rescinded an interdiction against strikes by law enforcement officers that had been in the union's constitution for twenty-three years...

...The revolt of the public workers— once anathema to all politicians and most citizens—has now become a fact of life in the 1970s...

...Enactment of PERA would, for the first time, give Federal recognition to the basic rights of state, county, and municipal employes...

...thirty-one per cent disagreed...

...The recent study published by the conservative Twentieth Century Fund, titled "Pickets At City Hall," urged these legislative guarantees for state and city employes: "One—Public employes have the right to join unions...

...For example, that right seemed to be accepted by a number of those attending the 1970 Denver convention of the U.S...

...The decade of public worker unionism is already underway . • If the 1970s are to be the decade of public employment unions, there will have to be greater public acceptance of the right of government employes (city, state, and Federal) to organize, bargain collectively, and negotiate contracts as strong as those developed in industry...

...A dozen or more mayors expressed the conviction that civil service unions—except police and firemen—should have the legal right to strike...

...And both laws permit strikes (except by police and firemen) after other procedures have failed to bring settlement...

...Three states have enacted permissive laws which sanction collective bargaining with public employes...

...The 1970 AFSCME convention, at my request, called for a coalition of public employe organizations (both within and outside the AFL-CIO) to achieve a more effective "impact upon Congress and the Executive Branch of government in the Federal sector, and upon legislatures and executive branches in the various states...

...A distinguished minority of this Twentieth Century Fund panel even proposed that strikes by public employes should be permitted (police and firemen excepted) if the governmental employer rejects the fact-finding recommendations...

...Two—When a majority chooses a union, it be recognized as exclusive bargaining representative...

...Twenty-one states have now enacted general collective bargaining legislation covering public employes...

...Until recently public employes have JERRY WURF is president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO...

...Sixty per cent of the Gallup cross-section said that police and firemen should be permitted to join unions...