Labor Strikes Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

A labor strike is a mass work stoppage by union members designed to disrupt business production or the provision of services. A strike normally takes place in response to a critical impasse in negotiations between a union and an employer in collective bargaining. Electing to withdraw one’s labor as part of a concerted strike action is the most powerful form of leverage available to workers, given the power imbalance inherent in the employment relationship. Labor strikes are designed to exert pressure on the employer to come to an agreement with the union on the terms and conditions of employment.

Labor strikes, which were legalized in most advanced capitalist countries in the early twentieth century, are regulated by a strict legal framework and are seen as a last, but often necessary, resort when a labor union and an employer cannot reach an agreement in collective bargaining.

A labor union’s ability to strike is often juxtaposed with an employer’s ability to lock out its workers. In a lockout situation, an employer withholds work from union members and denies them access to the workplace to exert pressure on the union to settle the collective agreement.

Workers who are on strike or who have been locked out normally picket their workplaces to advise the public of the labor dispute and discourage customers from doing business with the employer. Picket lines are used also to dissuade replacement workers, often referred to as strikebreakers or scabs, from performing the work of striking union members. Labor strikes are sometimes associated with picket line violence, motivated primarily by the tension caused by an employer’s decision to hire scab labor. To offset the loss of wages experienced by striking union members, labor unions typically distribute pay to union members who participate in picket duty.

The success of a labor strike is often measured by what the union gained in the long term, rather than what it sacrificed in the short term, by engaging in industrial action. Prolonged strikes normally cause deep-rooted resentment between the union and management, as well as between union supporters and strikebreakers.

Although labor strikes normally take place within the regulatory frameworks imposed by states, instances of illegal strike activity are not unprecedented. Workers infrequently engage in wildcat strikes (illegal work stoppages that occur while a collective agreement is in force), sympathy strikes (striking in support of another striking union local to demonstrate solidarity), and general strikes (a concerted effort by several unions across several industries to strike all at once to shut down a city’s economy). Labor strikes also have been used as political weapons to pressure elected governments into agreeing to the demands of the labor movement. These more militant forms of illegal strike activity usually are treated with open hostility by the state, often resulting in fines and even imprisonment for labor union leaders.

A more moderate variation of the conventional labor strike is a tactic known as work-to-rule. Union members engaged in a work-to-rule campaign do not withdraw their labor completely, but rather continue to perform their work duties exactly as required by the collective agreement, without any extra effort. A work-to-rule campaign could, for example, take the form of a mass refusal to work voluntary overtime, or a strict adherence to complex occupational health and safety regulations to slow production. Work-to-rule campaigns often are launched in response to specific workplace grievances during the life of a collective agreement. This type of workplace action is popular in the public sector, where the conventional right to strike is more restricted. A large proportion of public sector union members do not enjoy a statutory right to strike by virtue of working in what governments have deemed “essential services.”

The incidence of labor strikes in most advanced capitalist countries has been in decline since the 1970s because of structural shifts in the economy, the deradicalization of the labor movement, and the state’s increasingly hostile attitude toward the right to strike and labor rights. The decline in the incidence of labor strikes has closely reflected declines in levels of union density, the proportion of a country’s nonagricultural workforce belonging to labor unions.

Bibliography:

Bennett, James T., and Bruce E. Kaufman, eds. What Do Unions Do? A Twenty Year Perspective. New Brunswick, N.J.:Transaction, 2007.
Larson, Simeon, and Bruce Nissen, eds. Theories of the Labor Movement. Detroit:Wayne State University Press, 1987.
Lichtenstein, Nelson. State of the Union: A Century of American Labor. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002.
Panitch, Leo, and Donald Swartz. From Consent to Coercion: The Assault on Trade Union Freedoms. 3rd ed. Aurora, Ont.: Garamond, 2003.
Silver, Beverly J. Forces of Labor:Worker’s Movements and Globalization since 1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Yates, Michael D. Why Unions Matter. 2nd ed. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009.

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