Cass,

On the flip side, teachers also have no incentives to strike.

Your blame of teachers for the circumstances surrounding strikes is extremely misplaced. PA law requires arbitration (which is the preferred and most effective method for resolving difficult contract disputes) only after teachers have gone on strike for a certain period of time; it also strictly limits the number of days that teachers can be on strike.

This is a recipe for disaster on all sides. While teachers only have their pay suspended (not forfeited) during a strike, school boards know that teachers can't strike indefinitely. Because the district isn't a for-profit business, it's not incurring any costs due to the strike, and thus has no real incentive to prevent strikes. Likewise, this means that strikes provide teachers with no real bargaining leverage.

In the private sector, strikes are a last-resort leveraging tool. Employees lose their paychecks permanently, but they sacrifice these to make long-term gains in wages and benefits. Employers negotiate in good faith because a strike will cost their business a substantial amount of revenue. As such you obviously can't apply private sector bargaining theory and rules to the public sector - it's apples and oranges.

Where you should place your blame is with the PA legislature, which has crafted and sustained strike laws that hurt both districts and teachers. Strikes should be permitted indefinitely, and any teacher pay lost during them should not be recoverable (unless the solution is to move school into the summer and the teachers end up working those days). Arbitration should be mandatory AND binding after a certain period of time to protect the interests of the community.

Unfortunately, our state legislators are too polarized to muster a real solution. On one side we have the Daryl Metcalfe-types, who are so simple-minded that they think just eliminating strikes will fix everything. It won't. On the other side, we have union-bought congressmen who won't risk offending their financial backers. In between - well, we don't really elect people in between anymore. Which explains our dilemma.