At the picket line in Queens, New York, police arrested and released Anthony Rosario, a Teamsters organizer, and Jogernsyn Cardenas, one of the striking workers, and then threatened mass arrests before breaking the line in two to allow vans through.
Workers stood strong on picket lines, disrupting deliveries. Police threatened mass arrests with zip ties in hand, though they did not follow through as workers united to defend each other.
Eventually, police barricaded the picket line and cleared a path for trucks to leave the delivery station unimpeded.
This is meant to be a factual question, what law were the strikers breaking? Was it because they were blocking trucks from entering and leaving?
Yes. It says “Workers stood strong on picket lines, disrupting deliveries.” which would be disrupting normal Amazon business. I believe that’s illegal, but I don’t know New York law.
A person is guilty of disorderly conduct when, with intent to cause
public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk
thereof: […]
He obstructs vehicular or pedestrian traffic
Presumably the strikers could be said to be intending to cause inconvenience and/or annoyance, and they were blocking vehicular traffic.
I saw the same comment on a video posted on social media - along with the usual misguided condemnations of the police as tools of the establishment, was the simple comment - “They moved people who were blocking traffic off the roadway. Nobody was arrested.”
Blocking deliveries is beyond striking, picketing, and protesting. It comes under the category of “unlawful restraint” and, I assume, a couple of more laws one could name. If I was angry at the company you work for and decided to physically block you from doing your job, you wouldn’t consider that a crime?
Also what wasn’t clear to me in the short clip I saw was whether they were blocking entry to their own place of work or a different Amazon facility where workers were not on strike.
One’s definition of a “good cause” and how far one will go to achieve it is a slippery slope. My definition of a free market is that I have the right to find the best goods at the cheapest price as a consumer and, as a retailer/wholesaler, find the cheapest form of production and delivery.
As far as I’m concerned, physically blocking access to a work place just because there are people who will work under the present agreement is over the line. Jimmy Hoffa and the teamsters come to mind as an example of how things can go too far.
You have buyers, and you have retailers, but what about workers? What rights to they have? Doesn’t the free market mean that they have the right to receive the highest salary for the least amount of work?
They have the right to ask for it and, if necessary, demonstrate and strike for it. They do not, however, have the right to intimidate/restrain other workers who are willing to work under the present agreement because the aggressors are trying to forcefully take away THEIR rights as workers.
But the flip side is that laws like these are why pro-life activists can’t block people trying to get into a planned parenthood clinic.
If you can physically stop people from entering an Amazon warehouse, you’d also be able to physically stop people from entering a planned parenthood clinic.
We’re getting into labor issues and civil disobedience issues which are outside of the scope of FQ. Since the factual portion of this topic has been addressed fairly well, I think this will do better if we move it to another forum.
While a lot of this is debatable, I don’t see a properly formed debate here, so let’s move this to IMHO instead.
Any additional factual information on this topic is of course still welcome.