Unions Without StrikesWhat power do unions have when right wing courts are against us? When the NLRB has ceased to function? When the government disregards our contracts, fires our members, and declares our painstakingly won rights to be nonexistent? We have the power of the strike. That is the one power that no president or court or employer can ever take away. Workers do the work, and they can stop doing the work. Everything the labor movement has built flows from that truth. The power of the contracts and the laws and the agencies that are supposed to protect us are all, ultimately, contingent on the fundamental power of the strike. We are finding out the hard way that unions that cannot or will not strike are exceedingly easy to disregard.
This is true, and yet I’m not optimistic that strikes are going to come back.