Nearly every city worker went on strike in July of 1979. Thirty-four hundred employees walked off the job. Fires burned with no firefighters to put them out. Fire hydrants could not be turned off. The Cherry Street bridge was left open. Doug DeGood was Toledo's mayor at the time.
The strike ended 48 hours after it started. City workers faced fines if they did not go back to work. So they returned.
Toledo city councilman Mike Collins was fairly new to the police force in 1979. At the time the state did not have a collective bargaining law.
Collective bargaining entered Ohio's revised code in the 1980's and remains in place today.
TPPA president Dan Wagner implied a strike could happen as a last resort. But Collins says that's illegal under collective bargaining law. Dunn does not want to see another strike and does not have the fondest memories of 1979.
Last night the city fired back, sending a letter to the union saying the blue flu was an illegal act and the city wants an emergency determination for the state employment relations board.
