John T. Dunlop, David A. Wells Professor of Political Economy, has been asked by Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller to be one of five labor experts on a panel which would recommend methods of avoiding strikes by state and municipal employees in New York.

Dunlop said that the panel would discuss procedures that could be used to settle disputes before strikes. "Saying a strike is legal or illegal does not solve anything. We must find proedures to make it unnecessary for public employees to strike," he added.

Under New York State's Condon-Wadlin Act, strikes by public employees are illegal. The act, however, has not prevented several strikes in recent years, Dunlop pointed out, including one by city welfare workers. "The machinery of the past has not worked very well, and it must be replaced by new procedures," he said.

Dunlop said that a wide variety of arrangements are now being used throughout the country to deal with strikes by public employees. In Boston, the Transit Authority has an agreement with the union that if the two are unable to reach a settlement, they will submit the dispute to arbitration.

A similar formula was applied in Providence, R.I., where Dunlop was called in to settle a dispute between the fire fighters and the city.

Serving with Dunlop are E. White Bakke, director of the Labor and Management Center at Yale, George W. Taylor, professor of labor relations at the University of Pennsylvania, David L. Cole '21, chairman of the advisory committee of the labor-management center of the American Arbitration Association, and Frederick H. Harbison, professor of industrial relations at Princeton.