I’m not sure how they expect to enforce this unless they’re planning on holding every striking employee at gunpoint and forcing them to work.
Union leaders are threatened with prison which cools the strike. That’s how it was done when biden broke down rail workers recently.
Don’t under estimate coercive power of the state and that the state is run to protect property of the ruling class.
All other purposes are secondary.
Bloody hell, with what crime? Convincing your comrades to not work?
Defiance of power is the only crime the state cares about.
Off the top of my head, if a strike is declared illegal then the workers don’t get the usual protections, so the employer is free to retaliate as they see fit (generally dismissal). The state doesn’t have to actually do anything.
If they dismissed everyone… I mean follow the logical conclusion there.
Hasn’t ever been a problem before. They can hire scabs, and some people won’t have the fortidude, you don’t need to convince everyone to cross the picket line to break a strike.
I’m not saying that illegal strikes can’t work, in fact I think the correct response to making strikes illegal is to strike illegally. It does however require people to be much more firmly committed to the cause.
Can’t hire scabs to work in factories that have been burned
🔥
Sure, strikes have been broken before.
Let’s put it in terms of expense: All it takes is a couple of mistakes (honest or not) by the temporary replacements to cost the organization more money than meeting demands would have. If the organization is doing manufacturing, that’s recalled parts, low productivity, and damaged public image.
Is it a health or safety organization? Lawsuits relating to missed/bad service can cost the tax payers a lot, and again, negative sentiment causing latent damage.
What do you think? The only downside to some of this process is that people have relatively short memories, so some profit oriented execs will try to sweep the monetary damages under the rug for the next sap to be accused of, albeit after helming a lower-esteemed org than previously.
I’m not saying you are wrong, but its: A) not necessarily a matter of expense, but one motivated at least in part by ideology (can’t let the union win) And B) mainly about perceptions. If people believe their job and possibly future employment opportunities are at risk, they are more likely to break. Scabs aren’t necessarily unskilled, they are just people who have decided the cash is more important than solidarity.
In an ideal world employers would realise a content, healthy, and properly compensated employee is better for the business and the economy in general. In reality they are going to keep cutting corners until the whole thing falls apart because line goes up.
Thanks for explaining the reasonably obvious, without adding much here.
Nobody is naive enough to think it’s solely motivated by cost, nor can we ignore the successes and failures of historical action.
The US has a pretty long history of industry watering down industrial action, either directly, or indirectly by tying things like healthcare to employment right? So, if in spite of pretty serious risks, people collectively decide to strike, it’s no longer a half-measure; to your point, the ideological part applies just as strongly to the membership, who will want to follow leadership that expressly works for the benefit of the members. Petals we haven’t all worked in manual/production environments, but no matter what, less people familiar with a process and its tooling is all but guaranteed to result in more/many mistakes which will absolutely cause money problems for the organization.
But Amazon! Amazon hasn’t cared much about the unionization efforts publicly because a) they’ve got tremendous marketplace inertia, which strikes and stuff still negatively effect, b) incredible profit margins and c) lack of marketplace alternatives. But look at how pernicious their anti-union messaging inside the warehouses has been. Almost seems like they know who actually has the power.
So: things are bad, but don’t be pessimistic. This past year alone has plenty of loudly successful efforts to improve working conditions for the avg joe/Jane.
It depends a lot on the kind of job too. The more skilled the workers have to be and the longer-term the projects the fewer options for the employer to just hire replacements for anyone who refuses to work.
Such workers tend to be better treated. There are many companies though that use a lot of what they see as commodity labour, and the staff involved at hlthat level as fungible and fluid.
It works with the police. They aren’t allowed to strike and therefore never do.
They get everything they want? Why would they strike?
Has there been any instance of that rule being enforced?
I dunno about cops but IIRC Reagan cleaned out air traffic controllers for striking.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
New government anti-strike laws for public sector workers could prompt the start of a campaign of mass defiance not seen since the 1970s, a union leader has warned.
Matt Wrack, the general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, said the minimum service levels legislation passed earlier this year was effectively a ban on strikes, and the biggest attack on the rights of workers since the second world war.
Speaking to the Guardian ahead of a specially convened TUC summit to discuss how to respond to the law, Wrack said a campaign of non-compliance was one of the options under consideration.
The minimum service levels law was passed this year as the government faced a wave of disruptive public sector strikes across health, education and transport.
Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, has publicly said he would not issue work notices under the new legislation, while the Labour party has pledged to repeal the law if it wins the next election.
“The FBU and other unions will not accept this attack on working people by this government led by multimillionaires and which ruthlessly serves the interests of the billionaires and bosses.”
The original article contains 731 words, the summary contains 189 words. Saved 74%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Ontario (the province in Canada) tried this recently.
It did not go well.
What started as a strike amongst education support workers very quickly became preparations for a national strike (basically the pieces were all in place, and and national union leaders politely informed the government of what was coming their way if they didn’t back down… They very quickly backed down).
