Are Strikes a Legitimate Way of Bettering Workers Lives?

[jps]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3054476.stm
Disgracful.

Is it ever acceptable to use scab labor? Are strikes a legitimate means of bettering workers situations?

It seems to me the answer is clearly no, and yes.
Strikes are really the only tool that workers have against the bosses, without the option of using them they'd have no recourse if abused.

Take the situation of the NYC transit workers. Its illegal for them to strike because if they do the city shuts down. The result? The city took advantage of them, treating them with contemptuous diciplinary programs, tiny(or no) raises, and cuts in safety that led directly to deaths. The union threatend to strike, in defiance of the law, and the city backed down on a number of their demands.

 

[nico]

Of course people have a right to strike, but if they work at a job that public safety is at risk i.e. Firefighters, Police, etc. they shouldn't be allowed to strike. What they should be able to do is say no to things that don't threaten lives. If it is a industrial fight or something like that of course. We don't want to be too capitalistic do we?

 

[Clockwood]

I figure you are allowed not to work, your boss is allowed to fire you for not working, and the boss is allowed to hire whoever is willing to work for him.

I would want to see the city shut down even less. I would reccomend having a backup in order.

 

[Tiassa]

A few things Unions have accomplished

(1) Wage standards
(2) Overtime
(3) Safety standards
(4) Job security
(5) Retirement benefits
(6) Minor unemployment relief

I'm actually reading (slowly) through A History of Seattle Waterfront Workers, issued by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

While I understand the notion of the right to work and the right to not work, and so forth, the priorities of business leaders in the last two centuries have more than justified the existence and function of labor unions. Strikes are, in principle, warranted, as I agree that they are the employee's last line of defense against abuse. But living in the Seattle area, a series of strikes over the years against Boeing, the school districts, and various medical institutions (engineers/manufacturers, teachers, nurses respectively) have left a foul taste in people's mouths up here insofar as unions and strikes are concerned.

There are other methods, but stabbing a mining executive fifteen times didn't work for Emma Goldman, so I don't see why it would work for me.

:m:,
Tiassa

 

[jps]

Originally posted by nico
Of course people have a right to strike, but if they work at a job that public safety is at risk i.e. Firefighters, Police, etc. they shouldn't be allowed to strike. What they should be able to do is say no to things that don't threaten lives. If it is a industrial fight or something like that of course. We don't want to be too capitalistic do we?

The thing is strikes don't come into the picture unless people are being mistreated. If workers in crucial areas have to strike for decent working conditions, then its not their fault if people die, its the fault of the those who refused to negotiate fair conditions.

Originally posted by Clockwood
I figure you are allowed not to work, your boss is allowed to fire you for not working, and the boss is allowed to hire whoever is willing to work for him.

I would want to see the city shut down even less. I would reccomend having a backup in order.

This is why Unions are important. If a few people are being mistreated, their refusing to work unilaterally could lead to their being fired. With a union, if people are mistreated everyone can stop working, shutting downt the business. Scab workers willing to do jobs for unsatisfactory wages or in unsatisfactory conditions to beat strikes are ultimately harming workers everywhere.

 

[Clockwood]

I didn't say I was against unions. They have their good points and their bad points.

 

[nico]

The thing is strikes don't come into the picture unless people are being mistreated. If workers in crucial areas have to strike for decent working conditions, then its not their fault if people die, its the fault of the those who refused to negotiate fair conditions.


I don't buy that, I know what you saying that the company or government takes advantage of the situation. But they are needed it's not money that comes first it's the safety of the public. They read oathes that reflect this, same with doctors etc. If they do some P.R moves they will get what they want. But never should the general and innocent public be put at risk to some monetary dispute.

 

[Tiassa]

An old argument

My father and I used to have an argument that got dropped before he ever made his point clear to me.

- I asserted that workers can manufacture and sell without management, thus making management unnecessary.
- He argued that management deserved the lion's share of the profits because they were managers and not laborers.

While I'm sure his point has something to do with the investment of education in management and the amount of knowledge (as opposed to skill, talent, or endurance) somehow made managers more valuable.

But he never told me what exactly it was that managers would sell if they had nobody to manufacture the product. He didn't worry because he knew that if he deemed labor too expensive, he could always find someone willing to do it for less.

Of course, he didn't look at starving children as a tragedy at the time, but rather as a motivation for exploitation of resources.

When I moved back up to Seattle, I worked for a major video-rental chain. They were embroiled in a row with the Washington labor authorities over workplace uniforms. The company instituted policies in violation of state labor laws because they knew it would (A) be a long time before they were caught, and (B) they could easily back down, because of due process, without taking a financial or PR hit. As a result, new hires in some stores faced the possibility of turning their first paycheck back over to their bosses in exchange for the costs of their uniform.

:m:,
Tiassa

 

[jps]

Originally posted by nico


I don't buy that, I know what you saying that the company or government takes advantage of the situation. But they are needed it's not money that comes first it's the safety of the public. They read oathes that reflect this, same with doctors etc. If they do some P.R moves they will get what they want. But never should the general and innocent public be put at risk to some monetary dispute.

So public workers should just accept their lot? In the case I gave of the transit workers it was about a lot more than money, they ultimately didn't get any more money. Two workers had been killed on the subway tracks as a direct result of safety cut backs.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Re: A few things Unions have accomplished

Originally posted by tiassa
A few things Unions have accomplished:
(1) Wage standards
(2) Overtime
(3) Safety standards
(4) Job security
(5) Retirement benefits
(6) Minor unemployment relief

Yep. And after a few decades of all that the blue collar people finally achieved what they wanted: To join the middle class. Then guess what happened? They turned into the people they were fighting against: landlords and stockholders. They're more concerned with lowering taxes, maximizing the appreciation on their real estate, and maintaining the value of the stock portfolio earned by their retirement association. They abandoned the unions in droves; union membership is down to a fraction of what it was fifty years ago and all their progress has been reversed. The "working class" abandoned both their principles and their crusades as soon as they became the "middle class."

1. Wage standards. A good portion of the population is now contractors instead of employees.

2. Overtime. The average work week in 1950 was about 41 hours. Now it's back up to 50, same as it was in 1900.

3. Safety standards. Yeah right. Ever work in a government building? They get special exemptions from the fire safety rules because their aisles are too narrow.

4. Job security. Don't make me laugh.

5. Retirement benefits. Yuk yuk. All their pension funds are invested in their own company's stock.

6. Minor unemployment relief. "Minor" being the operative word. A hundred dollars a week for six months maximum is typical.

 

[Tiassa]

Various

Fraggle Rocker

Technically, I agree with your criticism, and also thank you for enlightenment on the other points as well. But just to counterpoint your counterpoints:

- Safety standards: I admit it is relative. But one of the early victories by early longshore, rigging, and stevedoring associations was changes in shipping conditions to reduce coal-dust explosions. Additionally, regulated hours, over time, would reduce other job-related injuries; the guys packing lumber in ship holds in the late 19th century had high injury rates. Your point is well-taken, especially in light of corporations like McWane.
- Job security: Perhaps "labor opportunity" would have been better. In economically unstable times, if a labor union has achieved hiring preference, it helps a great deal.
- Retirement benefits: Also acknowledged as problematic is graft associated with those pension funds, obviously a good source of cash.
- Minor unemployment relief: Actually, what you've noted is more than I was thinking. I had in mind the days when two-hundred families would gather at the union hall because it was the only place they could get a meal.

International considerations

I noticed a couple of strikes internationally. The French strike referred in the topic article had escaped my notice. The Zimbabwe strike was more of a political venture than a labor issue. Curious to me are the vaguely-explained issues of the Nigeria strike.


Briefly, I shrug off French strikes. Perhaps this is disrespectful, but I've always gotten the notion (limited largely to news-coverage perceptions) that anytime the French government annoys the people in the slightest, there's a riot in Paris. Fuel tax? Shipping strike and eventual riots. University tuition going up? Riots. &c. &c.

But I think there exists a vast gulf between an American labor strike, which deals with double-digit dollars per hour and thousands of dollars in immediate and retirement benefits per worker and what seems to be going on elsewhere. I said vaguely-explained in the Nigerian case; perhaps someone can help us all out with that. I get that it has to do with fuel costs--in a country that exports oil?--and standards of living, but I'm not sure exactly what the issues are; this is a little bit different to me than the issues of a teachers' or nurses' or engineers' strike in the Seattle area. Not to belittle the latter, but I do think there's a difference, and even I began my participation in this topic with American considerations tapped by a French labor issue. So ....

In the meantime ... for some reason I think it was 1997 ... does anyone remember a General Motors strike during the Clinton administration? It's just that I remember that the strike, which centered (I think) on job security and safety standards, paralyzed nearly 200,000 workers. Doing quick, unreferenced math while sitting at a traffic light and listening to NPR, it, I came up with the number 0.2%. As in, the proportion of the domestic workforce on strike. It's hardly accurate, but based on it I would guess that between one and three tenths of one percent of the American workforce was on strike. That's a pretty significant labor force, an persuasive capital potential, to withdraw from the economy.

:m:,
Tiassa

 

[Pete]

It's a power balance thing. Humans are basically greedy bastards.

Workers need the right to exert their power on their bosses, because bosses are greedy bastards and will use their power to exploit the workers.

Bosses need the right to exert some control over workers, because workers are greedy bastards and will use their power to exploit the bosses.

Mostly, bosses have had excess power, and workers copped it.
In some cases, workers have had excess power, and entire industries copped it.

There's no easy answer, because power balance is hard to find, and impossible to keep stable.

 

[Tiassa]

Ask a silly question

I got my rough overview of the Nigeria strike. In news-media form, but an overview nonetheless:

- Unions Accept Fuel Price Deal, End Strike (allAfrica/UN-IRIN)

. . . . Leaders of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), who met all night to consider the government offer, settled for 34 naira (US $0.26) for a litre of petrol or a 31 percent hike instead of the 54 percent increase announced by President Olusegun Obasanjo's government on 20 June.

"Given the suffering and deprivation Nigerians have suffered within the last few days, the NLC had a compelling duty to avail the people some relief by suspending the strike," Adams Oshiomhole, president of the umbrella union, said in a statement . . . .

. . . . The government insists Nigeria should no longer have to spend US $2 billion a year on subsidising fuel that was already extremely cheap by international standards.

Labour leaders argue the steep price increases for petrol, diesel and kerosene would only aggravate poverty among Nigeria's 120 million people, 70 percent of whom live on less than one dollar a day.

See ... compared to the kind of griping that goes on with unions around here, it's hard for me to hop on the bandwagon. Not only does the NLC seem to have a point, they seem to have won their cause, and they seem to have gotten the soundbite.

I mean, yes, the government has a point: subsidizing fuel in a fuel-producing country where prices are already low at a cost of $2b a year? But it would seem that $0.26/litre is quite a bit if you live on less than a dollar a day.

:m:,
Tiassa

 

[Cowboy]

Workers have the right to strike. You shouldn't be prohibited from voicing your displeasure regarding some aspect of your job.

Companies have the right to hire "scabs". They shouldn't be locked into using one particular group as their source of labor.