Labor Strikes the Positive and

Labor Strikes The Positive and Negative Consequences of Strikes Union labor strikes affect at least five groups of people, employers, their employees, union officials, and the customers and suppliers of the strike targets (Baird pp). Union officials often purport that the striking workers are the greatest beneficiaries of such conflicts and that those benefits come at the expense of employers and the investors they represent and they seldom mention the gains they receive for themselves and almost always ignore the effects on customers and suppliers (Baird pp).

Under American labor law, all strikes involve the legal use of private coercion, often involving violence (Baird pp). The only purpose of a picket line is to prevent or try to prevent replacement workers, customers and suppliers from engaging in voluntary exchange with strike targets (Baird pp).

The picket line becomes a barrier to the property of the strike target and often anyone who crosses the line is in danger of physical harm and harassment, as illustrated by the Teamsters strike against United Postal Service in the late 1990's (Baird pp). Basically, a picket line in any other context would be considered trespassing (Baird pp).

According to a numerous empirical studies, strikes, in general, do not benefit workers, and any gains received by the striking workers or union officials are ultimately borne by consumers and other workers, not by employers and the investors they represent (Baird pp). Therefore, evidence supports that striking workers gain very little, if anything at all, from strikes (Baird pp). The big winners are union officials and the institutions they rule with the gains appropriated at the expense of consumers, union-free workers, and most often, the striking workers (Baird pp).

The Employment Policy Foundation in Washington D.C. produced important data on the beneficial consequences of strikes (Baird pp). One particular strike that was detailed was the 1997 UPS strike. EPF compared the cumulative wages that both full and part-time workers would have received had the Teamsters accepted the last offer made by UPS prior to the strike with the cumulative wages they will receive because of the strike for the years 1997-2001, the life of the new contract (Baird pp).

In 1997 the strike made part-time workers worse off by 2126 and the full-time workers worse off by $3,703. In 1998 the respective figures are $2,126 and $2,303; in 1999, $1,866 and $703; and in 2000, $2,402 and $963. In 2001, the last year of the contract, part-timers will be worse off by $1,018, and full-timers will be better off by $2,237" (Baird pp).

The Teamster president proclaimed during the strike that it was on behalf of the part-time employees, as well as the full-time workers, however, part-timers are actually worse off every year of the contract and full-timers benefit only during the last year of the contract (Baird pp). When this is combined with the indisputable fact that the pension plan offered by the Teamsters is clearly less remunerative than the pension plan offered by UPS, all of the UPS workers represented by the Teamsters lost benefits from the strike (Baird pp).

Union officials have interests that are significantly different from the rank -- and file workers (Baird pp). The survival of the unions may been seen as a means for their promotion and tenure in union hierarchies as well as their prominence in local, state and federal political arenas (Baird pp). They need only to create the appearance of sufficient gains for their members to keep them from rebelling, and many believe that other than that the welfare of workers matters little to union officials (Baird pp).

One example is when Teamsters president Ron Carey, during the UPS strike, was scheduled to stand for reelection against James P. Hoffa (Baird pp). Shortly before the UPS strike, questions were being raised by government officials regarding alleged illicit campaign donations to Carey's campaign in exchange for Teamster donations in the congressional and presidential elections of 1996 (Baird pp).

Many believe that the strike diverted attention from Carey's legal problems and helped to solidify the political support and create the illusion that he was securing significant gains for the rank-and-file (Baird pp). Union officials routinely claim that the strike-threat system makes unionized workers much better off than nonunion workers, however the data from EPF disputes such claims (Baird pp). Yet labor strikes have played an important role in the economic, political and social life throughout its history (Labor pp).

From strikes by shoemakers, printers, bakers, and other artisans in the era of the Revolution through the bitter airline strikes two centuries later, workers repeatedly tried to defend or improve their living and working conditions by collectively refusing to work until specific demands were met (Labor pp).

Although wage disputes are usually the most common cause of strikes, workers have walked off jobs for reasons including efforts to win union recognition, shorten the workday, gain or defend control over the work process, improve working conditions, and protest the disciplining of unionists (Labor pp). In the early twentieth century, to avoid or settle strikes, many unions turned to private mediation groups (Labor).

Most public-sector strikes involve local government employees, such as teachers or transit workers, however, the largest public employee walkout was a 1970 wildcat strike of 180,000 postal workers (Labor pp). In September 2004, approximately 10,000 hotel workers in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. seeking "employer-paid health benefits, fair workloads, improved wages, improved pensions and immigrant rights.