Today in Labor History October 20, 1980: As a presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan wrote a letter to PATCO President Robert Poli promising that if the air traffic controllers union endorsed him, he would “take whatever steps necessary to provide them with the most modern equipment available and to adjust staff levels and work days so that they were commensurate with achieving a maximum degree of public safety.” The union naively endorsed Reagan and, within a few short months, President Reagan fired the air traffic controllers for engaging in an “illegal walkout” over staffing levels and working conditions. Their nationwide strike began on August 3, 1981, after workers rejected the government's final contract offer. Most of the 13,000 strikers ignored orders to go back to work and were fired on August 5. The mass firing of unionized workers, and the inability of the labor movement, as a whole, to respond to the crisis, led to the rapid downhill spiral of union power and membership. For example, in the years immediately after the PACTO strike, other major employers chose to fire striking workers en masse and replace them with scabs (e.g., Phelps Dodge, 1983; Hormel, 1985-1986; and International Paper, 1987). In the 14 years leading up to the PATCO strike, an average of 2.3 million U.S. workers per year were engaging in strikes and job actions. In the 10 years immediately after the PATCO strike, there was an 80% drop in strikes, with an average of 414,000 people on strike each of those years. And from 2001-2017, the number of U.S. workers who were striking each year had declined even further to an average of only 84,000 per year. There was a slight uptick in 2018 and 2019 with over 400,000 strikers each of those years, and again in 2023, with nearly 478,000 workers on strike. (Data is still pending for 2024, which is looking like another high number). But to this day, there has not been a single year where the number of striking U.S. workers has risen above 20% of the average prior to the PATCO strike.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #union #strike #patco #AirTrafficControllers #reagan #unionbusting #phelpsdodge #hormel #solidarity #strikewave
