2018 has seen a long-overdue resurgence in strike activity. Most spectacularly, public school teachers in the deep-red states of West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Arizona struck despite laws prohibiting public-worker strikes. So strong was their public support that none of the Republican-dominated governments in those states dared to enforce the anti-strike laws. Instead of complaining about the teachers’ disruptive tactics, parents joined their calls for more public funding and higher teacher salaries. For the first time in decades, the Republicans’ low-tax and anti-public-education policies faced a serious challenge in the red-state heartland.

So why did two leading New York Democrats effectively come out and say that teachers and other public workers who strike should be fired and fined? The Democrats are the pro-labor party, right? Not judging from the pronouncements of Governor Andrew Cuomo or Mayor Bill de Blasio. Both came out in support of the New York Taylor Law’s draconian strike ban, which makes red-state anti-strike laws look like pieces of fluff.

Strikers can be fired and fined for peacefully refusing to work, but their leaders can be jailed, and their unions fined millions of dollars. Officials have no discretion to grant amnesty in a strike settlement. Under the Taylor Law, the red-state teachers would have been punished notwithstanding the justice of their cause or the extent of their public support. So repressive is the law that it has been condemned by the Committee on Freedom of Association of the International Labor Organization, a tripartite body that includes employer representatives. The next time a Republican governor works up the nerve to enforce anti-strike laws against public workers, they’ll have the satisfaction of piggybacking on those Democratic friends of labor, Cuomo and de Blasio.