Labor 101, or why strikes are okay

Great Debates
181

I’m not sure there’s much relevance to the CUPE specifics–this sounds like an idea for a related thread–but I’ll say one more thing about them in general, quoting the OP:

I think there’s scant persuasive evidence offered so far that the garbage workers’ strike involved bad labor action. But if evidence comes out that it does, that doesn’t contradict anything that I believe, or anything in the OP. Labor actions that instigate violence, or labor actions that present clear and significant danger to health and safety, are not actions I’m inclined to approve of.

182

A few things in closing. If you think I’m a secret anti-unionist trying to pretend otherwise, I ask you to please read my post #162, where my position on what would happen without union wage protections is extremely clear. How is it possible to read this and conclude that I’m anti-union? It’s among the many views about the vital role of unions that I’ve expressed that you not only fail to acknowledge, but seemingly fail to comprehend. Instead, you attack me for pointing out that powerful, overly aggressive unions are a problem, too.

I don’t agree that the evidence against CUPE is “scant”, and you make the most unreasonably charitable interpretations of the cites I provided. For example, on the injunction to prevent the union from blocking pest-control workers from the temporary dump sites, you said “it’s also possible the city was taking out a preemptive injunction as a way to make the union look bad”. If you read the cite more carefully, you’d have seen that this was an emergency injunction that was issued because vermin and flies were out of control. The union didn’t care. I suspect that if you’d had to live through the two recent strikes and listened to the daily news reports about union mayhem you might have a different perspective.

That said, I completely agree that the faults of one union are not an indictment of all unions. It should be perfectly clear that I support unions in principle (again, see my post #162) and I unequivocally condemn American-style plutocracy, so I don’t know why we’re having this argument.

183

I think for public services in general, it varies by jurisdiction. Federal employees are prohibited from striking at all. 5 U.S.C. § 7311. State employees, in Florida, are prohibited from striking at all. Fla. Stat. § 447.505.

From the History Channel’s website, there was a big postal worker’s strike in 1970, and in 1981 thousands of air traffic controllers walked off the job, but in both instances the strikes were illegal.

We don’t have explicit freedom of association in our Constitution like you do in Canada. It’s been held by our courts to be implied by the right to peaceably assemble and petition government, but I doubt that extends to strikes. Rather, we have federal regulation that guarantees the right to strike - in the private sector - on the basis of it being a regulation of interstate commerce.

~Max

184

AGAIN: it don’t matter none. If you do manage to convince me that CUPE acted inappropriately, it falls into a category of behavior I established in the OP that I condemn. I agree with you in principle, even if I think your beliefs about this case may represent a hopeless misunderstanding of what really happened, possibly due to how the strike inconvenienced you personally.

If you really want to debate the specifics of that one strike, I recommend doing so in a different thread.

185

Completely agree, and I said so (emphasis added):

To be crystal clear about the point that I’m making, unions are essential to securing and advancing workers’ rights, for the obvious reason that they provide an organized collective voice to balance the power of intrinsically organized corporations, governments, and other institutional employers. Historically, unions have tended to be the weaker entity, often at the losing end of this power imbalance. But over time some unions have grown to a remarkable extent from mergers, expansion of scope, and other means of membership growth, and become large, powerful, and well-financed. With that power sometimes comes a certain amount of arrogance, with very large unions becoming intransigent bureaucracies in their own right.

That was my sole point in bringing up the CUPE examples of what I regarded as arrogance and overreach, both by union leadership and the culture of the rank and file members. A significant power imbalance in the union-employer relationship is never a good thing, regardless of which side is dominant. Institutional employers are rarely saints, but neither are unions. They just sin in different ways.

186

On public sector strikes:
Back in January the UK’s Conservative Government passed teh Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act in a bid to deal with the fact that lots of critical workers including doctors, transport workers and teachers were going on strike. For good reason - over and above the real terms pay cuts inflation was inflicting, over a decade of underinvestment and poor management had left these sectors chronically unable to function. But, you know, if you just make it harder to strike the problem will go away.

So the Act sets out which sectors are so critical the right to strike should be restricted, and gives the government the power to designate “minimum service levels” in the event of a strike. Once the government does so, the employer has the power to issue “work orders” to the union, detailing specific workers required to do specific work - i.e. barring them from striking. Failure for the union to comply would leave them open to being sued for all economic losses caused by the strike.

This is incredibly heavy-handed and shifts a lot of power from workers to the government and employers.

The good news is, Labour’s Deputy Leader and friend of the thread Angela Rayner has just given a big speech to the annual Trade Union Conference in which, among other things, she pledged that a newly elected Labour government would repeal this act in the first 100 days.

For far too long, unions have had barriers put in the way of your work, damaging industrial relations and worsening disputes.

The Tories pushed through the 2016 Trade Union Act, preventing fair bargaining and holding back living standards. And this year they gave us… The Minimum Service Levels Bill

A spiteful and bitter attack that threatens nurses with the sack. We know going on strike is always a last resort. But it’s a fundamental freedom that must be respected

So let me tell you loud and clear. The next Labour Government will ask Parliament to repeal these anti-trade union laws within our first 100 days. So that you can get on with your jobs of negotiating better for your members

So that’s pretty explicit and bang in line with the OP - the right to strike is there to allow unions to negotiate better for their members. Without it, they and workers lose power.

Other pro-union policies in the speech which might be worth including in Labo(u)r 101:

  • Stamping out blacklisting (employers in a sector keeping a list of people never to be hired on the grounds of their union activism)
  • The right of unions to access workplaces in order to recruit, organise and represent workers
  • Making it easier for gig economy workers to join unions
  • Union votes allowed to be conducted by electronic means (our current governing party uses electronic voting for its own leadership elections, but somehow unions have to use paper and pen, I mean come on.)

All of which seem to me to be perfectly sensible and fair; correspondingly, the lack of them seems to create structural inequality between employers and workers.

187

That famous letter by Martin Luther Kind cited here raises a profound point about the tension between the rule of law and civil disobedience in the pursuit of justice. There are no simple answers, but the historical perspective has generally been that civil disobedience is morally supportable only when the injustices it opposes are truly egregious; for example, fighting massive and systemic racial discrimination, as opposed to garbage workers wanting more paid sick days – and engaging in illegal actions to gain their objectives. Conflating actions calling for large-scale social transformations with actions motivated by petty union grievances is a classic example of argument by false equivalence.

That’s my argument. If you have a problem with it, that’s the argument you need to address. What follows is just an interesting additional anecdote.

An interesting sidebar here, since you brought up MLK, is that he was bailed out of the Birmingham jail by the United Auto Workers, then under the leadership of Walter Reuther. Anyone wondering what interests the UAW could possibly have in MLK might be interested to know that Reuther also made the union a major force behind the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and both Medicare and Medicaid. As many of these initiatives could be seen as directly beneficial to its members and were just causes that most of us would strongly support, they may seem difficult to criticize.

But this union overreach also resulted in Reuther aggressively pushing his union-centric concepts of socialization to the entire auto industry and beyond. He forced automakers into contracts providing for ever-higher worker pay and hostile to plant automation, which is a major factor in consistent manufacturing quality. This doomed them to being less competitive with foreign automakers, particularly the Japanese, and ultimately led to the collapse of Detroit as the world’s premier center of automobile production.

188

I mean, that’s your perspective. To counter that, I will again encourage you to read that letter that you reference:

So, no, what you claim is the “historical perspective” is profoundly ahistorical, indeed, exactly the sort of nonsense that King criticized when he criticized the White moderate. King never talks about how the injustices must be “truly egregious”; that’s something you came up with.

Read the letter. It’s the single best strategic and moral analysis of social justice struggle I’ve ever come across.

189

As for whether King considered garbage workers wanting better compensation an important issue? In Memphis, sanitation workers went on strike in February 1968, in a strike that lasted for more than two months. King went to Memphis to participate.

Here’s what he said to striking garbage workers:

Before the strike ended, King was murdered.

I can’t find details, but I suspect that in Memphis, there were piles of garbage. I also suspect there were people calling the strikers “thugs” and talking about the overreach of unions and cavilling about their lawbreaking ways.

That’s definitely an interesting sidebar about the car industry’s automation! It’s funny how you describe the relationship solely from the UAW’s side: they “bailed out” King, we should wonder “what interests the UAW could possibly have in MLK,” his causes were “directly beneficial to its members.” Almost like King was passive in that relationship.

King, of course, was anything but passive. Here’s what he said about this exact issue:

and

and

Once again you criticize union activity, this time as “overreach”, as “forc[ing] automakers into contracts . . . hostile to plant automation.” Just be aware that in this matter, too, you’re at significant odds with Dr. King.

190

There’s a lot to unpack behind that quote and all that came before it. First of all thanks for the link to the Birmingham Jail letter, which is indeed a very powerful document. Also for the impressive research on MLK’s other statements in support of social activism.

My objection here is still one of fundamental principle, and it centers on the one line in my post that you didn’t quote:

Conflating actions calling for large-scale social transformations with actions motivated by petty union grievances is a classic example of argument by false equivalence.

For all of his great achievements, sacrifice, and wisdom, MLK may well have been guilty of the same false equivalence in this regard as Walter Reuther. The question of where the threshold lies when a social cause justifies civil disobedience over the rule of law remains a blurry line. But I think I can confidently say that the financial minutiae of the collective agreement of a group of sanitation workers should not ever justify illegal actions that outweigh the health and safety of six million people.

191

You are aware of what triggered the Memphis sanitation workers strike?

Black sanitation workers were not allowed to ride in the cab of the trucks, and could not go into whites only shops. They had to ride hanging on to the outside of the truck.

Then one day there was a major rain storm. Two workers, trying to keep dry, took shelter inside the crushing area of the truck.

There was a malfunction and they were crushed to death.

But I guess that’s just financial minutia about greedy unions.

192

Geez, that was a horrifically wrong interpretation of my post, but my quickly composed post was phrased very badly The “financial minutiae” was specifically in reference to the CUPE strikers, not the Memphis situation. In fact, you’ve supported my point – the Memphis sanitation workers were being subjected to inhumane treatment just because they were Black. This is fully within the moral justification of Martin Luther King’s call for civil disobedience. Not at all like the CUPE workers lobbying for more paid free time.

193

Wowza.

194

Given what @Northern_Piper just clarified about the Memphis strike, MLK was taking a completely morally supportable position. I was just suggesting, in general, that a wise man is not always right about everything, but it turns out that your Memphis example is an instance of horrific racism and is not at all relevant to my objections to the union overreach in the CUPE strike.

195

Again, your implication that King would have supported your position here is in stark opposition to everything he spoke about and stood for. It’s classic Victor’s Virtue, it’s classic “whatever the facts are, they’re gonna support my conclusion,” and I’m not here for it.

196

In case anyone is interested in actually reading about the strike that so infuriated @Wolfpup, here’s the Wikipedia article.

Among other things: the injunction about spraying was because picketers at 2 of the 19 temporary garbage cites had blocked access to spray trucks (it’s unclear whether it was malicious or a mistake), and the union immediately agreed to abide by the injunction.

As for endangering “the health and safety of six million people”? How terrible! Why, even if 99.999% of those six million people survived, we’re talking a death toll of 60 people. Unconscionable!

Please remind me how many people were killed in the Great CUPE Massacre of 2009.

The hyperbole and vitriol against unions would be expected from someone who claimed to be anti-union. As I quoted earlier, though, “Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

197

Cool. Let’s review the facts. And let’s do it in the context of what I said earlier, re-stated for a third time: “Conflating actions calling for large-scale social transformations with actions motivated by petty union grievances is a classic example of argument by false equivalence.”

All the examples that we’ve seen so far of Martin Luther King’s statements and his acts of civil disobedience were in opposition to barbaric racism where Black people were literally being treated as subhuman. There should be no question of the moral right to oppose such horrific oppression regardless of the legality of such opposition. Similarly, Mahatma Gandhi, whose policy of non-violent resistance is often associated with the first use of civil disobedience as a political tactic, initially fought horrible racial oppression in South Africa, and later back in his native India against the tyranny of British colonizers.

One must surely recognize the qualitative difference between civil disobedience in this existential struggle for fundamental human rights, and the malfeasance of this particular union in pursuit of more paid sick days (and other similar fringe benefits). Now tell me again who’s ignoring the facts in support of a preconceived conclusion!

In all the examples I cited of this union’s malfeasance, you consistently make excuses for them, even in cases where the city was forced to go to court to obtain emergency injunctions against them. I can’t help but conclude that you’re so deeply invested in union ideology that it blinds you to the fundamental importance of the rule of law in an enlightened modern society, including its role in protecting the rights of the general public and, yes, sometimes even the rights of employers and their investors. Not every union strike has a moral equivalence to the social movements of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi.

198

Some of us consider health care to be a fundamental human right.

199

Absolutely. So do I. Understand that in this context “sick day” has nothing to do with health. Sick days, and the “banking” thereof, was just a union tactic to get paid more for less work. They already get free public health care, supplemental health care benefits, a generous pension, and (according to a current city recruitment ad) get paid $30.70 an hour.

200

Nah, I’m good. I’ve reviewed them just fine, and I don’t think I have it in me to continue with you on this subject in this forum.