Hawaii’s public workers became the first in the nation to win the legal right to strike—by illegally striking.

Winning the Right to Strike—By Striking

With outlawing strikes no longer a realistic option, public employers were forced to come up with other methods to try and stem the tide of public employee strike activity. As a result, several states decided to take the opposite tack and legalize public employee strikes. The idea behind this strategy was that by making strikes legal, “they can be regulated and procedures can be required which will reduce the incidence of strikes and shorten those strikes that do occur.” The passage of the first comprehensive state law legally permitting public employee strikes occurred in Hawaii in 1970 (Vermont passed a limited law in 1966), and is an excellent example of the power of illegal strikes forcing slow-moving legislators to act. In 1968, Hawaii’s constitution was amended to say that “Persons in public employment shall have the right to organize for the purpose of collective bargaining as prescribed by law.” Despite this new constitutional mandate, the state legislature failed to enact legislation in 1969 authorizing collective bargaining. After realizing that such legislation was unlikely, 1,600 state workers took matters into their own hands, striking for two days. The resultant strike “illustrated an increasing militancy among Hawaii’s public employees, corresponding to rising unrest on the Mainland, and caused more thought to be given to the collective bargaining process as a way of determining wages and other employment conditions.”

In the wake of the strike, the Hawaii state senate commissioned a report in 1970 to study collective bargaining and strike prohibitions. Despite “the near universal prohibition against strikes by public employee in various jurisdictions throughout the country,” the report from the Hawaii Senate Public Employment Committee determined that:

experience has shown that such prohibitions are ineffective in preventing, and at times have been the cause of, strikes (sic). In many instances, strike penalties have been modified or waived in order to bring striking employees back to work, often times fostering disrespect and disregard of the law. …The Committee feels that granting the right of public employees to strike will not increase strikes, but on the other hand, would be effective in deterring strikes because genuine collective bargaining would result thereby.

The committee understood, from the experiences of public workers in other states, but more importantly, from the militancy of Hawaii’s public workers, that the right to strike needed to be granted. In case state legislators failed to grasp the point, Hawaii’s public workers engaged in another statewide strike on the day the legislature was voting on the law. Initially, nurses and other hospital workers stuck for wage increases and in support of the right to strike. The following day, they were joined by members of the white collar Hawaii Government Employees Association. All together “about 13,500 workers…were active in the stoppage; an estimated 7,000 marched on the state capitol. Lack of custodial services and cafeteria workers closed schools. After three days the strike ended with the legislature granting the blue-collar raise and increasing the wages of about half the white-collar workers.” And that is how Hawaii’s public workers became the first in the nation to win the legal right to strike—by illegally striking.

[Footnotes from the original text were not included.]