Certain groups are just not legally allowed to strike in the US. Air traffic controllers are critical to the economy and safety of the country.
Another interesting point is that all of the fired air traffic controllers were banned for life from working that job again.
That helps explain why it took 10 years to recover: all the new employees were probably newly trained.
Once that card (striking) has been played, you lose any leverage afforded by avoiding interruptions of "economy and safety".
If you are not showing up for work (striking) you are not getting paid anyway. This is why the unions build up huge war chests so that they can pay their striking members. For example the largest property investor in Finland is a company owned by the unions. So they got wealth in the billions to fight if need be.
An ATC being fired doesn't ground flights any more than an ATC on strike grounds flights.
"Stop getting a paycheck" is just a euphemism for "the employee/union has already burned their leverage and gets fired".
Paying striking members is a losing battle once those members are fired: you’ll be paying them indefinitely in this case because there is only one employer for air traffic controller jobs in the USA, the federal government.
Reagan did not negotiate with terrorists, either. These people were knowingly and purposefully breaking federal law. What kind of example does it set to continue negotiations with them after that?
Additionally; laws follow humans, not the other way. If you're a person in a profession that is not allowed to argue for better conditions: then that's the best way to get the worst possible conditions.
Seems like a false economy to force people to accept the conditions that they get with no recompense. A bitter FTC employee is much worse than a strike. A bitter FTC employee can kill hundreds.
The Iran-Contra affair seems like a pretty clear case of negotiating with terrorists.
There is an obvious and straightforward way of getting those 12000 people to work again. There is no argument for firing them just because they are striking outside of petty displays of power and pure stupidity.
And how is it stupid to conclusively resolve an ongoing dispute that intentionally threatens national air travel? Just because one side loses doesn't make the decision 'stupid'.
Replacements were found and the world didn't end.
The notion that labor isn't replaceable when their demands exceed their replacement costs is absurd, no matter how skilled they are or how critical their work is.
Especially when the opponent is the government, the one entity that gives unions their power of monopoly, and the one opponent who doesn't need to act rationally when determining "replacement costs".
You can't make it illegal to strike on the grounds of it being dangerous; then fire everyone for it with little or no issue: it just tells us that the reasons for it being illegal were bullshit.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/danish-government-inter...
In this case it was the nurses' union vs. the public healthcare system. The nurses voted no to the proposed agreement and eventually went on strike. Because nurses are critical to healthcare it was very controlled which nurses were included in the strike.
The negotiations continued but it was impossible to reach an agreement and the number of nurses on strike increased over time.
Eventually the government decided to intervene and made the initial proposed agreement into law. This is part of the organization of the Danish labor market that if a conflict continues for too long there can be an intervention from the government.
Some nurses being angry about the outcome continued smaller strikes. These strikes are illegal within the framework of the labor laws. There's a special court ("Arbejdsretten" or "The labor court") that can decide that both the nurses as well as their union have to pay fines for illegal strikes. This is not a criminal court.
The main reason that the nurses went on strike is because they want greater pay. Historically nurses and many other public jobs were governed by special rules where they were not allowed to strike but could also not easily be fired ("tjenestemand"). This system was inflexible and was modernized in 1969. The nurses ended up with lower pay compared to similar jobs in terms of education (schoolteacher, policeman) most likely because being a nurse is typically a woman's job. This pay gap still exists today where the nurses now are allowed to strike within the framework of the labor laws in an attempt to increase their pay.
However, the question was if nurses are forbidden to strike, and the answer is: no, not in general. What is happening now is that the government forced a contract on them, and continued strikes break that contract.
>In February 1981, PATCO and the FAA began new contract negotiations. Citing safety concerns, PATCO called for a reduced 32-hour work week, a $10,000 pay increase for all air-traffic controllers and a better benefits package for retirement.[9] Negotiations quickly stalled. Then, in June, the FAA offered a new three-year contract with $105 million of up front conversions in raises to be paid in 11.4% increases over the next three years, a raise more than twice what was being given to other federal employees, “The average federal controller (at a GS_13 level, a common grade controller) earned $36,613, which was 18% less than private sector counterpart";[10] with the raise demanded, the average federal pay would have exceeded the private sector pay by 8%, along with better benefits and shorter working hours. However, because the offer did not include a shorter work week or earlier retirement, PATCO rejected the offer.[11]