If transit workers follow through on their threat to call a strike on Monday, their employers would have a powerful weapon to use against them.þþIt is called the Taylor Law, and it states that strikes by public employees are illegal. It also forbids anyone to ÿinstigate, encourage, or condoneÿ them. Passed in 1967 after a devastating transit strike, the law includes painful penalties, like fines for the union and individual members, and the option for employers to seek additional sanctions in court.þþWorkers have flouted the Taylor Law and called strikes on a number of occasions over the years, and they might do it again. þþBut if the past is any indication, the transit workers and their union could end up paying dearly. After the 11-day transit strike in 1980, the union was fined $1 million, and individual workers also had to pay two days' salary for each day they were on strike.þþSince the Taylor Law was passed, penalties have been imposed after most of the roughly 250 public employee strikes that have been called, said Gary Johnson, associate counsel at the Public Employment Relations Board, which was created by the law. The most common penalty is to temporarily suspend a union's ability to raise funds through automatic dues deductions from members' paychecks, he said. þþThat can cripple a union. After the United Federation of Teachers struck for five days in 1975, it lost dues deduction privileges for three months, forcing the union to collect dues from each individual, which is costly and time-consuming. Union officials estimated that they lost $2 million in revenue. The transit workers' union suffered similar losses after its automatic deduction was temporarily suspended in the aftermath of the 1980 strike.þþThe law is named for George W. Taylor, who was named by Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller in 1966 to head a five-member panel to recommend new legislation governing union rights and procedures. A professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and an experienced arbitrator, Mr. Taylor had been the chairman of the National War Labor Board during World War II, said Josh Freeman, a history professor at Queens College.þþBut the law bears his name by default. ÿNo one wanted their name on it, because the New York City unions were very articulate in their opposition to the law,ÿ said Jerome Lefkowitz, who drafted the law and helped to administer it afterward.þþHarsh as it may seem to some public employees, the Taylor Law replaced a more severe law passed in 1947, the Condon-Wadlin Act. That law barred strikes, but it also called for the firing of striking workers. ÿIt was so draconian that it was difficult to enforce,ÿ Professor Freeman said.þþIn addition to penalties, the Taylor Law included provisions allowing workers the right to organize. Although many New York City workers had already won that right, the law gave a powerful support to unions elsewhere in the state, Professor Freeman said.þþThe law also improved arbitration procedures and created a new cadre of skilled negotiators. It requires binding arbitration for workers who are considered most vital to the public, including firefighters and police officers. New York City's transit workers were added to that list in 1995.þþIn addition, some scholars say that by firmly establishing the right to organize, the law helped to expand the political power of unions, giving them more leverage with elected leaders.þþÿPeople began to realize that public employees have a weapon that exceeds the right to strike in the private sector: they can vote their bosses out,ÿ Mr. Lefkowitz said.þþVirtually all states prohibit strikes by public employees to varying degrees, said David Gregory, a professor of labor law at St. John's University Law School, but the Taylor Law's penalties are more definite and more immediate than those in some other states. At least a few states have patterned their own laws on it, Mr. Lefkowitz said.þþThe ability to fine individual union members for each day they strike, a power some other states lack, is a particularly effective threat, scholars said. After the 1980 transit strike, the fines imposed against 33,000 transit workers were equivalent to the first-year raise the workers got in their next contract, Professor Freeman said.þþ
Source: NY Times
