What does an umpire say when you miss the ball three times in a row? “Strike your out!”, but in this case a strike is a bit different, this particular type of strike is when a group of employees refuse to work until issues within the workplace are resolved, and although this rule exempts all public sector workers, like the teachers participating in the teachers’ strike in Chicago of September of 2012, public sector workers may still strike if conditions within a place of work are unbearable or if rules or policies are unjust. If other workers are allowed to strike why shouldn’t public sector workers have this privilege? Public sector workers should be allowed to strike. Firefighters put out fires and save people from aflame properties or crumbling buildings, police officers enforce the law and put the individuals who break the law in prison to help make the streets safer, teacher’s educate schoolhouse children of all ages and care and mold them into becoming well-rounded citizens ready to enter society and offer their skills, doctors, nurses, and hospital staff cure and treat the sick, one thing they all have in common is that they all serve the public and yet they are not allowed to strike when things within their place of work are not proper. …show more content…
According to New York School Bus Strike: Sign of National Pressure on Unions, “The New York City school bus strike is now on its third day pitting the union’s concerns over job security and bus safety against the city’s need to bring down bus costs that are the highest in the nation.” The bus strike is “another indication----along with the recent teacher strike in Chicago and the fights over union rights in Wisconsin and elsewhere----that unions nationwide are increasingly feeling “their backs area to the wall,” says Ed Ott, a distinguished lecturer in the labor studies, at the City University of New York’s Murphy Institute and the former head of the New York City Labor
Tensions between union supporters and management began mounting in the years preceding the strike. In April of 1994, the International Union led a three-week strike against major tracking companies in the freight hauling industry in attempts to stop management from creating $9 per hour part-time positions. This would only foreshadow battles to come between management and union. Later, in 1995, teamsters mounted an unprecedented national union campaign in attempts to defeat the labor-management “cooperation” scheme that UPS management tried to establish in order to weaken the union before contract talks (Witt, Wilson). This strike was distinguished from other strikes of recent years in that it was an offensive strike, not a defensive one. It was a struggle in which the union was prepared, fought over issues which it defined, and one which relied overwhelmingly on the efforts of the members themselves (http://www.igc.org/dbacon/Strikes/07ups.htm).
The paper will discuss minicases on ‘The White-Collar Union Organizer’ and ‘The Frustrated Labor Historians’ by Arthur A. Sloane and Fred Witney (2010), to understand the issues unions undergo in the marketplace. There is no predetermined statistical number reported of union memberships in this country. However, “the United Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) excludes almost 2 million U.S wages and salary employees, over half of whom are employed in the public sector, who are represented at their workplaces by a union but are not union members. Not being required to join a union as a condition of continued employment, these employees have for a variety of reasons chosen not to do so. Nor do the BLS estimates include union members who are currently unemployed” (Sloane & Witney, 2010, p.5). Given this important information, the examination of these minicases will provide answers to the problems unions face in organizational settings.
Labor’s rights, this issue have been bothering many worker since the 19th century and can still be a problem today. As John L. Lewis has said in his speech “I repeat that labor seeks peace and guarantees its own loyalty, but the voice of labor, insistent upon its rights, should not be annoying to the ears of justice or offensive to the conscience of the American people” (John L. Lewis), which under his words meant that labor is something that can be done right and peacefully but it needs rules and benefits that come with those rules which labor asks for and when labor asks for those rules and benefits it shouldn’t be taken like some annoying kid’s demands but more as something that needs to be done and done with a right mind set. Labor today consists of a man or woman going to work, working their hours, and finally getting paid for those hours at the end of the week, at least a minimum of $7.50 an hour (United States Department of Labor), but before it wasn’t like that before many workers would get paid very poorly even thought they would work for a lot of hours and they wouldn’t get benefits from their work or safety when working such as in the mines like the mine workers, but one man stood up for them and his name was John L. Lewis (John Llewellyn Lewis, Encyclopedia).
The Pullman Strike of 1894 was the first national strike in American history and it came about during a period of unrest with labor unions and controversy regarding the role of government in business.5 The strike officially started when employees organized and went to their supervisors to ask for a lowered rent and were refused.5 The strike had many different causes. For example, workers wanted higher wages and fewer working hours, but the companies would not give it to them; and the workers wanted better, more affordable living quarters, but the companies would not offer that to them either. These different causes created an interesting and controversial end to the Pullman strike. Because of this, questions were raised about the strike that are still important today. Was striking a proper means of getting what the workers wanted? Were there better means of petitioning their grievances? Was government intervention constitutional? All these questions were raised by the Pullman Strike.
... (Piven & Cloward, 18) Workers protest by striking against their employer, it is easier for employees to protest because they are all located and working together under one roof and are fighting for one thing, and that one thing is related to the workplace. While it is easier for employees to protest, it is not that easy for lower class employees to protest because they have little ability to protect themselves against their institutional managers. When the lower class workers have an informal organizational protest the government is eventually stepping in to disarm the protestors and make efforts to conciliate, “…mobs of unemployed were granted relief in the 1930s…” (Piven & Cloward, 29) The protests cause disruption and sometimes that disruption can make a change but when people are protesting blindly they are more prone to social injustice then making a change.
Throughout the history of the United States of America the continuation of misfortunes for the workforce has aggravated people to their apex, eventually leading to the development of labor unions.
against their employers, employees were able to go on strike and prove a point. Some
Wallerstein, M. & Western, B. 2000. Unions in Decline? What Has Changed and Why? Annual Review of Political Science. 3: 355-377.
...d knight of labor. When they are all fighting the workers are still in bad conditions and nothing gets done. In 1895, the Supreme Court declared that the government has power from the Constitution to remover obstruction from the highway (Document H). This really tells us that the government has all the power and can replace the strikers when they get in the way. Since the government is more powerful, they have more control over the activists outweighing them all. So, because the activists are busy fighting, the government can take over and so the poor are left where they are.
Beginning in the late 1700’s and growing rapidly even today, labor unions form the backbone for the American workforce and continue to fight for the common interests of workers around the country. As we look at the history of these unions, we see powerful individuals such as Terrence Powderly, Samuel Gompers, and Eugene Debs rise up as leaders in a newfound movement that protected the rights of the common worker and ensured better wages, more reasonable hours, and safer working conditions for those people (History). The rise of these labor unions also warranted new legislation that would protect against child labor in factories and give health benefits to workers who were either retired or injured, but everyone was not on board with the idea of foundations working to protect the interests of the common worker. Conflict with their industries lead to many strikes across the country in the coal, steel, and railroad industries, and several of these would ultimately end up leading to bloodshed. However, the existence of labor unions in the United States and their influence on their respective industries still resonates today, and many of our modern ideals that we have today carry over from what these labor unions fought for during through the Industrial Revolution.
Service (UPS). The strike was an attempt to increase their wages and secure benefits and
Teachers’ strikes seem to occur whenever satisfactions are not met in the contract. Whether it happened in recent times or many years ago, salary improvement has always been the number one issue. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) think that teacher’s salaries are lower than other workers in other private companies, the service, or some of the organizations. Government reduced the budget of the education through cutting down the salaries and dismissing a number of employees.
Since the 1990s the Supreme Court of India, bizarrely somersaulted the entire labor jurisprudence by introducing structural adjustment and disregarding workers rights. In T.K Rangarajan v. State of Tamil Nadu , in this per Incuriam decision the Supreme Court took away the right to strike from government employees, thus snatching the most powerful weapon of collective bargaining. Previously, labor jurisprudence of the Supreme Court was oriented towards protecting the rights of workers, and had held that right to collective bargaining is guaranteed to government employees. (Bangalore Water Supply v.
For Marx, lineated labor is, “exterior to the worker, that is, it does not belong to his essence. Therefore, he does not confirm himself in his work, he denies himself (…) no free physical and intellectual energy (…) his labor is therefore not voluntary but compulsory, forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need but only a means to satisfy needs outside itself” (2013a). The workers on strike do not have control over the service that they provide. They have to do what they have been told (ride a specific route and follow a schedule, depart from the indicated areas and stop at the indicated places) and do so repeatedly without questioning. They have been separated from their creative potential and have become a tool of the capital system. Some people can say that this job provides the money they need to satisfy their needs, but the truth is that they are not using their full potential. By doing this job, they are giving up his time to do the things that fulfill their life. Drivers do not need to travel to Philadelphia transporting people; it is all the way around. People need drivers to take them to their jobs, schools, etc. However, does society value this? My answer would be no. Workers do not receive a full reward for the work they do. In this system, it does not matter how fast workers do their job neither their attitude toward the riders. The only thing that matters is doing the job. In other
Unions have an extensive history of standing up for workers. They have advocated rights of steelworkers, coal miners, clothing factory employees, teachers, health care workers, and many others. The labor movement is based on the idea that organized workers as a group have more power than individuals would have on their own. The key purpose of any union is to negotiate contracts, making sure workers are respected and fairly compensated for their work. “In theory” unions are democratic organizations, resulting in varying inner authority. Workers look for security within a job a...