How Do We Win Strikes Again?

[Omaha Steve]

http://labornotes.org/2010/05/how-do-we-win-strikes-again



Peter Olney | June 4, 2010


ILWU members picket in Boron, California. Photo: Slobodan Dimitrov


A special session at the April Labor Notes Conference brought together representatives from strikes and lockouts across the continent to consider the question: How do we make the strike a winning tool again?

The standing-room-only panel featured a hospital striker from Philadelphia, miners from Ontario, California, and Mexico, and food-production workers from Rochester, New York, on the edge of walking out.

Labor journalist Steve Early pointed to the strike’s dramatic decline—there were only five strikes or lockouts of 1,000 or more workers last year, compared to at least 200 per year in the 1970s.

Clearly, unions avoid strikes because they fear they can’t win them. How do we break this mold? We brought the question to Peter Olney, organizing director of the Longshore and Warehouse Union. In Boron, California, 560 borax miners—ILWU members—just won a 15-week lockout by their multinational employer, Rio Tinto.


PO: Part of the decline in strikes simply correlates to the decline in private sector and industrial unionism, and part of that correlates to the entrenched Taft-Hartley legal regime.

But part of it correlates to a certain sense of resignation on the part of the labor movement and an unwillingness to engage in strikes. Strikes and lockouts are extremely uncomfortable for the institution. They force a huge expenditure of resources, they radically upset the routine applecart of officers’ and staff’s time and duties—so it’s something unions shy away from.

FULL story at link.

[Bluzmann57]

1. One thing we need to do

We need to differentiate between strikes and lockouts. When Union members are on strike, they are willingly on strike. When employees are locked out, they want to work under the existing contract but the company won't let them in the doors. The media and the general public need to be made aware of this fact.

[burnsei sensei]

2. Strikes can only be effective if they are very

large and well-coordinated.
I have written it before-- Taft-Hartley is an unjust law.
It should be defied openly. It is unenforceable in the shadow of massive sympathy or general strikes.
The Civil Rights movement was about changing unjust laws.
Now it is labor's turn to transform bigotry into tolerance by way of direct action.

[dhpgetsit]

3. We need sensible trade policies first.

We need tariffs on products we want to be producing in the US.
We need to throw some illegal employers in prison and put an end to the underground labor pool.
In short, we need a government that will not continue to wage war on the middle class.