The Tuesday Megapanel and Joseph McCartin, Associate Professor of history at Georgetown University and author of Collision Course:  Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike That Changed America discuss the enduring legacy of the 1981 strike and the current state of labor in the United States today.

In August 1981, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) called an illegal strike. The new president, Ronald Reagan, fired the strikers, establishing a reputation for both decisiveness and hostility to organized labor.  As Prof. McCartin writes, “the strike was the culmination of two decades of escalating conflict between controllers and the government that stemmed from the high-pressure nature of the job and the controllers’ inability to negotiate with their employer over vital issues.” PATCO’s fall not only ushered in a long period of labor decline; it also served as a harbinger of the campaign against public sector unions that now roils American politics.