If 12,000 of them were fired (all at once?), so they are not that critical to the economy and the safety of the country to the point that can't strike, right?
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.
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?
The Iran-Contra affair seems like a pretty clear case of negotiating with terrorists.
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.
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".
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.