(a)  The protection of the public health, safety, and welfare demands that full-time police officers of any paid police department in any city or town not be accorded the right to strike or engage in any work stoppage or slowdown. This necessary prohibition does not require the denial to these municipal employees of other well recognized rights of labor such as the right to organize, to be represented by an organization of their choice, and the right to bargain collectively concerning wages, rates of pay, and other terms and conditions of employment.

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(b)  It is declared to be the public policy of this state to accord to full-time police officers of any paid police department in any city or town all of the rights of labor other than the right to strike or engage in any work stoppage or slowdown. To provide for the exercise of these rights, a method of arbitration of disputes is established.

(c)  The establishment of this method of arbitration shall not in any way be deemed to be a recognition by the state of compulsory arbitration as a superior method of settling labor disputes between employees who possess the right to strike and their employers, but rather is solely a recognition of the necessity to provide some alternative mode of settling disputes where employees must, as a matter of public policy, be denied the usual right to strike.