Essential services, public education workers, and the right to strike

Abstract

Essential services are commonly defined as those services whose interruption might inflict substantial harm on the population at large. Police, firefighters, and emergency medical professionals are paradigmatic examples of essential service providers. In recent years, some governments have resolved that formal primary education should be added to this list of essential services. The immediate practical implication of designating education as an essential service is that workers tasked with providing this service will face new limitations or even outright prohibitions on their freedom to strike. This paper analyzes the harm-based justification for declaring formal primary public education an essential service—that is, to consider if education is one service whose interruption might inflict substantial harm on the population at large. I argue that there is no compelling case to be made for changing the status of primary education from non-essential to essential and discuss why teachers' right to strike should be protected. On the one hand, it is unclear to what extent educators’ participation in strikes can produce a type of harm that justifies limiting their right to strike. On the other hand, restricting that right has costs that must be weighed in any plausible harm-based account.