Not Right to Strike

Harry Bernstein’s opinion (“Public Workers Deserve the Right to Strike,” June 4) is ill-founded and fortunately not held by legislators in all but a dozen American states, California being one of the unfortunate 12.

In the private sector, the strike is an attempt to inflict economic damage against an employer in an attempt to win contract concessions. In the public sector, a strike by public workers is not aimed at inflicting economic damage but at the welfare of the general public.

A strike in the public sector, even if it is a strike by office workers in a small government agency, is intended to hurt the public. A strike by firefighters or police is an attempt to expose the general public to greater danger or even death. A strike by garbage workers (one of which led to the California Supreme Court decision legalizing public worker strikes) is aimed at exposing the public to disease.

It is true the California decision provides for an employer injunction if the employer can prove “substantial and imminent danger to the health and safety to the public,” but even when there was some doubt about legality of public employee strikes, California courts were loath to grant injunctions, and gave only wrist slaps as punishment for strikers ignoring the injunctions.

Since labor costs make up the great majority of the cost of public services, to turn any dispute about wages and benefits over to an arbitrator whose decision is binding is to do away with the most important function of elected officials in favor of having this function performed by a person responsible to no one.

Calvin Coolidge told it the way it should be a long time ago: “There is no right of anyone, anywhere, at any time to strike against the public welfare.”

GERALD E. DART

Calimesa