Recent Garbage Strikes Cry Out for Binding Arbitration

The ugly murder of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. took place in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968, when the civil rights leader was preparing for yet another demonstration to help striking black garbage collectors form a union. With King’s help, they forced a racist city government to recognize their union and boost their wages--and won a measure of dignity and justice that they had never known before.

Memories of that bloody day have been revived by the recently concluded strikes of thousands of garbage collectors and other municipal workers in Detroit and Philadelphia.

The essence of all three strikes is similar: the struggles of workers to better their lives despite widespread condemnation by citizens who suffered from the health-threatening mountains of rotting garbage, the loss of public transportation and other, lesser strike-related problems.

But, while there are similarities between the three strikes, there are vast differences, too. And they all cry out for an alternative that is viable in a free society--binding arbitration.

The most dramatic and revolutionary of the strikes was the one in Memphis 18 years ago. It was called by black garbage collectors who struck only to win official recognition of their union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).

That goal was achieved two weeks after King’s murder. The resulting union contract boosted their wages, benefits and job security.

“We are doing just fine here (in Memphis) these days. Wages are fairly decent, and workers are treated with a good bit of that respect that Dr. King knew we all need and are entitled to have,” Dorothy Crook, an executive of AFSCME’s Local 1733 in Memphis, said recently.

Their wages may not equal those paid in some larger cities, but AFSCME contracts have boosted the earnings of King’s men to a top of $7.95 an hour, up a whopping 700% since the union’s first contract, compared to a 215% hike in the consumer price index.

But that strike had broader ramifications. It added substantial momentum to the unionization of government workers in cities and states across the nation. It also increased black interest in politics and thereby helped bring about another of King’s dreams: more blacks in key government positions.

Both of King’s goals--to help workers and also to get more blacks in government--have been partially achieved, but so far they have not had the mutually reinforcing effect that he anticipated.

One of the first unfortunate tests of that hoped-for synergy came about nearly nine years after Memphis. In 1977, Maynard Jackson, Atlanta’s first black mayor--elected with strong support from unions and blacks--crushed a bitter 18-day strike of mostly black garbage collectors.

The defeat in Atlanta slowed but did not stop the efforts to unionize municipal workers. Government workers flocked to unions in far greater numbers than in the private sector. AFSCME grew from about 300,000 members in King’s day to more than 1 million today. Nearly 25% of U.S. workers are employed in government, and 75% of them are covered by union contracts, more than three times the private sector average.

Garbage collectors in Philadelphia were also unionized. But when they struck for better wages last month, they were battling another black mayor, W. Wilson Goode. He won politically important praise from leading white Philadelphians when he first threatened to replace all of the workers with strikebreakers. He got more praise, and predictions of a reelection victory, after he broke the strike with a court order forcing the workers back to their jobs pretty much on his own terms.

Nevertheless, before that “success,” which took 18 days, Philadelphia had to deal with thousands of tons of reeking rubbish that could have endangered the health of the entire city.

Municipal workers in Detroit were unionized, and there, too, they were dealing with a black mayor, Coleman Young. He seemed less belligerent toward the city workers than Goode. He even refused to cross their picket lines during the 19-day walkout. But he fought them from other locations.

Young failed to get a back-to-work court injunction in that union-oriented city. Instead, the judge ordered the union and city officials back to the bargaining table, and the city workers won significant increases after more hard bargaining.

The biggest strike-caused problem in Detroit, as in the other cities, was mountains of uncollected refuse. The rubbish piled up when the Detroit garbage workers, represented by the Teamsters, honored picket lines set up by other municipal employees who belong to AFSCME. Non-striking bus drivers, too, refused to cross picket lines. It was a show of unity that unions need urgently these days.

The black mayors of Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta were all elected with crucial support from AFSCME and other unions. Detroit’s Young is even a former executive of the United Auto Workers.

One evident conclusion from the municipal strikes is that black and white elected officials are not very different. After an election, race usually becomes irrelevant. Even when unions are a significant factor in the election of a politician, the unions never “own” them. Mayors, like other elected political figures, must represent the majority and appeal to a wide spectrum of voters. Union members are not the majority of the electorate, and stinking piles of garbage are not vote-getting devices.

Another conclusion that can be drawn from the municipal strikes is that some way must be found to avoid creating what the California Supreme Court last year called “a substantial and imminent threat to the health or safety of the public.”

In a wise decision saying that public workers generally have a right to strike in a democracy, the state court said that such strikes can be limited only when they threaten the public’s health or safety. The high court added vaguely that lower courts will have to decide when a strike does pose a danger to the public and also what to do about them.

Few strikes really fit that category. And those that do fit can be in either the public or private sector. But if a strike of city garbage collectors or electric company workers in the private sector truly endangers the public, then in a free society they should not be ordered back to work by the courts and forced to accept management’s contract terms.

A fair alternative is binding arbitration. A neutral third party or panel of mutually acceptable experts should be allowed to hear the arguments of both the workers and management and decide the merits of their arguments. Final decisions in labor-management disputes should not be left to either side exclusively, even in critical areas of employment.

A ‘Leaking’ NLRB

It is well known that news stories critical of government policies or individuals often stem from “leaks.” Such stories about personality and policy disputes within the National Labor Relations Board in recent years have often been based on those usually reliable but unidentified leaks.

A few weeks ago, though, a letter came to light at a congressional hearing giving credence to the “leaked” stories of NLRB infighting. It was written by NLRB Chairman Donald L. Dotson, who has been blamed for much of the time-consuming feuding within the agency.

The very conservative Dotson wrote a letter early this year to the Business Roundtable giving short shrift to the new, pro-management but only moderately conservative board majority. He wrote then that “the board has not made a substantially worthwhile decision in over a year. As presently constituted, I believe it will make few if any such decisions and that there will be an erosion of the 1983-84 decisions” (when there were more Dotson-minded members).

Without naming her, he wrote that the office of the board’s general counsel, Rosemary Collyer, “continues to litigate trivial matters at great expense to respondents and the government. There continues to be evidence that investigations are conducted with an eye toward prosecution of employers rather than objective analysis.”

And while it is not unusual for government agencies, even quasi-judicial ones, to have a political bias, they rarely boast about it, as Dotson did when he wrote the Business Roundtable that before new members joined the board, its decisions were “favorably received by business and the courts (and) were part of the record on which the President (Reagan) was resoundingly reelected.”

It isn’t hard to figure out why the chairman has offended so many of his colleagues, much less unions and their liberal allies.