| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstPaper" |
|---|
Who Wants to Chase an Eighteen-Wheeler for a Year?
By AmandaBell - 23 Mar 2010 |
|
<
< | All labor strikes are difficult in some way. However, American unions sometimes do not take chances that might make certain strikes easier because we fear liability under the secondary boycott rule. This concern is legitimate, but unions have an obligation to our members to experiment with the “publicity exception” to the secondary boycott rule. |
>
> | All labor strikes are difficult in some way. However, American unions sometimes do not take chances that might make certain strikes easier, because we fear liability under the secondary boycott rule. This concern is legitimate, but unions have an obligation to our members to experiment with the “publicity exception” to the secondary boycott rule. |
| | Strike Strategy
Particularly difficult strikes occur in industries where neither picketing nor stopping work can harm employer profits. For example, striking industrial laundry workers who picket outside their plant do not cause clients to cancel their linens contracts. Laundry clients care only that the delivery truck arrives carrying clean linen. Clean linen keeps coming even during a strike because the laundry can easily find scabs to fill its low-skill jobs. And the clients never even see the workers’ picket, so they are not bothered by it. |
| | However, clients become very bothered – and very interested in canceling their contracts – when a picket line shows up at their hotel or restaurant. There’s nothing like a bullhorn, people waving signs, a ten-foot inflatable rat, and earnest conversation with a leafleting laundry lady to make guests go somewhere else. The hotels and restaurants start looking for a different laundry that does not come with noisy picketers attached.
The Problem of Secondary Boycott |
|
<
< | Unfortunately, workers rarely actually set up a picket at clients’ businesses. Such a picket is prohibited by the secondary boycott rule of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 and its resulting court decisions. The rule forbids most kinds of action toward “secondaries” – businesses with which the union has no direct dispute, such as a laundry’s clients. When a picket causes a client to lose income, the client can get an injunction to take down the line. The union can be on the hook for three times the amount the client claims to have lost as a result of being picketed. Unions cannot afford those damages. Also, if a client knows it can claim loss from a secondary boycott, then get triple the amount back from the union, the client’s incentive is to side with the laundry. |
>
> | Unfortunately, workers rarely actually set up a picket at clients’ businesses. Most such pickets are prohibited by the secondary boycott rule of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 and its resulting court decisions. The rule forbids most kinds of action toward “secondaries” – businesses with which the union has no direct dispute, such as a laundry’s clients. When a laundry workers' picket causes a client to lose income, the client can get an injunction to take down the line. The union can be on the hook for three times the amount the client claims to have lost as a result of being picketed. Unions cannot afford those damages. Also, if a client knows it can claim losses from a secondary boycott, then get triple the amount back from the union, the client’s incentive is to side with the laundry. |
| | The Truck-Chasing Loophole |
|
<
< | As a result, workers are only safe from damages and injunctions when they picket the laundry – an activity that barely affects their employer. There is one loophole. Workers may picket outside a client’s business while the laundry’s trucks deliver. This means strikers must set up and take down picket lines across busy driveways in less than ten minutes. They must chase the trucks from client to client for eight to ten hours a day in cars jammed with co-workers and picket signs. The pay-off is that each client gets picketed for ten minutes per day. Unfortunately, ten-minute pickets are ineffective in preventing consumers from spending money. Most consumers never even see the picket. Those that do may see it so briefly that they don’t have enough time to decide to support the workers. Strikes like this can drag on for over a year, and strikers do not always win. By contrast, strikes with no secondary boycott issues can often win within weeks. |
>
> | As a result, workers are only safe from damages and injunctions when they picket the laundry – an activity that barely pressures their employer. There is one loophole. Workers may picket outside a client’s business while the laundry’s trucks deliver. This means strikers must set up and take down picket lines across busy driveways in less than ten minutes. They must chase the trucks from client to client for eight to ten hours a day in cars jammed with co-workers and picket signs. The pay-off is that each client gets picketed for ten minutes per day. Unfortunately, ten-minute pickets are ineffective in preventing consumers from spending money. Most consumers never even see the picket. Those that do may see it so briefly that they don’t have enough time to decide to support the workers. Strikes like this can drag on for over a year, and strikers do not always win. By contrast, strikes with no secondary boycott issues can often win within weeks. |
| | The Publicity Exception
In order to avoid putting members through long, low-impact strikes, unions should push the limits of the secondary boycott rule. We should experiment with untried but possibly legal forms of “publicity” at client locations. |
| | Unions’ reluctance to push the publicity picketing envelope is justified. Triple damages are not affordable on the dues of members earning $9 an hour. Courts are often hostile and unlikely to decide in unions’ favor. However, we can develop test cases that push the edges of what the exception allows. The worst that can happen if a union loses a case is that the rest of the labor movement is forbidden a strategy it was too nervous to try anyway. Test cases would have to be chosen carefully, based on individual facts and on the sympathetic qualities of witnesses. Such cases should be filed when the NLRB and the federal benches are not too weighted with right-wing appointees. Costs could be limited by pooling funds among unions and by choosing secondaries that would be unlikely to prove high damages.
Conclusion: Obligation to Members |
|
<
< | As democratic organizations, unions cannot ignore that a successful publicity test case will improve members’ lives. A better strategy in the short term could mean less exhausting strikes. Long term, it will mean bigger victories. Why strike one year for a 74¢ raise when you can strike three months for $1.00? Unions have an obligation to find new winning strategies, including by experimenting with publicity activity. |
>
> | As democratic organizations, unions cannot ignore that a successful publicity test case will improve our members’ lives. A better strategy in the short term could mean less exhausting strikes. Long term, it will mean bigger victories. Why strike one year for a 74¢ raise when you can strike three months for $1.00? Unions have an obligation to find new winning strategies, including by experimenting with publicity activity. |
| | . |