For everyone except labor activists, the 1981 strike by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) has faded into the dim mists of memory. But President Reagan's harsh treatment of the strikers set the tone for three decades of union busting in America.
On Aug. 3, 1981, PATCO went on strike, seeking better working conditions, better pay, and a 32-hour work week. Reagan reacted by declaring the strike a “peril to national safety” and ordered the strikers back to work. Only 1,300 of the nearly 13,000 controllers complied.
Subsequently, Reagan demanded those remaining on strike return to work within 48 hours or face the loss of their jobs. Two days later, Reagan fired the 11,345 striking air traffic controllers that had ignored the order and banned them from federal service for life. (The ban was later lifted by President Clinton in 1993.)
The irony of the PATCO debacle was that the union had endorsed Reagan for president in 1980. Its members were perhaps the least likely candidates for labor martyrdom. But, as labor organizer and writer Steve Early wrote in The Boston Globe on the 25th anniversary of the PATCO strike in 2006, the mistakes that were made in 1981 would haunt the labor movement for years to come.
“PATCO failed to build ties with the pilots, mechanics, flight attendants, and baggage handlers whose backing was so desperately needed during the controllers' walk-out,” wrote Early. “The lesson of PATCO...is as old as unions themselves: An injury to one is an injury to all. No labor movement can long survive, much less thrive, without a strong culture of mutual aid and protection.”
After three decades of wage stagnation, longer hours, and shrinking pensions for working Americans, PATCO's demands seem unrealistic today. But what PATCO sought was what their professional peers in Europe enjoyed at that time - a standard of living that's an impossibility for many Americans.
Why? Because the things that working Americans now take for granted - the 40-hour work week and the eight-hour workday, the end of child labor, the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, health care and retirement benefits - are rapidly disappearing, and the unions that fought and died for them are disappearing, too.
Since the PATCO strike, companies can fire anyone suspected of union activity, at any time, for any reason, and not face punishment. As a result, it is almost impossible to unionize any workplace in America.
Large corporations like it that way. They want to drive down wages and benefits, and keep workers fearful and insecure. They prefer to make it tough to build solidarity. The winner-take-all, every-man-for-himself ethos that drives today's global economy works fine for the bosses.
The subtext of the ongoing fight waged by Republicans in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and other states that are considering legislation to destroy public-sector unions by eliminating all collective bargaining rights is easy to see. In a nation where union membership is at its lowest level in nearly a century, public-sector workers are the last workers in America who enjoy things that many workers once enjoyed - livable wages, fair benefits, and pensions that let them live with a modicum of dignity and security in retirement.
But Democrats haven't been much better than Republicans. Too many give lip service to the rights of workers, yet take the side of the corporations and investment banks that are destroying the lives of American workers.
Our governor, Peter Shumlin, has not proposed any draconian measures against Vermont's public employees. However, like his Republican predecessor, Shumlin refuses to consider taxing the wealthiest Vermonters to fill the growing budget gap. And, like his Republican predecessor, Shumlin seeks also seeks pay and benefit givebacks from state workers, and has proposed cuts that will affect services to poor and elderly Vermonters, all in the name of deficit reduction.
The stakes of the fight in Madison, Columbus, and state capitals across America are plain for all to see. The right is trying to split what remains of the middle class and distract us from noticing the massive transfer of wealth to the richest 1 percent of America. If Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and other Republican lawmakers succeed in smashing public sector unions and gutting the public services provided by union members, they will have achieved their biggest victory in three decades of class warfare against working Americans.
It's been heartening to see the rallies that have sprung up all over the country in response to this spasm of union busting, but it will take more than rallies. It will take the efforts of all working Americans to join and recognize that this fight affects everyone. All working Americans will need to realize that there is a direct correlation between belonging to a union and having a better standard of living, and not belonging to a union and being treated like chattel.
The question is not whether public employees should have better wages and benefits than most other workers. It is why more workers in America are not better compensated for their labor, and why more workers aren't allowed to take the necessary steps to achieve a reasonable share of prosperity.