I’m not up on my US labor history, so maybe this is a dumb question, but has there ever been a major company or industry that has been shut down by consecutive or ‘rolling’ strikes by different unions? Not where one union went on strike and others joined in solidarity, but something more antagonistic between the two (or more) unions. Here’s a hypothetical example:
Airplane pilots go on strike; airline is shut down; pilots get better contract, plan to return to work, except -
Airline maintenance union is pissed off at the sweet new deal that the pilots got, and goes on strike too, keeping the airline shut down even though the original pilot’s dispute is resolved. Neener neener, pilots!
I suppose that a scenario could occur in which more than one union cooperates in ‘rolling’ strikes that keep an industry shut down, but I can’t see the benefit to the unions in that case.
As a secondary question, my (weak, possible wrong) understanding is that union members get some nominal payment from the union while they are on strike - but do the members of the other affected unions get some nominal payment too? Are the grips getting anything from the grip union during the writers’ strike? If not, would it be worth it to the grips to go on ‘strike’ as well to collect this pay, and then call off their strike when the writers’ strike is resolved? Not to show support to the writers, but rather to allow for some (no doubt small) payments to their own members while they are out of work.
Boeing went through 2 strikes by different unions in 1995. SPEEA, which covers the engineers and other paper pushers went out on strike in May. Due to the language in the other union contracts, the other unions crossed the picket line and went to work. Then in October the Machinist’s Union of which I am a member went out on strike. Same as before, members of the other unions continued to work. The SPEEA strike slightly slowed production, there was enough managers and scabs to cover their usual work. The Machinists strike stopped production cold, some customers insisted that no work be performed till the strike ended. I was halfway through rigging the nose gear doors on a 777 when the strike started, I picked up right where I left off 69 days later.
I’ll be damned. I had no idea that my airline hypothetical would be close to the mark. Some followup questions for you, racer72:
Do you know if there was any coordination between the two unions in regards to the timing of their respective strikes? Did the machinists’ strike have anything to do with the terms of the SPEEA resolution, or were the machinists going to strike no matter what?
Remember that a union can normally only go on strike when their contract has expired, they have made a ‘good faith’ effort at negotiating a new contract, etc. They can’t just up and go on strike any time they want.
And employers generally carefully plan the length of contracts to make sure that different union contracts do not end at the same time or right after each other. They also try to make the contract with the smallest, weakest, least vital union end first – hoping they can force them to settle for a cheaper wage, and they use that as a precedent with the other unions.
Most unions have a ‘strike fund’, with a certain amount of money in it. This is used to make some small* payments to members on strike … for as long as it lasts. Which is usually not very long.
But that strike fund is created by contributions from the union members, as part of their dues, when they were working. So it’s effectively like their own savings now being spent. If you haven’t been on strike for many years, or if your union has lots of members at other companies not on strike, you might have built up a fair amount in the strike fund.
(But in reality, when the fund gets big, union members start to other things to do with that money that they see as more immediately useful, such as reducing the dues, or increasing the available benefits, etc. When it’s been years since you’ve had a strike, it seems wasteful to have all that money just sitting in the strike fund.)
So the ‘strike fund’ is your own money, put in there over the years. And you know you will have to rebuild that fund after the strike is over, too. So unions are hesitant to dip into that money unless they really have to.
When I was on strike, on the picket line we discussed whether the strike money would cover the cost of gas to and from work, plus the extra gas to go somewhere for lunch (since the company lunchroom was closed), plus the extra gas to keep cars running to warm up (in a Minnesota winter, walking picket lines get real cold!). And this was when gas was well under $1/gallon.