NO

There is nothing in the United States or Illinois constitutions giving any citizen the right to strike. Government employees, like all citizens, have the constitutional right to associate in groups to advocate their special interests to the government. But there is no requirement, in the absence of a statute, that such employee groups be recognized as bargaining agents for collective bargaining with those groups. The common law that came to us from Great Britain prohibited strikes by citizens against the crown — against the sovereign. Illinois courts still enforce that common law, and will enjoin public employee strikes if public employers have the political courage to seek such injunctions (City of Pana v. Crowe, Illinois Supreme Court 1974, 316 N.E. 2d 513). A strike by school employees has been found to be unlawful as against the public policy of the state (Board of Education v. Kankakee Federation of Teachers, 111. Sup. Ct. 1970, 264 N.E. 2d 18).

The argument usually advanced in support of public employees' collective bargaining and right to strike is that government employees should have the same rights as employees in the private sector. Should they? Everyone who works for a living wants to have more pay and better working conditions. Government employee associations can and should be able to engage in political action and lobby the General Assembly on behalf of their members. And they certainly are doing that. But collective bargaining for pay and working conditions is another matter.

The difference between private versus public "management" is profound, insofar as the question of collective bargaining is concerned. Collective bargaining is a system of labor-management relations developed and designed for the private sector. It contemplates bargaining between equals on economic decisions. It is disciplined by the economic ability of the employer to meet labor demands and still stay competitive.

Public sector bargaining, on the other hand, involves political decisions which affect everyone. Government is a monopoly. There are no alternative sources of supply of government services, and there is no free market competition to keep government costs in line with other sectors of the economy. Public employee collective bargaining is also inconsistent with the concept of Civil Service, enjoyed by so many public employees, and tenure for educators. Private sector employees enjoy no such job security.

In order to function properly government must be sovereign. Collective bargaining tends to be destructive of governmental sovereignty. As the power of public sector labor leaders increases, the power of citizens to exercise self- government decreases. There is no room at the bargaining table for the taxpayer while political decisions affecting his taxes are being made. The plight of New York City today is a grim reminder of what happens when governments are dominated by public employee union leaders.

Collective bargaining does not improve the efficiency of government nor promote peaceful employer-employee relations, as consistently urged by proponents. The Public Service Research Council, a national not-for- profit research group of Vienna, Va., recently reported that a study of the 34 states with public employee collective bargaining statutes revealed that enactment of such statutes increased employee strife and caused an increase in strikes, although all but seven of the statutes prohibit strikes. In Michigan, there were 290 public sector strikes in the first six years following enactment of its collective bargaining statute (which prohibits strikes), compared to one strike in the seven-year period before the law. In Pennsylvania, there were 141 strikes in the first three years, compared to 23 strikes in the 10-year period before the law.

It is the nature of collective bargaining and maintenance of union leadership to ask employers for more than they are willing to give. This is followed by a hardening of positions, then the strike, depriving the public of services for which there is no substitute, then capitulation by the government employer and amnesty for illegal strikes.

Compulsory arbitration is sometimes suggested as a way of avoiding public employee strikes. But compulsory arbitration does not guarantee a "no- strike" end of a dispute with a militant union. More importantly, as applied to public employee collective bargaining, it places the power of decision regarding government costs and tax increases in

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l4/ April 1977/ Illinois Issues

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the hands of the arbitrator, removing the voter-taxpayer even further from those political decisions.

Illinois, although without a collective bargaining statute (except in special situations, such as the Chicago Transit Authority and Regional Transportation Authority), already has had considerable public strike activity. In 1974, 781 of the 6,386 government units in Illinois were engaged in collective bargaining, despite the lack of a statute. Most of the units were school districts. Gov. Dan Walker's Executive Order No. 6 of 1973 extended collective bargaining to state employees under his jurisdiction. Illinois has been averaging 17 public sector strikes a year in recent years. But things can get worse. If history in other states teaches anything, a statute providing for compulsory collective bargaining for all state and local public employees in Illinois will greatly increase union organizing and strike activity, whether or not strikes are prohibited.

Increasing public sector bargaining and strikes in Illinois will mean greater costs of state and local government. State and local taxes, the combination of which now makes Illinois' taxes seventh highest in the United States on a per capita basis, wilt inevitably go higher. The pressures to shift more of the tax load to industry will increase.

Although taxes on manufacturers are ultimately paid by consumers, the taxes and other state-and-local government- imposed costs of a manufacturer must permit him to compete with out-of-state competitors. If they do not, the Illinois manufacturer may have to move or expand elsewhere. Illinois already has serious business climate problems. Since 1969, this state has had a net loss of more than 202,000 manufacturing jobs, a drop of almost 15 per cent, according to the Illinois Department of Labor. Most of the jobs are going to southern states. None of them, from Texas to Virginia (except Florida), have public sector collective bargaining laws. In fact, North Carolina specifically prohibits collective bargaining with state and local employees.

Some states provide for collective bargaining only for teachers. However, because of the number of teachers and others in the educational establishment, and the fact that education is normally the largest item of state spending, the threat to state costs and taxes is great despite confining the statute to teachers.

In fact, the growing power of teacher unions is little short of awesome. The National Education Association (NEA) has 1.8 million members and took in $200 million in 1974 directly and through its affiliates, much of which went for political action. Most public employee strikes involve teachers, and that includes Illinois.

Catharine Barrett, then president of the NEA, said, "We are the biggest striking force in the country and we are determined to control the direction of education . ., . We will need to recognize that the so-called basic skills, which currently represent nearly the total effort in the elementary schools, will be taught in one quarter of the present school day. The remaining time will be devoted to what is truly basic . . . war, race, the economy, population and the environment." What about the authority and responsibility of school boards, elected by the people to make such decisions? What does such a trend mean for self-government and democracy?

The vast majority of public employees are conscientious and dedicated Americans. None of the above remarks should be interpreted as implying any sinister conspiracy on the part of organized public employees. But the nature of collective bargaining and union leadership, and the history of public employee union activities, serve to validate the conclusion that Illinois does not need and should not have a general statute providing for compulsory collective bargaining with organized public employees. As to the right to strike, if there is collective bargaining, there will be strikes, whether or not they are legal. 

16/ April 1977/ Illinois Issues

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Denying teachers their basic rights and forcing them to teach by court order violates dramatically the principles basic to education in a free society, so much so that prohibitions against teachers' strikes are generally unworkable and unacceptable. To the teachers who care about academic freedom and their integrity as teachers, and to all those who care about intellectual freedom, there is no acceptable alternative to the right of teachers to collectively withhold their services. Those who believe teachers should be prohibited by law from striking and that disputes between teachers and public education boards over matters of educational policy should be submitted to a third party for arbitration, either do not understand or lack respect for the rights of teachers and for the integrity of the governing boards of public educational institutions.

Much progress has been made in the past 20 years in securing organizing rights for teachers. Until the late 1960's, most of the progress was made by a minority of teachers who defied the formal and informal rules against teachers' unions, and sometimes struck in violation of court injunctions. As a result, about 80 per cent of public school and community college teachers in Illinois are now represented by unions or associations in collective bargaining. University teachers are rapidly moving in the same direction. Three landmark court cases that affirmed the constitutional rights of teachers grew out of these union activities.

The most important of these court cases occurred in 1966 because of the firing of two members of the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT) in Dolton, located in south Cook County. The teachers alleged that they were fired because of union activities. As chief administrative officers of the IFT at that time, I directed that court suits be filed in both the state and federal courts. As had been true historically in Illinois courts, the suit in the circuit court of Cook County was unsuccessful. The suit in federal district court, the case known as McLaughlin (a teacher) v. Tilendis (the school superintendent), was also dismissed, but was appealed to the U .S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The district court judge ruled that joining a union was not a right protected for teachers by the U.S. Constitution. He said the act of joining a union could be reasonably construed by a school board as a threat to its authority. The Court of Appeals reversed this decision in July 1968 on grounds that the right to join a union is protected by both the First and Fourteenth Amendments. This was the first federal court ruling that union membership is a constitutionally protected right for teachers. Prior to that, teachers were often dismissed for union activities or for refusing to join the so-called "professional organizations," the Illinois Education Association and the

National Education Association. The associations enjoyed favored status because they were controlled by school administrators, and because they opposed collective bargaining. The court ruling in the McLaughlin v. Tilendis case was a major blow to the elaborate defenses against union organization of teachers.

A second important court case, that helped to protect teachers in their union activities, grew out of the dismissal of a teacher in Lockport High School. The teacher, Marvin Pickering, had written a letter to the editor of the Lockport Herald in which he criticized harshly the school board's management of school district financial affairs. He was dismissed on grounds that his letter had harmed the reputations of the school board and administration, and that many of the statements in the letter were not true. Pickering's appeal of the board's action was pursued unsuccessfully in the state courts during the same time as McLaughlin v. Tilendis was developed in the federal courts. The 1FT then appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court (Pickering v. The Board of Education). Interestingly, the Will County Circuit Court judge had said in his ruling that Pickering had been properly dismissed because a teacher "has no

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April 1977/Illinois Issues/15

YES

right to criticize his boss." In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the position taken by the Illinois courts and ordered Pickering reinstated in his job. In so doing, the court said that a teacher could not be fired for exercising free speech rights unless it could be shown that he had made statements that were "knowingly and recklessly false."

A third case of vital importance developed from efforts by the Chicago Teachers Union to establish a collective bargaining relationship with the Chicago Board of Education. Unlike other states, where public school teachers in the largest cities were in the forefront of initial efforts to win bargaining rights, Chicago had lagged somewhat behind smaller school districts in Illinois, such as East St. Louis, Granite City, Kankakee, Cicero, and Proviso Township. The Chicago Board of Education, like most school boards and other public employers, had maintained that it could not enter into a bargaining relationship with a teachers' union in the absence of a law specifically authorizing it to do so.

Finally, however, in the fall of 1965, the Chicago board authorized an election among the teachers to choose a bargaining agent. But a suit was filed in Cook County Circuit Court by James Broman, an official of the Illinois State Chamber of Commerce, for the purpose of blocking the election. Broman was joined in the suit by the Chicago Division of the Illinois Education Association. Defendants were the Chicago Board of Education and the Chicago Teachers Union. Ironically, Broman simply used a warmed over version of the board's old argument.

Cook County Judge Cornelius J. Harrington dismissed the suit and ruled that the Chicago Board of Education did have the authority to bargain exclusively with a union of its employees. The decision was appealed by Broman and the Education Association, but the Appellate Court upheld the ruling in the spring of 1966. More important, the court stated emphatically that, in the absence of a statute, public employers in Illinois have the authority to recognize unions for collective bargaining. The ruling was appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court, but was allowed to stand, becoming, as it remains today, the controlling law on the subject.

These court victories were important because they fostered organizing and bargaining successes of local unions, and also because they strengthened the resolve of IFT leaders to oppose any effort to deny or limit the rights of teachers.

On perhaps the most vital issue of all, the right to strike, progress for teachers has been agonizingly slow, at least insofar as the Illinois Supreme Court is concerned. In 1965 the Illinois Supreme Court ruled, in the Redding v. Board of Education decision, that public school employees do not have the right to strike. More recently, the court ruled, in City of Pana v. Crowe, a case which grew out of a strike by city employees, that the state Anti-injunction Act of 1925 (Ill. Rev. Stat., 1975, Chap. 48, sec. 2a), which prohibits the issuance of court injunctions in collective bargaining disputes, does not apply to strikes by public employees. In a majority of the more than 70 strikes by IFT unions over the past 18 years, courts have issued injunctions against unions even though no Illinois statute prohibits strikes by teachers.

Over this period, teachers have proven that their unions can influence the allocation of money at the state and local level. Contracts negotiated by IFT locals have given teachers a voice in many matters of educational policy. Academic freedom has been strengthened. Teaching conditions have been improved by negotiated reductions in class sizes, increased time for planning, and by the employment of more teachers to expand programs in art, music, physical education, and education for the handicapped. Average teachers' salaries in the elementary and secondary schools increased from about $5,000 in 1960 to nearly $14,000 in 1976.

In 1969, twelve IFT local unions conducted strikes. Many of the issues were non-economic, but demands for reductions in class sizes, more time for planning and expanded services to students were expensive. Contract settlements by IFT local unions in 1969 provided salary increases averaging 10 per cent. As an example, Kankakee teachers struck in May of 1969. The strike was bitter, with the school board using every device possible, including a court injunction, fines and jail sentences. The teachers persisted and the strike settlement provided salary increases ranging from 13 per cent for the most experienced teachers to 16 percent for beginning teachers. The school board also agreed to hire 8 per cent more teachers and to provide improved insurance benefits and funds for teaching supplies.

Pressure from bargaining by teachers with local school boards caused demands for more state aid and increased pressure for enactment of the state income tax.

Without the right to strike, unions cannot represent their members effectively and education will suffer in competition with other interest groups. During the period from 1960 to 1973, the percentage of the gross national product (GNP) devoted to education increased from about 5.2 per cent to 8 per cent. It was in this period that teachers established collective bargaining in education. But a combination of aggressive postures of school boards in bargaining, the use of court injunctions against teachers' strikes, and the refusal of political leaders to allocate more money for instructional services has leveled the percentage of the GNP devoted to education to around 8 per cent.

Because of inflation, teachers' salaries have increased at about 5 per cent a year, while other operational costs of schools and colleges increased at an annual rate of 10 or 12 percent. In the school year 1976-77, salary schedules have been frozen for nearly a third of public school teachers at 1975-76 levels, while other operational costs have continued to rise at the same rate as in the general economy. This is true partly because workers in the construction industry, manufacturing, transportation, communication, and other segments of the economy have demanded and bargained fair increases in wages. Academic employees in the state's university system have been especially hard-hit by their unfavorable legal status. The state's university teachers received only a 2.5 per cent salary increase for the 1976-77 academic year, supplemented by another 2 per cent added in December 1976 by the General Assembly's override of the governor's reduction veto of university appropriation bills.

Most of the powerful groups and individuals who oppose collective bargaining and right-to-strike legislation do so for economic reasons. Public employers, they argue, may not be able to raise the money necessary to pay negotiated salary increases. But the real reason is that they are opposed to education having a bigger share of the economic pie. As with other rights and liberties that have been secured by teachers in the long struggle to establish unions, the right to strike must inevitably gain the protection of Illinois law. ž

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