In recent articles in this Journal (Reid and Kurth, 1988, 1989b), we modeled governments as political firms of specialized employees organized and directed by politicians to maximize a mixture of votes, power, and income for politicians. From this model, we proffered one public choice explanation for the spatially and temporally distinct transitions of public employees' organizations from patronage to civil service and civil service to militant unions, namely that at its moment of adoption the new organization served politicians-directors most profitably. In particular, we argued that militant labor actions by public employees became tolerated and therefore common when they became useful to protect subordinate (state and local) political mandates from superior (generally federal) mandates. Their penalties for militancy reduced, state and local public employees exploded into militancy and into established unions that from experience best could lead militancy and from affiliation best could coordinate actions across states. Briefly put, our argument with respect to the recent growth of unionism in the public sector was: employees' militancy benefited politicians-employers, and established labor unions directed militancy efficiently. Consequently, public employees became militant unionists.
Here are the facts (from Reid and Kurth, 1989b, unless otherwise noted): Public employees have been organized for a long while into organizations and federations which provided expert testimony to committees and forums, but did not take adversarial stances toward their employing politicians. Then, between 1955 and 1978, membership by public employees in unions and associations grew 5-fold, while mandays struck grew 90-fold. Militancy, in short, grew dramatically faster than union or union-and-association membership through the 1960s and 1970s. Militant job actions overwhelmingly were by local public employees (for example, 88 percent of public mandays struck in 1978 were at the local level; Reid and Kurth, 1990: Table 1). Local public employees did not all become militant together, but became militant in occupational groups: in succeeding waves teachers, then firemen, then police, then social workers