# Labor 101, or why strikes are okay **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 6, 2023, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-101-or-why-strikes-are-okay/989700 "2023-09-06T18:04:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 28
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2023, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-101-or-why-strikes-are-okay/989700/28 "2023-09-06T22:03:24Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > **Except under exceptional circumstances, violence is not a legitimate tactic for maintaining a strike**. Unionized garbage collectors who beat up freelance garbage collectors are bad people. This should be obvious, but I’m putting it here to forestall odious analogies. First of all, thank you for starting this thread to prevent any ongoing hijacks in the other one. Some of these points (of which this is just one) seem to have arisen from my comments in the other thread. Your quoted context here is incomplete, though. In the context of the garbage strike, it wasn’t _ **only** _ about freelance garbage removers being beaten up. It was also about private citizens, seeking sanitation in the face of the garbage strike, attempting to deliver their own garbage to the transfer stations, and effectively _ **being denied access** _ by union thugs. To be fair, access wasn’t totally denied, but it amounted to the same thing – it was more a matter of very, very significant intentional delays, to maximize inconvenience to the point that many people either gave up or got into confrontations with the picketers, or just threw their garbage into nearby fields, the end result being the same – that sanitation and health in the entire city was at risk. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > **Cross-union solidarity is a valid exercise of worker power**. Sometimes, sure. But my garbage strike example may be illuminating. Recall my comment above about citizens just trying to properly dispose of their garbage during the strike and sometimes getting into confrontations with the strikers. Police were sometimes on site. So now they’re making judgment calls – “I just want to take my garbage to the landfill” … “No, you don’t – that’s our job and we’re on strike”. Well, around here, anyway, police have very strong unions (as does apparently every other public employee). Who do you think the police were most likely to side with in these sorts of discretionary confrontations? Yeah! Cross-union solidarity FTW! 🙄 > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Strikes should be a pain in the ass. That doesn’t meaningfully distinguish between “inconvenient” and “dangerous”, as in my garbage-strike example above. The other key point here is that the union was not only withdrawing the services that their members provide, they were also _ **explicitly preventing** _ individuals from doing those things themselves. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > **Public sector unions are a valid exercise of worker power**. Sure. The problem – around here, anyway – is that in our liberal social democracy governments cave all too readily to public union demands, and have now created monsters that are virtually unstoppable – the masters of all they survey. We have cashiers at government liquor stores making more than research scientists, and garbage collectors able to hold citizens hostage to dangerous filth in hot summer heat. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > **Not all union actions are good**. Just because something’s a valid exercise of worker power doesn’t mean that it’s being exercised for a good cause. I’m in a teacher’s union, recently resigned from leadership because I was freaking exhausted (seriously, it gives me so much more sympathy for people that say they want to spend more time with their family), and we agitated for better pay, to try to gain parity with workers in other similar districts in our state. I’m totally with you here, my friend. You’re trying to do a good job in a state with shitty politics and a shitty government, and all the power to you for what you do. You need unions. That doesn’t change my other arguments in other contexts, though. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-101-or-why-strikes-are-okay/989700)._