Few private employers can afford simultaneous 100 percent turnover, even temporarily, so a strike threat encourages negotiations. And once a strike is on, resolving it is almost always preferable to training a whole new work force, at least if workers have any special skills. Were the air traffic control system subject to market pressures, firing the strikers would have been much harder and banning them for life inconceivable. Thinking of the right to strike in this way suggests the fatal flaw in traditional unionism, and a direction for a reborn union movement. Old-fashioned unionism pretends that all workers are the same, that the only difference among them is whether or not they enjoy union privileges.
Insiders are valuable, outsiders worthless, but all insiders are equal.
Only seniority distinguishes them. To see the absurdity of this notion, consider the nation's largest union, the National Education Association. Anyone who has ever been a student, parent, or teacher knows that some teachers are extraordinary, some mediocre, and some abysmal. But in defense of union egalitarianism, the NEA attacks every public policy that would reward good teachers or screen out bad ones. Treating employees as interchangeable is not only degrading to good workers and infuriating to good managers, it is an invitation to hire permanent replacements.