Practice Pickets: solving the problem of no-strike, no-picket clauses before contract expiration

Almost all American union contracts contain a clause that prohibits employees from striking while the union contract is in effect. These no-strike clauses inhibit employees' ability to stage an effective protest in various ways. However, this limitation is particularly burdensome immediately before a contract expires. Employers that do not fear that workers may strike will stick to their harshest proposals, and small-scale protest such as sticker days are unreliable indicators of whether unions members are ready to strike. A meaningful demonstration that members are serious about striking can be a crucial bargaining tool.

In Februrary 2005, I was [preparing union members for a strike] in a Stockton, California laundry plant. We pushed the usual strike preparation: sticker days, sign-making, and circulating a petition demanding Hepatitis B vaccinations for the soil-sorters. Most of the union members were cordial, but only three seemed as though they would be ready to strike when the contract expired in May. In general, they seemed lukewarm about our preparations.

I think that you should include more details here. For instance, why do you think that the members were “lukewarm” before the practice picket? Did they also seem afraid (which you allude to later)? Details describing how they acted lukewarm would contribute to the story by describing the pre-picket balance of power and provide a contrast to their later confidence (though their confidence is only referred to vaguely; that would have to be expanded with details also). In general, the power shift is fascinating, and I think that any insight you have here would strengthen your paper. Also, if the members were lukewarm, why do you think you have a 73% turnout at the picket?

Also, I'm not clear on what your job description was. Hence the [brackets].

Planning

I wanted management, not my members, to be afraid of a strike. In April, the union’s attorney sent me a copy of the contract. Though it had a no-strike clause [assuming no-strike and no-picket clauses are the same, I think that you should be consistent in naming them], the language was vague about what “picketing the employer’s establishment” meant. The term “picketing” has a clear legal meaning – “patrolling at a site with a message . . . on . . . sign[s].” Howard Lesnick, The Gravamen of the Secondary Boycott, 62 Colum. L.Rev. 1363, 1364 n. 5 (1962). But the contract language did not say that no picketing could occur during the contract. It only forbade picketing at the “establishment.”

So the contract had some sort of loophole allowing a practice picket? Is it common to leave the no-strike clause so vague? If not, do you think that practice pickets would be helpful where the language was more precise? That might be beyond the scope of your paper, but you might want to consider the question.

There was a vacant lot a block away from the laundry. I told our lawyer that we wanted to “practice” picketing the chainlink gate to the lot. He agreed that although the lot was within sight of the plant, it was sufficiently unrelated to the plant that the union members could practice picketing without violating the no-strike clause.

Member turnout

On the day of the picket, the first to arrive were not union members, but two managers and their video camera. They stood across the street to record whatever happened. Soon members arrived. We practiced patrolling and learned the basic chants. One enthusiastic worker volunteered to drive his minivan up to the lot gate so we could imitate the arrival of a delivery truck. We practiced slowing the “truck’s” entry. Finally everyone left, to punch in to swing shift or go home. I compared my attendance list to the full shop list. We had seventy-three percent participation.

If you could add more details about what happened at the practice picket, it would help to contrast the innocuousness of the practice picket with management’s apparent panic, further demonstrating how something so simple could be so effective. For instance, you say earlier that you wanted to picket the chainlink gate. What does that entail? Were you pretending that the gate was the entrance to a client's loading area or did you use the gate for some other purpose? How did the members act during the picket? Did they become more confident as the picket wore on? How long did it last? How was it different from a real picket? How did the managers that were taping the picket act during the picket? (Of course, all of these questions don't need to be answered. I'm just trying to give you ideas.) It seems like you described a laundry picket in your last paper, but you could reiterate that here so the second paper is more of a stand-alone piece for people that don't know how laundry pickets work. Or maybe you could describe how you picketed the minivan-delivery truck in more detail.

Management reaction

I was relieved, and so were the original three members who had helped bring co-workers to the picket. Management was less relieved. They installed a surveillance camera and hired a guard. They held a “fire drill” that turned into a meeting about how the union was going to put everyone out of a job. The GM even bolted the ladies’ room window shut because he thought I was sneaking into the plant through it. Fortunately, the members found all this funny rather than intimidating. Seeing their managers frightened of them – simply because they had marched around like strikers – had shifted their sense of the balance of power. When the contract expired two weeks later, the members volunteered to picket the plant itself.

Management became insecure, but do you think that the union members felt more empowered? If so, you should describe that. The fact that they thought that management's insecurity was funny instead of threatening surely suggests it. If the members were legally disempowered because they could not protest, but the practice protest made them feel more empowered in a social sense, then that distinction might be interesting to explore. Surely management’s reaction shows that there must be some psychological value in picketing.

A few weeks after those real pickets began, we won the best contract the members had achieved in 30 years. It included their highest raise in all that time and fairer schedules. The contract did not contain everything the workers had hoped for, but it represented an important break from the past.

Conclusion

A practice picket is a creative, effective tactic. It can assess employees’ strength, give them confidence, and, most importantly, pressure management into bargaining a better contract.

This conclusion is weak. You should reiterate more of the provocative ideas that you suggest in your paper: that the practice picket shifted the balance of power, that it made management insecure and members more enthusiastic, that this might be attributed to the symbolic effect of a picket, that practice pickets can salvage some of the power that a no-strike clause takes away from the union. If you write about that in your conclusion, you won’t have to say that “a practice picket is a creative, effective tactic” because you will have proven it.

The swing shift's practice picket, April 15, 2005. The man kneeling in the middle is my co-worker Heraclio, a shop steward at San Diego Airport Sky Chefs. He took several months off of work to help organize the laundry.

View Larger Map

Our vacant lot is the gray rectangle labeled "1201 South Airport Way." The gray-roofed building with white trucks in the parking lot is the laundry. The lot full of rusty-brown dumpsters next to it is a scrap yard, and the white-roofed building across the street is a homeless shelter. Most workers lived in the Union Square and Stribley Park neighborhoods behind the plant. A week before the picket we talked to the lady who lived in the house west of the vacant lot and to the imam of the mosque across the street to let them know what we would be doing.

In editing your paper, I mostly eliminated the background so that the story of the practice picket was center stage. Previously, it was buried halfway through, despite being, in my opinion, the most compelling part, both because it is practical evidence of the importance of practice pickets and because your raw material is excellent for storytelling: it has conspiracy and intrigue and power plays and creative problem-solving. So, in general, I think that your focus should be on the story, with background and theory added where appropriate. You don't need very much initial background because the basic idea of a practice picket is very intuitive (practice makes perfect, after all.) You don't need the "what is problematic about no-strike clauses" section because your paper is more effective, in my opinion, when the topic is narrowed to the concept that practice pickets are a way of avoiding the unique burdens of a union that is bound by a no-strike clause on the eve of a contract's end. However, I think that you should keep the observation that wearing stickers or circulating leaflets doesn’t have “the punch of a picket,” though speculating why that is would be helpful. (Does it have something to do with the social or symbolic significance, discussed below?) The observation that a member brave enough to wear a sticker isn’t necessarily brave enough to strike is interesting as well. Perhaps you could include these observations where you describe the pre-picket "lukewarm" feelings of the members.

I did not rewrite much beyond the first couple of paragraphs, because I think that what would make it strongest would be to include more details about the strike and the practice picket (details that I don’t know, obviously).

Since your suggestion is that the practice picket helped the members win a better contract, details contrasting the atmosphere before and after the practice picket would be compelling. Were they more enthusiastic after the practice picket? During the real picket, was their picketing style safer, less awkward, more confident, or more effective than typical first-time picketers? Of course, management’s reaction to the picket is very important. But it seems that you are also suggesting that the picket made the members more receptive to the possibility of striking, so details on members’ reactions would support that proposition.

Also, I don't think that the photo captions give any crucial information and may be cut or shortened if necessary. I think that the first photo in particular speaks for itself.

-- AmandaBell - 17 Apr 2010

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