Right to strike

“ The right of labor combination? It is tempered by the power of your class to subdue the workers leaders by starvation through dismissal.
The right to strike? The witnesses whom you have heard, witnesses from own class in many cases, come to tell you how strikers, even inoffensive strikers, are sabred and horsewhipped, and how, after strikes, even victorious ones, the powerful employers thin out the ringleaders in order to terrify the rest. ”

“ I regret that there are some labor leaders who insist upon resorting to strikes as the proper and best means of obtaining recognition of labor rights. Where, as in the Philippines today, the Government is earnestly endeavoring to help labor in its just claims, strikes are unnecessary and unjustified. Although the right to strike is recognized by law, strikes are, by their nature, a form of coercion, and once coercion is used by one party in, a conflict, it pro­vokes retaliation by the other party. Hence, strikes often result in physical violence, sabotage, and public disorder. ”

“ And as no force, even a revolutionary one, can hold out against the public opinion of the whole of the nation, the working class will suffer a widespread defeat.
Finally, I say that if the general strike is conceived and comes before the public, not in the form of a wider and more perfectly organised exercise of the legal right to strike, but as the forerunner of a movement of revolutionary violence, it will at once set up a reactionary movement of fear which the more intelligent fraction of the proletariat will not be able to resist. ”

“ Their first affirmative defense was that the waiver of the right to strike, expressed by their employees in their collective-bargaining contract, applied to strikes not only for economic benefits but to any and all strikes by such employees, including strikes directed solely against unfair labor practices of the employer. ”

“ Yet the whole problem is far from being settled, because it is not easy to define the rights, privileges, and duties of organized labor. Some things we know, and one is that the right to strike does not carry with it the right to destroy, or the right to organize the right to oppress others. ”

“ And it may subject to punishment him who uses the power or influence incident to his office in a union to order the strike. Neither the common law, nor the Fourteenth Amendment, confers the absolute right to strike. ”

“ In any event, congressional imposition of certain restrictions on petitioners' right to strike, far from supporting the Wisconsin Act, shows that Congress has closed to state regulation the field of peaceful strikes in industries affecting commerce. ”

“ While it may be argued that the State may intervene in such a manner as to substitute the protection of justice for the right of strike and lockout, the belief in the right to strike has become imbedded in the minds of the laboring community of the world to an extent that it will not receive with confidence any alternative in driving its own bargains. ”

“ Moreover, adoption of this presumption would disrupt the balance of competing economic weapons long established in strike situations and substantially impair the employees' right to strike by adding to the risk of replacement the risk of loss of the bargaining representative as soon as replacements equal in number to the strikers are willing to cross the picket line. ”

“ On the other hand, it was felt that the most calmly planned strikes can lead to embitterment and violence, and the tyrannical and murderous suppression of the non-union working-man. And here the American sense of freedom is touched. Every man has the right to decide freely under what conditions he shall work; the strike-breaker was regarded as a hero, and the trusts did their best to convince the world that the interference of the trades-unions in the movements of non-union workmen is a menace to American democracy. ”

“ I suppose men have a right to quit work whenever they want to; but they haven’t a right to try to win a strike with brickbats and torches.”
“If workmen were fairly treated, and given their due proportion of the product of their labor, there would be no strikes, and no brickbats, and no torches. Anyway, the idea of workers being awed or shot or bayoneted by the militia into submission to their capitalist employers’ terms, is so abhorrent to me that I don’t want to think of it.” ”

“ In strike settlements it is necessary to guard against the right danger of grossly over-estimating the employers' strength and consequently of weakly abandoning the struggle, and also against the ultra-leftist danger of over-estimating the workers' forces and thus leading them into hopeless struggle when much could be saved by a settlement. ”

“ We do not deny the right of labor to strike, but we gainsay the right of labor performing indispensable and immediate public service to strike in a body and without notice, and we believe that there should be stringent legislation in the interest of the public to prevent such acts. ”

“ But it is unfortunately common for those who strike to endeavour to persuade or even frighten workmen from coming to take their places. This is as much as to claim a right to the trade of a particular place, which no law and no principle gives to them. A strike is only proper and legal as long as it is entirely voluntary on the part of all concerned in refusing to work. When a striker begins to threaten or in any way prevent other people from working as they like, he commits a crime, by interfering with their proper liberty, and at the same time injuring the public. ”

“ He may combine with others to enforce this right and form a union with his fellow-workers to exert the adequate moral power to maintain it or better his condition within the limit of justice.
The worker in the last resort has the right to refuse to work, that is, to strike, and to induce by peaceful and lawful measures others to strike with him. ”

“ It is utterly rejected in practice, if not in so many words, in almost every case of strike. In one way or another the strikers prevent others from exercising that right to work and to employ, or attempt to do so, thus assuming for themselves superior rights and despotic powers. ”

“ It is the absolute, unqualified right of every employee, as well as of every other person, to go about his legal business unmolested and unobstructed 1010and free from intimidation, force, or duress. The right of a labor association to strike is no higher than the right of a non-union workman to take employment in place of the strikers. ”

“ There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time. ”

“ The common means are work stoppage, persuasion of other workers to keep the work stopped until the demands are met, and picketing in a peaceful manner. Sabotage and violence against an employer’s person or property constitute unjust means. “Scabs,” or professional strike-breakers, may be prevented from depriving the workers of their jobs to which the workers keep their rights; but violence in defense of this right seems illicit, unless violence is begun by the strike-breakers and the workers are forced to defend themselves. ”

“ They contain statements of the legal rights of labor organizations in strikes, stated so clearly that the decisions have been cited time and again in subsequent litigation by labor organizations themselves as precedents in their favor. They affirm unequivocally the right of labor organizations to strike to better the condition of their members, and the right to use peaceable persuasion to prevent other employees from taking the place of strikers, a right which in some jurisdictions, particularly Pennsylvania, has been denied. ”

“ The right to combine for such a lawful purpose has in many years not been denied by any court. The strike became a lawful instrument in a lawful economic struggle or competition between employer and employees as to the share or division between them of the joint product of labor and capital.'↑ 'We do not agree with Respondent's contention that the Union in its strike settlement agreement of July 17 waived all rights for these employees. ”

“ Section 7 grants employees the federal right to engage in concerted activities in furtherance of collective bargaining. A strike accompanied by peaceful picketing is a typical expression of such authorized concerted activity. Instances of special situations that are clearly outside of this protection are (1) where the aspect that the strike action takes constitutes a union unfair labor practice interdicted by the Taft-Hartley Act, or (2) where the strike is in violation of the federal criminal law. ”

“ A. That was when we heard of the ten per cent. reduction.
Q. Had you any grievances before?
A. No.
By Mr. Lindsey:
Q. It was arranged then by your union that you would strike in case of a reduction?
A. That was what we organized for.
Q. Do you claim the right at all times to strike as a body? Do you claim that it is one of the rights that you have?
A. I claim that every free born American citizen, if necessary, has the right to quit work if he wants to. That is what I call striking—quitting work.
Q. Doing anything more?
A. We have no right to destroy property. ”

“ The degree to which the employers use this great instrument of legalized violence against the workers depends upon the urgency of their need.
If the strike is a small one they may confine their violence to the thuggery of their private plug-uglies and local police. If the strike is more important they will call in the courts, with their train of injunctions, jails, and the rest of it. And if the strike is a great one of far-reaching political significance they will use the troops if need be to crush it. Ever and always when they need it they use the state against the workers. ”

“ Usually the leaders of the unions are conservative and deprecate violence. But a strike by its very nature offers an opportunity to the lawless. The destruction of property and the coercion of workmen have been so prevalent in the past that, in the public mind, violence has become universally associated with strikes. Judge Jenkins, of the United States Circuit Court, declared, in a leading case, that “a strike without violence would equal the representation of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet omitted.” ”

“ And that is why I have always interpreted a general strike not as a means of violent action, but as one of the most gigantic means of legal pressure that the educated and organised proletariat can bring to bear for great and definite ends. ”

“ It would outlaw threats against employees. It would not outlaw anybody striking who wanted to strike. It would not prevent anyone using the strike in a legitimate way, conducting peaceful picketing, or employing persuasion. All it would do would be to outlaw such restraint and coercion as would prevent people from going to work if they wished to go to work.' Ibid. ”

“ They feel under existing conditions that the power to strike is their only weapon of defense against employers and the only means by which they can enforce a betterment of their conditions of service. ”

“ In order to defeat the workers of a branch or a factory, the united employers do not hesitate to lock out innocent working men, in order to force the strikers to go back to work, and in this manner destroy their organisation. ”

“ Consequently the proletariat, in declaring a general strike, would know that it was within its legal rights, and would go into the movement in the strength of that knowledge. Many workmen who would have been shocked at the premeditated use of force and at deliberate revolutionary action, would not hesitate to show their irritation with social injustice by a movement which would be a menace, but would not put them outside the bounds of law in the very beginning and before their blood was up. ”

“ Nevertheless a strike ought to be avoided by every means within the power of every man, capitalist, laborer, or the neutral citizen, and he who would not give his best efforts and thought to prevent a strike is scarcely doing justice to his fellow-men, nor is he loyal to the institutions under which we live. ”

“ The General Strike is a Utopia. It will never be possible to so thoroughly organise the proletariat that all working men will go on strike like one man; and if it were so well educated, and imbued with solidarity, and so well organised as to be able to declare a General Strike, then it would not need any General Strike; then it is the power in the country ”

“ This course brings us into violent conflict with the conservative trade union bureaucracy, who refuse to recognize the growing political character of strikes, and to arm the workers with the necessary consciousness and political organizations for the struggle. ”

“ Some imagine, it is true, that the general strike, breaking out at many points simultaneously, would oblige the capitalist and proprietary government to spread its armed force over such a large area that it would be practically absorbed by the Revolution. ”

“ These reformists, who are opposed on principle to directly attacking capitalism, have always rejected such a drastic weapon as the general strike and are only too eager to seize the slightest pretext to discredit it. In reality, the general strike is one of the most powerful of the workers’ weapons. ”

“ That power is particularly vital when the members engage in strikes. The economic strike against the employer is the ultimate weapon in labor's arsenal for achieving agreement upon its terms, and ' (t) he power to fine or expel strikebreakers is essential if the union is to be an effective bargaining agent * * *.' [8] Provisions in union constitutions and bylaws for fines and expulsion of recalcitrants, including strikebreakers, are therefore common-place and were commonplace at the time of the Taft-Hartley amendments. ”