Lockout

“ Here the Board has given no reasons, no rationale, to show how this closing violated the Act, except to say the closing was a bargaining lockout. A lockout is the refusal by an employer to furnish available work to his regular employees. It is apparent that the considerations which fault an employer for refusing to furnish available work are quite different from those which would prohibit him from laying off workers for whom there is no 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every employer who declares or causes a lockout contrary to these regulations is guilty of an offence and liable upon summary conviction to a fine of not more than five hundred dollars for each day or part of a day that the lockout exists. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is a very real prospect of staggering punitive damages accumulated through successive actions by parties injured by members who have succumbed to the emotion that frequently accompanies concerted activities during labor unrest. This threat could render even those activities protected by the Federal Act too risky to undertake. Must we assume that the employer who resorts to a lockout is also subject to a succession of punitive recoveries at the hands of his employees? ”

“ These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries, if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the President has received a report from a board of inquiry, he may direct the Attorney General to petition any district court of the United States having jurisdiction of the parties to enjoin such strike or lockout or its continuance, and if the court finds that a threatened or actual strike or lockout (1) affects an entire industry or a substantial part thereof engaged in trade, commerce, transportation, transmission, or engaged in the production of goods for commerce ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I think that the Board may assess the impact of a bargaining lockout on protected employee rights, without regard to motivation, and that the Court errs in failing to give due consideration to the Board's conclusions in this regard. ”

“ Given the finding that the closing was due to lack of work at the Chicago yard, it is no answer to say, as the Board does, that there was no reasonable basis to anticipate a strike and hence the closing was an offensive bargaining lockout. Whether there was a reasonable basis to fear a strike or not, the fact remains that the employer, and its customers, did fear a strike, and consequently there was no work for the employees. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ In the group-struggle over the division of the joint product, labor utilizes the union with its two great weapons, the strike and the boycott; while capital utilizes the trust and the association, the weapons of which are the black-list, the lockout, and the scab. The scab is by far the most formidable weapon of the three. He is the man who breaks strikes and causes all the trouble. ”

“ There’s a good guy.... Most of you fellers go around puttin words in a man’s mouth. Cant trust one of you. I’ll tell you one thing though the lockout is a wonderful thing for the contractors. Wont be no housebuildin with a war on anyway.” “It wont last more’n two weeks and I dont see what it has to do with us anyway.”
“But conditions’ll be affected all over the world.... Conditions.... Hello Joey what the hell do you want?”
“I’d like to talk to you private for a minute sir. There’s some big news....”
The bar emptied gradually. Jimmy Herf was still standing at the end against the wall. ”

“ Lockouts are not now as common as they used to be. Another weapon of the employer is the blacklist, which contains the names of workmen who have been prominent in fomenting labor troubles and who are, accordingly, regarded by the employers as undesirable. This list is circulated by the employers from one to another and no workman whose name is on it will be given employment. When a worker’s name goes in the blacklist it means that he has the greatest difficulty in finding employment in his own trade anywhere. ”

“ Indeed, the Court itself seems to recognize that there is a difference between locking out before a bargaining impasse has been reached and locking out after collective bargaining has been exhausted, for it limits its holding to lockouts in the latter type of situation without deciding the question of the legality of locking out before bargaining is exhausted. ”

“ This drives many over the uncertain line between lawful and unlawful conduct and they land in jail. There are more crimes committed in hard times than in good times. When wages are comparatively high and work is steady fewer men enter the extra-hazardous occupation of crime. Strikes, lockouts, panics and the like always leave their list of unfortunates in the prisons. Every lawyer engaged in criminal practice has noticed the large numbers of prosecutions and convictions for all sorts of offences that follow in the wake of strikes and lockouts. ”

“ Great strikes raged in all the industrial centers. At first the workers, having a fair field, got the best of it; but about July, the Kerensky Government coming more and more to the assistance of the employers, the tide of battle turned gradually in the latter's favor and they entered into a huge campaign of lockouts and sabotage, calculated to bring the industries to a standstill and to starve the workers into submission. ”

“ In support of this, take the attitude of employers toward strikes and lockouts, their most outbreaking and violent troubles. These are named in all of our contracts along with lightning, tornadoes, floods, and other "acts of God," if not directly, at least by inference It is plain enough, at any rate, that those who draw up the contract consider strikes and lockouts as wholly outside of their control, as they do the elements. It is the same old ignorance, the same desire to shift the blame. ”

“ To abolish strikes, then, is to take away the employees' chief means of offense or defense; while to pretend to abolish strikes and lockouts is to leave in the hands of the employers the ability to discharge or punish in other ways the men with whom they are dissatisfied. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ A strike or lock-out (as defined in section one of the Industrial Conciliation Act, 1937 (Act No. 36 of 1937) ) which follows upon a labour dispute for the settlement of which the proceedings prescribed by the said Act have been taken, and which is not in contravention of the provisions of the said Act, or the promotion of or participation in such a strike or lock-out, shall not for the purposes of paragraph (b) of the definition of “communism” be regarded as an unlawful act or omission or as the promotion of disturbance or disorder. ”

“ She stood facing the men, her arms resting on the palings that divided the gardens. 'It isn't their children that are dropping into their winding-sheets through want of food.'
'If I had my way, I'd hang every man who in this crisis is putting his hand to a stroke of work,' exclaimed Sam Shuck. 'Traitors! to turn and work for the masters after they had resorted to a lock-out! It was that lock-out floored us.'
'Of course it was,' assented Mrs. Quale, with marked complaisance. 'If the Union only had money coming in from the men, they'd hold out for ever. ”