Strike and You're Out: The Supreme Court's Destruction of the Right to Strike
The strike has long been labor's most powerful weapon. Strikes put pressure on the employer - which needs the employees' labor to run the business - to agree to employees' demands for fair wages and working conditions.
Strikes are also a public form of expression. Seeing striking workers marching in front of a workplace sends a message to the employer, to the public and to the workers themselves. It says that the workers stand together to fight for decent working conditions and that their dispute with the employer is so important that they are willing to lose pay to fight for a fair workplace. It tells the public and other workers that they might not want to patronize, or work for, the employer unless changes are made. Strikes build solidarity among the workers and help them maintain their resolve under the severe pressure of losing income while on strike. Strikes are also an expression of control by the workers, who may feel that the employer treats them as if they were nothing more than a live form of raw materials.
Congress understood the importance of the strike to labor unions, so it protected strikes in two ways in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). First, strikes are covered by the broad protection Section 7 gives to all group actions directed at improving terms and conditions of employment. Despite this broad protection, which includes strikes, Congress thought it important to repeat in Section 13 that nothing in the law "except as specifically provided for herein, shall be construed so as either to interfere with or impede or diminish in any way the right to strike."
This week's installment in our series on the NLRA discusses permanent replacement of strikers, while next week's installment will discuss other judicially created limits on the right to strike.
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In the last 30 years, employers have frequently used permanent replacements to defeat strikes. Just the threat of permanent replacement can destroy solidarity among striking workers. Those who are more easily replaced will be tempted to return to work when a threat is made, while workers with skills that are harder to find will be more able to resist the threats and remain on strike. As a result, bitter divisions can occur, further damaging the workers' power.
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This is going to take a long time to fix.
If it took 30 years to get to this point, how are we going
to convince a group of new potential union workers to
fight for the next 30 years to fix this for the generation
of union workers after them, when our selfish nature
keeps us from looking past what's good for us individually?
