Getting Rid of Automatic Dues Collection Could Unleash a New Wave of Teacher Strikes

The anti-union governors don't know their history.  States and localities eliminated the viability of strikes by teachers in the mid-1970s, by using automatic union dues collection as both a carrot (we'll give it to you if you don't strike) and a stick (we'll give it to your competing union/association if you do strike).  In interviews I conducted while writing my MA thesis on the 1974 Baltimore teachers strike, there was broad agreement among Union and Association leaders that Mayor Schaefer's heavy-handed approach regarding dues collection was successful in buying off the unions and making strikes impossible.  There is a good chance that elimination of this carrot/stick will bring back a wave of strikes similar to that of the late 1960s and early 1970s