COLLECTIVE BARGAINING FOR PUBLIC EMPLOYEES.

Edited by Herbert L.Marx Jr. '37. New York: The H. W. Wilson Co., 1969. 215 pp. $3.50.

Developments in labor-management relations have been dominated in recent years by the efforts of government at all levels to devise a viable system of collective bargaining for public employees. What makes these experiments so fascinating is the attempt to demonstrate that the right to strike, contrary to the conventional wisdom, is not a prerequisite of free collective bargaining. Whether government in this endeavor has set itself a realistic goal is certainly debatable. That it has set itself an important task, however, is indisputable.

If current experiments confirm the traditional view that bargaining and strike rights are inseparable, then society faces a painful choice. It can agree to extend to the public sector the bargaining institutions and practices of the private sector, which means, among other things, abandoning the prohibition against strikes. Or it can jettison the notion that government workers should enjoy the bargaining rights accorded others and seek to contain the resulting conflict by repressive laws, which can only continue the recent dreary experience of unrest and disruption. Neither alternative is very appealing, though the former is perhaps at least tolerable. If, on the other hand, government is successful in fashioning a bargaining system whose procedures obviate the need for strikes, then it will have pioneered a major social innovation with revolutionary potential for the structuring of private collective bargaining and perhaps even of other basic processes of conflict resolution.

Considering the stakes involved in public bargaining, it is not surprising that a voluminous literature has grown up around the subject in only a very few years. Herbert Marx's slim volume of readings can offer no more than a small sample of that literature. Nevertheless, his selections are judicious and sensibly arranged, and a fine bibliography is appended for the reader who would pursue the subject further. Mr. Marx, as editor, has been careful not to interpose his own opinions or to offer his own solutions. He does ask the right questions, however, and he provides a framework and set of materials within which one can usefully ponder the answers.

Mr. Macdonald is Professor of BusinessEconomics at the Tuck School and has agolf handicap of 4 at the Hanover CountryClub.