Before this year, the most important government worker union labor action in U.S. history took place in 1981. The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, PATCO, called an illegal strike against the Federal Aviation Administration during the Reagan administration. President Ronald Reagan responded decisively; holding to President Calvin Coolidge’s maxim that “there is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, at any time,” Reagan fired the striking controllers, replaced them with military controllers and nonunion civilian supervisors, and barred strikers from federal employment.
Compare Reagan’s decisiveness to the weak-kneed response of the nation’s governors to the de facto strike action of the teachers unions. With a few exceptions — Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, and Rhode Island’s Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, among them — governors and local officials have more or less allowed teachers unions to conduct a mass-scale “sick out” keeping schools closed and families in lockdown. This was ostensibly because of the coronavirus pandemic but more plausibly as an extortionate political action in advance of a presidential election. Reagan’s decisiveness in dealing with the unions, even in jurisdictions that ban government worker strikes, has been entirely absent.
And to be clear: Research shows that teachers union power, not the rate of coronavirus infection or deaths, is closely associated with whether classrooms will open or remain locked down. By one model, “A 10% increase in union power is associated with a 1.3 percentage-point lower probability of reopening in person.”
But while political leaders have alternately dithered, capitulated, or pandered to the might of the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, parents have taken their own action. According to one poll, nearly 40% of parents are not enrolling their children in the school they would have attended but for the pandemic. Anecdotal stories suggest that children are being moved into private schools or into independent home-school arrangements, and teachers union-aligned governments are passing legislation to prevent student and parent independence from affecting school system budgets.
What may be happening — data is spotty, polls are unreliable, and teachers unions never need an excuse to demand more money — is that the spinelessness of public officials has prompted parents to counter the teachers unions’ strike all on their own.
Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, teachers unions have operated on a simple premise: “Give us what we want, or your kids get it.” Just as the PATCO strikers thought that a chokehold on a key economic node gave them incalculable leverage to demand raises of 31% amid a recession, teachers unions have operated on the assumption that no force can resist them, so they can make extreme political demands — everything from defunding the police to public welfare for illegal immigrants.
But what if the unions don’t have the leverage they thought they had? In the case of the air traffic controllers, Reagan called in the military controllers. Air travel continued, and no major air disasters happened; PATCO’s leverage was ephemeral, and its strike failed. If parents, whether by developing “pandemic pods,” defecting to private schools, or adopting home-school curricula rather than accepting whatever online drivel teachers unions and their captive municipalities are offering, can show that they can break the strike, the public might be able to repeat Reagan’s victory.
Michael Watson is the research director at Capital Research Center in Washington, D.C.
