Lockout (industrial relations)

“ When one or more employers suddenly dismiss their workpeople altogether, in order to oblige them to take lower wages, or agree to some alteration of work, it is called a lockout, and a lockout is nearly the same as a strike of the employers. Strikes sometimes last for many months, the workmen living on what savings they have, and on contributions sent to them by workmen or unions in the same or other trades. The employers at the same time lose much money by their factories standing still, and they sometimes receive aid from other employers. ”

“ The lockout.—Lockout is a name given to a method employed by managers to prevent the continuance of a strike by aid of the sympathy of employés not directly interested. It often happens that a comparatively small body of workmen in a great factory strike for higher wages, and are sustained in their strike by the sympathy and support of other workmen in the same factory. Under these conditions the employer is tempted to stop all work by a sudden closing of all shops, that the pressure of suffering among a large body of wage-earners may force the smaller body to accept the old conditions. ”

“ The narrow question to be decided is whether a temporary lockout may lawfully be used as a defense to a union strike tactic which threatens the destruction of the employers' interest in bargaining on a group basis. ”

“ The lockout seldom gains a popular sympathy, for the reason that employers appear to be using this method of warfare from a superior position of power. And yet no one can dispute the general right of employers to control of their business. Such a sudden stopping of business without an attack by a strike or some similar provocation would be considered inhuman, and popular sympathy would be wholly with the laborers and consumers interested. ”

“ Since the examples of different lockout situations could be multiplied, the logic of the Court's limitation of its holding should lead it to recognize that the problem of lockouts requires 'an evolutionary process,' not 'a quick, definitive formula,' for its answer. ”

“ And these wretches, who have scarcely the strength to stand upright, sell twelve and fourteen hours of work twice as cheap as when they had bread on the table. And the philanthropists of industry profit by their lockouts to manufacture at lower cost.
If industrial crises follow periods of over-work as inevitably as night follows day, bringing after them lockouts and poverty without end, they also lead to inevitable bankruptcy. So long as the manufacturer has credit he gives free rein to the rage for work. ”

“ The Board's position is premised on the view that the lockout interferes with two of the rights guaranteed by § 7: the right to bargain collectively and the right to strike. In the Board's view, the use of the lockout 'punishes' employees for the presentation of and adherence to demands made by their bargaining representatives and so coerces them in the exercise of their right to bargain collectively. It is important to note that there is here no allegation that the employer used the lockout in the service of designs inimical to the process of collective bargaining. ”

“ The lockout is the employer’s strike. Unwilling to grant the worker’s demand, the employer shuts down his plant, thus terminating employment of both strikers and non-strikers. The same conditions and restrictions that apply to the strike are applicable to lockouts. That the lockout itself is not unjust, but at least morally indifferent, appears to be evident in this, that as workers are not bound to submit to injustice, neither is the employer. He cannot be expected to pay wages when essential employers have quit or stalled production. ”

“ The International Typographical Union, the oldest in America, has a membership of over 40,000, and there are many others of great strength.
The weapon of offense with which the labor organization seeks to gain its ends is the strike, in which the artisans quit work for the purpose of forcing employers to grant their demands, and endeavor to prevent others from taking their place. The reverse of this is the lock-out, an expedient adopted by capitalists for the purpose of obliging workmen to yield to their demands. ”

“ It is not only that the strike or lock-out is a crime against helpless women and children, that it wastes the substance and savings of employers and employed and embitters their relations for a generation—all that we knew before ”

“ In analyzing the status of the bargaining lockout under §§ 8 (a) (1) and (3) of the National Labor Relations Act, it is important that the practice with which we are here concerned be distinguished from other forms of temporary separation from employment. No one would deny that an employer is free to shut down his enterprise temporarily for reasons of renovation or lack of profitable work unrelated to his collective bargaining situation. ”

“ This gives rise to disputes between rival unions and causes annoyance and loss to the workers themselves, to the employers, and to the general public.
§ 8. #Strikes in labor disputes.# A strike is a concerted stopping of work by a group of employees to enforce a demand upon the employer. A lockout is an employer's closing of his shop because of a disagreement with his employees. The strike is, in its direct and indirect, immediate and ultimate, effects the most important weapon of the organized wage-earners in their relations with their employers. ”

“ Moreover, the course of action to which the Board would limit the respondents would force them into the position of aiding and abetting the success of the whipsaw strike and consequently would render 'largely illusory,' 137 N.L.R.B., at 78-79, the right of lockout recognized by Buffalo Linen; the right would be meaningless if barred to nonstruck stores that find it necessary to operate because the struck store does so. ”

“ Instead of these favored few being made to pay those deprived of the land an equivalent for the privilege enjoyed, the disinherited many are compelled to pay a premium to the landholder for the opportunity to labor.
When there is a lockout, is it not the pressure of want that brings the men back, hat in hand, to the factory door? If one could go to the outskirts of this town to cultivate a bit of the unused land, could he not hold out till he got all that his labor was worth? ”

“ The attention of the world has been called to the great strike and lockout in the building trades in Chicago because it rested upon the question of individual liberty—a question which is not only vital alike to the employer and the employe, but which affects every industry, every class of people, every city, state and country. ”

“ An employer or worker bound by an award or an industrial agreement who takes part in a strike or lockout in the industry affected is subject to heavy fine. Unless fourteen days’ notice has been given, a strike or lockout in a public utility or an industry dealing in the necessities of life is considered a statutory offence, even when the party in fault is not bound by an award. A strike in the milk business or on a railroad or street-car line would fall under this provision. ”

“ The harsh weapons of the strike and lockout are injurious, not only to the trades immediately affected, but to the community as a whole. It is, therefore, the business of the governments to devise means for preventing recourse to such barbarous methods of settling disputes. ”

“ In New York, too, 14.8 per cent, of all the workers whose shops are inspected by the factory inspectors are in the clothing trades, while in Illinois only 7.3 percent, are so engaged.
One of the most interesting conflicts between capital and labor in current history was the strike of the journeymen tailors and the lockout on February 15, 1900. There were 700 men in the union, and thirty-five or forty merchant tailors for whom they worked. ”

“ Failing to force concessions from the employers by the strike, work is resumed and “sabotage” is used to force the employers to concede the demands of the workers.
The great progress made in machine production results in an ever increasing army of unemployed. To counteract this the Industrial Workers of the World aims to establish the shorter work day, and to slow up the working pace, thus compelling the employment of more and more workers. ”

“ Stoppages of work are in their nature wasteful. Time, which might be employed in work yielding wages to the work-people and profits to the employers, is lost never to be recovered, while many forms of fixed capital deteriorate during idleness. In attempting, however, to estimate the utility or disadvantage of strikes and lock-outs, whether to the parties themselves or to the industrial community as a whole, it is insufficient to take into account the value of the wages and profits foregone during the stoppage, and to balance these against the gains made by one party or the other. ”

“ Now, last of all, what do we see at the Master Masons' headquarters? A united body of men with large interests at stake, and great responsibilities, who have not attempted to enforce a long and exhausting lockout for bringing their misguided employes to terms through poverty and distress, but calmly and deliberately leaving to us, the representatives of the sister building trades, the arbitrament of their own interests. The principles that they have adopted are those which we formulated, and they have agreed to the broad doctrine of freedom and justice. ”

“ These employers' associations offer every possible obstacle to the progress of the working class through labor organizations. Naumann has exaggerated their strength in the extracts quoted above. But the victorious progress of the unions is more restricted during recent years. They are everywhere being placed on the defensive. Ever more frequently and more effectively is the strike met with the lockout. The favorable periods in which successful battles may still be fought are more infrequent. ”

“ On Tuesday, June 28, the company ordered the armor-plate mill and the open-hearth department shut down, throwing 800 men out of employment.
This was the beginning of the lock-out, for a lock-out it was, and not a strike, as has been very generally represented.
A strike occurs when dissatisfied workingmen cease work of their own accord and refuse to return until the cause of dissatisfaction is removed.
A lock-out originates with the employing individual or corporation, and consists in the refusal to let the employees work until they come to terms with the employer. ”

“ On the very day after the Congress, the Moabit riots broke out, which sounded like the overture to an era of trouble. The labor unions, the great federations of workingmen, hitherto so measured in their movements and actions, now ostensibly incline to harsher tactics. And the militant organizations of the employers likewise confederated take the initiative and answer the threats of strike with the declarations of a lockout, throwing hundreds of thousands of men on the street and carrying the social struggle to a degree of exasperation it never before reached in Germany. ”

“ It is becoming the general practice of organized labor to buy no goods which do not bear the “union label”, which is a sticker or tag certifying that the merchandise was made by members of a union.
How the employer strikes back. Lockouts and Blacklists.—But if the worker has his weapons, so has the employer. When the employer believes the demands of his workmen to be excessive he can shut down the establishment and lock the workers out. Then, if he can find men and women to work for him on more favorable terms, he takes them into his employ and starts up again. ”

“ Think of the one comprehensive fact of the lock-out!
That year was a bad year, a year of world-wide economic disorganisation. Through their want of intelligent direction the great "Trust" of American ironmasters, a gang of energetic, narrow-minded furnace owners, had smelted far more iron than the whole world had any demand for. ”

“ During the year 1865 it seemed as if the lock-outs were about to become a feature of every large industry, the most notable instances being those of the Staffordshire ironworkers, to which we have already alluded, and the shipbuilding operatives on the Clyde. In both these cases large sections of the men were willing to work at the employers’ terms, but were either known to belong to a Union or suspected of contributing to the men on strike. But though this practice of “locking out” created great excitement among working men, it did not achieve the employers’ aim of breaking up the Unions. ”

“ I am directed to remind you that there is nothing unusual for workmen to cease work in defence of their interests as wage-earners, and that the specific reason for the decision in this case is to secure for the mineworkers the same right from the employers as is insisted upon by employers from workers, namely, that negotiations shall be conducted free from the atmosphere of strike or lock-out. ”

“ LABOR ORGANIZATION: A. D. 1908. "A Notable Labor Treaty." The Shipbuilding Agreement between Employers and Trade Unions to avert Strikes and Lockouts. In the early part of 1908 the woodworkers in the shipbuilding yards of the north of England went on strike against a reduction in wages, which was equivalent to one that the ironworkers in all the British shipyards and the woodworkers in the Scotch yards had accepted. The Federation of Shipbuilding Employers then notified a national lockout unless the strikers resumed work pending the adjustment of the dispute by conference. ”

“ Resolved, That we condemn the Builders' and Traders' exchange for their cowardly action in locking up the building materials and forcing a lockout, thereby paralyzing the business interests of this city, and causing loss and suffering among thousands of our citizens who are in no way responsible for the differences existing between our organization and the master masons, so-called. ”