Deterring Strikes by Public Employees: New York's Two-For-One Salary Penalty and the 1979 Prison Guard Strike

Abstract

After briefly tracing the development of the statutory penalties imposed on striking public employees in New York State, this article focuses on the Taylor Law's requirement that such strikers lose two days' salary for each day they are on strike. Particular emphasis is placed on the litigation that occurred in the aftermath of the statewide strike by prison guards in 1979, when the guards' union challenged several aspects of the two-for-one penalty. The author concludes that the act's current provision governing payment of the penalty—requiring that the entire two-for-one penalty be deducted from the strikers' paychecks during a sixty-day period after the strike—imposes a major hardship on participants in a long strike, and he recommends the act be amended in a way that he believes will not undermine the deterrent purposes of the penalty.