WI: Reagan's PATCO firings met with May 1968 France-style civil unrest?

RySenkari

Back in 1981 when Ronald Reagan fired the PATCO air traffic controllers, public and union response was quite small and no general civil unrest occurred.

But what if the American public had responded to Reagan's firings in a manner similar to this?:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1968_events_in_France

With massive (albeit illegal under the Taft-Hartley Act), paralyzing general sympathy strikes, huge demonstrations in the street, factory occupations and acts of severe civil disobedience?

Would such a thing be completely ASB considering the nation's political mood at the time?

And if it did happen, what would the administration's response be?
 
Simon

Simon

Yeah, I'm going to call ASB on this one. The US and France are just so different socially that without a point of departure quite a ways back as to make things almost unrecognisable I simply can't see it happening.
 
Plumber

Plumber

The problem is not only that such things would be illegal, but that the labor movement had started to fancy itself as part of the establishment since the mid-1960s, and became uninterested in expansion. (George Meany: "I used to be worried about the unorganized, but now I realize it's not our problem if they don't wish to get representation.") The conservative surge in the 1978 elections blindsided labor, but the AFL-CIO was still too arrogant to cooperate with other left-leaning groups, like civil rights groups and feminist groups, until after Reagan had left them with little allies left. Now, if you butterfly away Senator Orrin Hatch, or have his 1978 filibuster against labor reform fail, the labor movement will gain needed reform and expansion. Taft-Hartley would fall by the wayside, and then you could get increased labor power that might allow such a strike to happen.

As for Reagan's response, look at Thatcher.
 

Lord Grattan

RySenkari said:
Back in 1981 when Ronald Reagan fired the PATCO air traffic controllers, public and union response was quite small and no general civil unrest occurred.

But what if the American public had responded to Reagan's firings in a manner similar to this?:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1968_events_in_France

With massive (albeit illegal under the Taft-Hartley Act), paralyzing general sympathy strikes, huge demonstrations in the street, factory occupations and acts of severe civil disobedience?

Would such a thing be completely ASB considering the nation's political mood at the time?


And if it did happen, what would the administration's response be?
Click to expand...



Not completely ASB at all; however, civil unrest on the scale you describe is very unlikely to occur in the USA of the 1980s; the atmosphere then was quite different from what it had been 10-20 years earlier. Not going to see "Tin soldiers & Reagan Coming".
 
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