Government ban on strikes

[dcsmart]

I am not a member of the Socialist Equality Party, but i like their web site and, as you can see from some of my other posts, i like the Socialist Worker web site also.

With that said, i thought this article would be an interesting read.

It has come to light that the federal bailout of General Motors and Chrysler approved last month by the Bush administration with the support of the incoming Obama administration includes a stipulation that effectively bans strikes or work stoppages by autoworkers.

The clause, which was revealed in a Security and Exchange Commission filing by GM last week, coincides with government demands that the 139,000 workers at Detroit's auto companies agree by February 17 to accept mass layoffs, plant closures and sweeping wage and benefit concessions.

According to the SEC filing, the Treasury Department could declare GM and Chrysler in default and revoke $17.4 billion in loans, throwing the automakers into bankruptcy, if "any labor union or collective bargaining unit shall engage in a strike or other work stoppage."

The effect of this provision is to revoke the legal right to strike, an achievement won by the American working class in bitter struggles against "criminal conspiracy" laws used against striking workers in the 19th century. It was only with the 1935 passage, in the depths of the Great Depression, of the National Labor Relations Act that federal law recognized the right of workers to strike. This concession to the working class was not some freely given gift of the Roosevelt administration. It followed general strikes that erupted in 1934 in Toledo, Minneapolis and San Francisco. Without the strike weapon, workers are reduced to the status of industrial slaves, legally compelled to accept the most brutal conditions of exploitation without any recourse to collective resistance.

Several commentators have questioned the legality of the anti-strike provision in the auto bailout bill. Nevertheless, under the terms of the bailout, the strike ban remains in effect as long as the auto companies have outstanding loans from the government, setting the stage for contract negotiations in 2011 in which workers would not have the slightest leverage to reject demands for even more draconian givebacks.

This confirms the warnings by the World Socialist Web Site that the crisis of the US auto industry is being exploited by the American ruling elite to throw the working class back to conditions not seen since before the UAW and the other mass industrial unions were built in the 1930s.

Just as the 1980 Chrysler bailout and the smashing of the PATCO air traffic controllers' strike in 1981 initiated a wave of wage-cutting and union-busting in the 1980s and 1990s, the current attack on autoworkers is being used to spearhead a fundamental change in class relations in the US and internationally, under conditions of a global breakdown of the capitalist system.

The organization that ostensibly represents GM and Chrysler workers, the United Auto Workers union, campaigned for the government bailout of the Big Three companies, accepting its stipulations for tens of thousands of layoffs and wage and benefit cuts to bring unionized workers down to the level of non-union workers. It has not uttered a word of protest over the provision banning strikes and work stoppages.
Text

SEE FULL ARTICLE:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/pers-j15.shtml

Now is a tough time for labor. If concessions means saving jobs is that right way to go. Should unions stand firm and not agree to more concessions. Corporate should also be required to agree to concessions of their pay and benefits. I think there should be some provision that concessions be given back as the company becomes more profitable. What is the right directon...

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[dipsydoodle]

1. They'd have needed to rewrite the law in the UK

From April 2000 :

Employers' groups have warned that a new law making it illegal to sack workers who go on strike could herald a return to the "industrial climate of the 1970s".

The law, part of the Employment Relations Act, will protect millions of employees from dismissal in the first eight weeks of a dispute.

At the moment employers can dismiss all workers engaged in a strike without facing unfair dismissal claims, even if there has been a lawful ballot.

The TUC has welcomed the change saying it would protect workers against bosses whose first reaction to a strike is to sack workers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/724107.stm