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36 Indus. & Lab. Rel. Rev. 431 (1982-1983)
Strikes, Arbitration, and Teacher Salaries: A Behavioral Analysis

handle is hein.journals/ialrr36 and id is 433 raw text is: STRIKES, ARBITRATION, AND TEACHER SALARIES:
A BEHAVIORAL ANALYSIS
JOHN THOMAS DELANEY*
This study uses Bacharach and Lawler's behavioral theory of bargaining to
derive hypotheses about the impact of strikes and compulsory interest arbitra-
tion on teacher salaries. Those hypotheses are tested with data sets on Illinois
and Iowa school districts and on a national sample of teachers drawn from the
Current Population Survey. The results suggest that strike use affects teacher
salaries but that arbitration use does not. Additional tests indicate that the
availability of both arbitration and of the legal or de facto right to strike has
similar effects on salary levels, increasing salaries by about 10 percent. The
findings also suggest that arbitration and the strike are used as defensive
rather than offensive strategies.

H ISTORY has shown that overt expressions
of conflict are an inevitable, if infre-
quent, consequence of collective bargain-
ing. In the private sector in the United
States, the possibility of conflict is accepted
as a   necessary   part of our industrial
relations system, but there is no consensus
that strikes by public employees should be
permitted.t Even the dramatic growth of
public sector unionism over the past two
*The author is a Research Associate at the Institute of
Labor and Industrial Relations, University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign. Partial funding for the study
was provided by the University's Graduate College
Research Board and the Institute of Labor and In-
dustrial Relations. The author is grateful to the Arden
House conference participants, many scholars and
practitioners. and especially to Peter Feuille for their
generous comments and advice.
'For a discussion of the conventional wisdom on
why public sector strikes should be prohibited, see
Harry H. Wellington and Ralph K. Winter, Jr., The
Unions and the Cities (Washington, D.C.: The Brook-
ings Institution, 1971, pp. 167-201.

decades has not reduced the belief among
many U.S. lawmakers that strikes by govern-
ment employees should not be tolerated.
As a result, the great majority of public
employees are legally prohibited from strik-
ing, and only eight states have granted lim-
ited strike privileges to selected nonessen-
tial public employee groups.2 Neverthe-
less, because experience has demonstrated
that mere strike prohibitions do not effec-
tively eliminate work stoppages, many
states have required at least some public
employees (generally uniformed or es-
sential) to resolve their bargaining im-
passes through binding arbitration.3
2Alaska, Hawaii. Minnesota, Montana, Oregon,
Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Wisconsin permit lim-
ited strike rights.
3Nineteen states currently mandate binding interest
arbitration for some public employees; and arbitration
laws in three other states have been overturned by the
courts or public referenda. For a discussion see B.V.H.
Schneider. Public-Sector Labor Legislation-An
Evolutionary Analysis, in Benjamin Aaron, Joseph

Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 36, No. 3 (April 1983). © 1983 by Cornell University.
0019-7939/83/3603 $01.00

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