rights of public and private employees. the federal government and the courts have remained an effective weapon of public employers to stop coordinated work stoppages or strikes by public employees.
Public employees have managed to make more ground in securing union rights at the state level. While more or less excluded from the protections of federal labor law, states may offer public employees normal union rights, such as the right to strike. Usually, the rule of law at the state level is also that strikes by public employees are illegal. Nevertheless, several states have opted to extend union rights to the public sector.
In 1970, Hawaii and Pennsylvania became the first states in the nation to grant their public employees the right to strike by acts of the legislatures. Court actions in other states have interpreted state public employee collective bargaining statutes to provide for public employee strike rights. Illinois and Ohio have legislated the right to strike for public employees in the last few years. And in 1990, Alaska granted its teachers a right to strike for a two-year experimental per
...