Three persistent misconceptions about collective bargaining for public employees are 1) that public employee organizations are singularly culpable for strikes in the public sector, 2) that strikes necessarily follow collective bargaining and will not occur unless the right to bargain has been granted, and 3) that public employees have less right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" than private-sector employees. Contrary to the second misconception, private-sector experience since the enactment of the Wagner Act in 1935 has shown that it is the absence of collective bargaining that brings strikes and disorder. Collective bargaining, mediation, fact-finding, and arbitration have the potential to resolve discontent without a strike. The price of stability is equity. Deny equity and induce instability. Teachers will go on strike only as a last resort, only if they see no reasonable and logical alternative. Unhappily, there is no national standard governing collective bargaining for public employees, and the consequences of state-by-state regulation are both illogical and inequitable. (Author/JG)