Water for Schools
Menu

Lesson plan Grade 11 Social Studies & Civics

Can Tannerville's Operators Strike? A Grade 11 Arbitration Lesson

Students act as an arbitration panel in a fictional city where state law bars water plant operators from striking and substitutes binding arbitration for the walkout.

Objectives

  1. Students will explain why many states classify some public employees as essential and bar them from striking.
  2. Students will apply a statutory arbitration standard to a wage and staffing dispute and justify the award.
  3. Students will evaluate what a no-strike rule gives each side and what it takes from each side.

Vocabulary

Key words: collective bargaining, essential service, binding arbitration, impasse, certified operator, mandatory overtime, comparability, public employee

Teacher overview

Public employee bargaining spread through state law in the 1960s and 1970s, and nearly every state that granted it also withheld the strike from workers whose absence would endanger the public, substituting fact-finding or binding arbitration instead. Water and wastewater operators sit squarely in that category, because a plant cannot legally run without a licensed operator on shift. This lesson uses three invented documents from Tannerville, a fictional city, and asks students to sit as the arbitration panel the statute creates. Students often assume that a law forbidding a strike simply favors the employer, when many of the same statutes pair the ban with an impasse process, and some make the final award binding on the employer as well.

Procedure

Hook, 5 minutes. Ask students to name three public jobs where a walkout would put people in immediate danger. Write the list on the board. Then ask whether the workers in those jobs should have the same right to strike as workers at a private factory. Take two or three answers without resolving them.

Background, 10 minutes. Give a short account of the sequence. Before the 1960s, most public employees in the United States had no legal right to bargain collectively. A federal executive order in 1962 gave federal workers limited bargaining rights, and states began passing public employee relations acts through the following decade. Most of those state laws barred strikes by public employees, and many singled out police, firefighters, and utility operators as essential. In place of the strike, the statutes created an impasse process: mediation first, then fact-finding, then in some states an arbitration award that binds both sides. Explain the licensing point plainly, since it drives this case. A drinking water plant must have an operator holding a state license of the required class on duty, so a plant cannot be run by supervisors indefinitely.

Document reading, 12 minutes. Distribute the three invented documents below and have students mark, in each one, the sentence that would matter most to an arbitrator. Remind students that all three were written for this lesson and describe the fictional city of Tannerville.

Document A, from the fictional state Public Employee Relations Act, adopted 1971: "Employees of a public water or wastewater utility are designated essential. No such employee shall engage in a strike, work stoppage, or concerted refusal of overtime. Where negotiations reach impasse, either party may demand arbitration, and the award of the panel shall be final and binding on both parties. In fixing wages the panel shall consider the compensation of comparable employees in similar communities, the interests and welfare of the public, and the financial ability of the employing unit."

Document B, memorandum of the Tannerville city manager to the council, 2026: "Our offer is a two percent annual increase over three years. The utility's revenue comes from rates, and the council has held rates flat for four years. Eight of our twenty-six operator positions are vacant. We have covered the gap with mandatory overtime and have kept every shift staffed with a licensed operator, as the law requires."

Document C, statement of the Tannerville operators local, 2026: "Our members hold state licenses that take years of testing to earn. Six operators have left for utilities in neighboring cities in the past two years, and every one of them was replaced by overtime rather than by a hire. Mandatory overtime is now assigned an average of two shifts per week per operator. We are asking for a four percent annual increase and a limit on assigned overtime."

Arbitration panel deliberation, 18 minutes. Divide the class into panels of three. Each panel must apply the three statutory factors in Document A, in order, and record a finding for each before proposing an award. Panels then write a single award covering the wage increase and the overtime question, with two sentences of reasoning per element. Circulate and press any panel that awards a number without tying it to a statutory factor.

Decision and debrief, 15 minutes. Each panel reports its award in ninety seconds. Record the awards on the board and ask the class which statutory factor produced the widest disagreement. Close with the formative check: on an index card, every student writes one sentence naming something the no-strike rule takes from the operators and one sentence naming something it takes from the city. Scan the cards before dismissal, and if fewer than three-quarters of the class names a cost to the city as well as to the operators, reteach the binding nature of the award at the start of the next class.

Can Tannerville's Operators Strike? A Grade 11 Arbitration Lesson — Grade 11 Social Studies & Civics
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

Tannerville is fictional, and all three documents were written for this lesson.

  1. According to Document A, what does the statute forbid operators from doing, and what does it give them in exchange?
  2. List the three factors Document A directs the panel to consider when it fixes wages.
  3. Which of the three statutory factors does the city rely on most heavily in Document B? Quote the phrase that shows it.
  4. Which of the three statutory factors does the local rely on most heavily in Document C? Quote the phrase that shows it.
  5. Explain in two or three sentences why the state license requirement gives the operators leverage that a comparable group of unlicensed employees would not have.
  6. The city says it has kept every shift staffed with a licensed operator. Explain in two or three sentences why that statement is both true and an argument for the local's position.
  7. Write your panel's award on the wage increase, then give two sentences of reasoning that name at least one statutory factor.
  8. Write your panel's award on mandatory overtime, then give two sentences of reasoning that name at least one statutory factor.
  9. In three or four sentences, evaluate the no-strike rule. Name one outcome it is intended to produce and one consequence it produces that the legislature may not have intended.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: It forbids a strike, work stoppage, or concerted refusal of overtime, and in exchange it gives either party the right to demand arbitration whose award binds both sides.
  2. Answer: The compensation of comparable employees in similar communities, the interests and welfare of the public, and the financial ability of the employing unit.
  3. Answer: Financial ability. Accept the quotation about revenue coming from rates and the council holding rates flat for four years.
  4. Answer: Comparability. Accept the quotation about six operators leaving for utilities in neighboring cities.
  5. Answer: A plant cannot legally operate without a licensed operator on shift, and the license takes years to earn, so the city cannot substitute temporary or untrained staff. That scarcity is why the legislature designated the work essential in the first place. Accept any answer linking the license to the difficulty of replacement.
  6. Answer: It is true because the shifts were covered, and it is an argument for the local because the coverage came from mandatory overtime rather than from hiring, which is the practice the local is asking the panel to limit. Accept any answer that identifies overtime as the means of coverage.
  7. Answer: Accept any award between the two positions that cites a statutory factor. A strong response lands nearer the local's figure on comparability grounds while noting the city's rate history, or nearer the city's figure on financial ability grounds while ordering a reopener.
  8. Answer: Accept any award that addresses overtime and cites a factor. A strong response caps assigned overtime and ties the cap to a hiring schedule, reasoning that the public interest factor covers plant reliability and operator fatigue, not wages alone.
  9. Answer: The intended outcome is uninterrupted water and wastewater service, since a walkout would leave a plant without a licensed operator. An unintended consequence is that a city can let vacancies accumulate and cover them with overtime, because the workforce has no lawful way to force the issue and arbitration is slow. Accept any answer naming a cost that falls on either side, including the city's loss of the ability to impose its final offer.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students the documents with the three statutory factors already labeled in the margin of Document A, and a panel form with the finding rows pre-headed by factor. Reduce items 7 and 8 to one sentence of reasoning each, and assign them the wage question only during the deliberation.

Extension

Ask these students to redraft Document A's arbitration clause so that the panel must also consider the utility's vacancy rate, then to write a paragraph on which side the change would favor and whether a legislature would be likely to adopt it.

ELL supports

Pre-teach strike, impasse, binding, license, and overtime with a simple flow chart showing negotiation, mediation, fact-finding, and an award that both sides must accept. Provide sentence frames for items 5, 6, and 9: "The license matters because ___," "This is true, but it also shows ___," and "The rule is meant to ___, yet it also causes ___." Allow panel reports to be delivered from a written script.

Extensions

Have students find out whether their own state permits public employees to strike and what process it substitutes when bargaining reaches impasse, using the state public employment relations board's published summary, then write a paragraph comparing that process with the one in the invented Tannerville statute.