New York’s “Taylor Law” exists to stop strikes. Will the strike wave change it?
by Sean Collins
TWU workers on strike in 1966.
On the morning of New Year’s Day in 1966, as John Lindsay moved into the Gracie Mansion and become mayor of New York City, members of the Transport Workers Union (TWU) and the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) walked off the job and brought the city’s subways and buses to a halt for 12 days.
Following the granting of collective bargaining rights to city workers by New York City Mayor Robert Wagner in the late 1950s—and coinciding with a wave of public sector worker militancy nationwide—New York’s public employees launched a strike wave culminating with the transit workers strike in 1966, the force and impact of which set the tone for New York public sector labor relations to this day.
In the wake of the transit workers strike, Governor Nelson Rockefeller appointed George W. Taylor, professor of industrial relations at the Wharton School of Business, to a commission that drafted what became the Public Employees’ Fair Employment Act, commonly referred to as the Taylor Law. Passed by the New York State Legislature in 1967, the Taylor Law replaced the Condon-Wadlin Act (1947), a Taft-Hartley era law that , prohibited public sector strikes and instituted strict penalties for workers who struck, including being placed on probation for five years and denied raises for three years. However, it proved largely ineffectual at governing public sector labor relations.
The Taylor Law went further, and granted all state and local government workers the right to unionize and collectively bargain, established the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) to supervise union elections for workers across all state and local entities (from towns and counties to school districts and public authorities), established a card check recognition process, and, like Condon-Wadlin, prohibited strikes. But instead of applying penalties to individual workers, which was rarely done, the Taylor Law penalized collective action and targeted the union with harsh penalties to end strikes. Under the law, if the union were to strike, they risk steep fines, the suspension of automatic dues deduction for up to a year, and union officials risk jail time. Individual workers who strike risk two days pay for every day out of work.
Further amendments were made to the Taylor Law. In 1969, PERB was empowered to prevent improper practices (similar to unfair labor practices in the private sector) and ensure that both unions and public employers bargained in good faith. In 1974, police officers and firefighters were carved out from Taylor Law and granted a different process of impasse resolution called “interest arbitration.” Now, if negotiations reach an impasse at the bargaining table or through mediation, an arbitration panel of three—one member appointed by the union, one by the employer, and the chair selected jointly—will render a final and binding determination.,
But even after the enactment of the Taylor Law, workers continued to strike. Between 1968 and 1982, there were 299 strikes across New York, peaking in 1975 (coinciding with New York City nearly declaring bankruptcy at the height of its fiscal crisis) when nearly 78,000 workers struck across New York for combined approximate total of 222 days. In 1980, TWU struck once again. 33,000 transit workers brought the MTA to halt for 11 days. While the workers were ultimately able to secure more in wages on the picket line, the union was fined over $1 million dollars and lost dues checkoff for four months. To fill budget gaps caused by the strike, straphangers saw a fare increase.
Enter the Triborough Amendment in 1982. While loathed by New York’s right wing think tanks and some public employers, the Triborough Amendment made it an improper practice to refuse to continue all terms of an expired agreement until a successor agreement is reached. Before its passage in 1982, public employers could freely alter contract provisions relating to permissive subjects of bargaining, and binding arbitration provisions lapsed. Some public sector unions, particularly New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), were big supporters of the Triborough Amendment. Under Triborough, employers could no longer unilaterally change working conditions as employers can in the private sector following an impasse. But the amendment didn’t prevent employers and municipal leaders from stalling in negotiations, doing the bare minimum to meet the legal threshold of good faith bargaining while dragging negotiations out for years.
There are concrete examples of employer delay tactics. In 2016, the Buffalo Teachers Federation finally ratified an agreement after working without a contract for 12 years. By the time Bill de Blasio became mayor in 2014, his predecessor Michael Bloomberg had allowed every contract with the city’s entire unionized workforce to expire. Albany’s blue collar workers went nearly five years without successor agreement while Mayor Kathy Sheehan tried to include raises for supervisory and managerial staff in her 2016 budget proposal.
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Militancy declined within the ranks of New York’s public workers amidst the nationwide decline of strike action following President Reagan’s decertification of Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO). Between 1983 and 2016, there were only 43 work stoppages across New York. Since the 2005 TWU strike, there have only been two recorded strikes, including adjunct faculty at Nassau Community College who struck for five days in 2013, ignoring a court injunction.
New York’s prohibition on strikes for state and local government workers is not unique. Only 12 states allow their public employees to engage in work stoppages. However, the existing labor law regimen in New York is particularly restrictive and at odds with the state’s aggressively manicured presentation as one of the most worker-friendly states in the country: a reputation tended to diligently by Governor Andrew Cuomo.
The reputation isn’t wholly deserved. Early in Cuomo’s tenure, he pushed through two significant changes that have squeezed workers and municipalities across the state. In 2011, he signed a property tax cap, which limited municipalities and school boards from raising taxes beyond 2% or the rate of inflation, whichever is less, annually. The following year, he established a new, sixth pension tier of reduced benefits for public employees and increased the retirement age to 63. These two changes infuriated the state’s three largest public sector unions—NYSUT, Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA), and the Public Employees Federation (PEF).
In the past two Democratic primaries, Cuomo, facing primary challenges, first from Fordham Law professor Zephyr Teachout and then from actress, union member, and public education advocate Cynthia Nixon, pivoted to the left to win back the support of organized labor, establishing a Fast Food Wage Board and pushing for a minimum wage increase, Paid Family Leave, and other progressive initiatives. In 2014, NYSUT did not endorse in the election and PEF made the bold decision to endorse Zephyr Teachout in the primary. CSEA, which didn’t endorse him in his first run for office, also did not endorse him in 2014.
In 2018, Cynthia Nixon challenged Cuomo’s pro-labor reputation and made amending the Taylor Law to remove the strike prohibition a central part of her platform, saying that “public sector workers across the country are under attack” and that she would “resist federal, right-to-work attacks on organized labor by amending Taylor Law to allow public sector workers the right to strike and support organizing drives for larger and stronger unions and protect union jobs from abusive non-union contractors.” Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, barely capable of agreeing on grass being green, both came out in opposition to the proposal.
The leadership of New York’s public sector unions, now at peace with Cuomo, came out against the proposal with knives. John Samuelson, then president of the Transport Workers Union Local 100 (which endorsed Cuomo), said that while he supported an amendment, Nixon’s proposal was “political opportunism” and that Nixon did not “care a rat’s ass about workers.” CSEA’s legislative director similarly panned the proposal, saying, “The right to strike is good if you can't negotiate,” continuing that CSEA is “of the belief that you sit at the table and negotiate in good faith and that's what the Taylor Law enables us to do.” NYSUT, which did not make an endorsement in the 2018 primary, echoed CSEA, saying the Taylor Law “worked effectively for more than 40 years” and that “in conjunction with the Triborough Amendment, it has ensured labor peace we are not seeking a change at this time.”
Ultimately, Nixon lost the primary in a landslide defeat and Cuomo was reelected for a third term. But in making an amendment to the Taylor Law a key plank of her platform, her campaign ignited a debate on public sector labor law that had not been seen in New York in decades. Coinciding with the strike wave—much of which has taken place in states where strikes are prohibited—New York public sector workers are increasingly willing to take bold measures.
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Before and after Nixon’s campaign, rank-and-file activists challenged their union leadership on more militant platforms, calling for a more direct action oriented approach. In 2015 and 2017, Phil Rumore, president of the Buffalo Teachers Federation (BTF) since 1981, faced challengers, a rarity in his nearly 40-year tenure. In 2016, Movement of Rank-and-file Educators (MORE)—a caucus within the United Federation of Teachers, the union for New York City school teachers—ran a slate to challenge current President Michael Mulgrew and his Unity Caucus slate, partially in response to his refusal to support the movement to opt out of standardized tests. Former NYSUT president Karen Magee became one of the highest-profile teachers union officials to support the national opt out movement; as a result, New York had the highest number of students opt out.
Increased rank-and-file activism got results. In 2016, the Professional Staff Congress-CUNY, made of 26,000 faculty and staff across the City University of New York’s various campuses, voted to authorize a strike after working five years under an expired contract, and members of the PSC-CUNY continue to agitate for the leadership of the union to incorporate a legitimate threat of a strike into their bargaining strategy. While not direct public employees, subcontracted bus drivers with the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1118 voted to authorize a strike earlier this year. In 2018, the New York State Nurses Association passed a resolution at their annual convention, introduced by members at NYC’s network of public hospitals, calling for the right to strike for New York’s public employees.
The impact of rank-and-file militancy extends beyond internal union affairs and contract fights, building broader solidarity. In 2017, Albany blue collar workers joined with Black Lives Matter protesters and drowned out Mayor Sheehan as she tried to deliver her State of the City address. Public workers across the state helped support and reinforce Verizon picket lines during the 44-day long strike in 2016. New York’s Capital District has the second highest union density in the country due to the organized state workforce, and actively supports private sector struggles in spite of lacking the right to strike. When IUE-CWA members at Momentive Performance Materials, a chemical plant in Waterford, struck for 105 days and UAW members at Honeywell in Green Island were locked out for 10 months, Capital District union members formed a support committee to reinforce pickets and raise funds for affected workers and their families.
The election of the Democratic Socialists of America’s Julia Salazar and four other progressive insurgents to the New York State Senate, with a Democrat supermajority for the first time in history, is due in part to the support of union leaders’ slow but steady recognition of the change in the winds. This year, New York extended collective bargaining rights to farmworkers. Next year, other pro-labor bills, such as allowing student athletes to earn money on the use of their name or likeness and limitations on the “independent contractor” classification, are expected to advance.
All these headline-grabbing progressive changes are important and necessary initiatives. However, it’s not enough, and leaves important issues unaddressed. It’s no exaggeration to say that New York’s infrastructure is in complete disarray; New York City’s subway system needs billions of dollars of investment. The TWU’s contract with the MTA expired earlier this year, and tensions between management and the workers have increased to levels not seen in years. Illegal strikes may have declined in New York since PATCO, but with strike action rising nationwide, New York public sector workers may decide now’s the time to change that.
Given TWU’s structural power and their history of strike action even in defiance of the law, they may ultimately choose to force important questions on Taylor Law—a law prompted by their strike action in 1966. Such a discussion is desperately needed, and can only be had by bringing the strike wave to New York—in force. Worker power, not legislative horse-trading, will change the state of play.
It’s captured in a sentiment shared by Elias Maysonet, a subway car cleaner, voicing what every New Yorker knows.
“We’re in a billion-dollar city and all we want is a living wage. We could stop the city if we wanted to, and maybe we will.”
Sean Collins is Lead Organizer for SEIU 200United and a member of the National Writers’ Union, UAW Local 1981. The views expressed are his own.
A special thank you to William Herbert, Esq, Executive Director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions and Distinguished Lecturer at Hunter College, for his thoughtful edits and corrections to an early draft of this article.