Impasse Procedures: The American Experience

Abstract

Recent American industrial relations have been characterized by experimentation with alternatives to the strike. Much of this experimentation is the result of public sector workers gaining access to collective bargaining while continuing to be denied access to the strike. In the United States, as in many countries, governments have taken the view that their employees should not strike. Considerations of public service, sovereignty and representative democracy, essentiality of government services and of the lack of some private sector restramts underlie this view