[ak217]

Air traffic controllers do have a union. PATCO, the previous union that was "busted", was a public employee union that chose to hold critical public infrastructure hostage, which is unacceptable. Any union that does that should expect to be stripped of its monopoly on that kind of labor.

[titusjohnson]

No, they did not. Reagan very much wanted to spread that lie, but no infrastructure was held hostage. The laborers who held the skills needed to run that infrastructure declined to work when their compensation negotiations were declined.

Reagan's actions have had a profoundly disturbing effect on the American middle class that is still being felt today.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Had they all quit that would have been fine - nobody can force you to work. But they chose to not work and keep their jobs.

> The laborers who held the skills needed

So did many other people. They conspired to break the law by arranging to violate their employment contracts in a group so as to cause undue difficulty to their employer and they held public infrastructure hostage to prevent anyone else operating it.

> Reagan's actions have had a profoundly disturbing effect on the American middle class

The death of unions is a lot broader of an issue than RR killing the ATCU, and generally much deserved. Unions exist to save lives where the law isn't capable but for every plausibly relevant situation like air-traffic control or deep mining there are a hundred overreaches like trying to unionize Amazon warehouses.

As society and work got safer in general it became less important to have such an option as the right to blockade someone's property and dictate who they can hire.

[rtkwe]

A union that can't strike is a shared suggestion box at best. The ultimate power of a union boils down to the ability to deny labor to businesses and support it's members through that period in order to bargain.