We need more, not fewer, strikes

The corporate lawyers and judges have indeed worked remorselessly to limit unions’ ability to have workers organize and win.

I add that Australia’s former arbitration system and now Fair Work Australia has pro-management ideology designed to make unlawful the strike and impose penalties (see my blog).

Today union leaders do not risk defying judicial injunctions against strike activity because of the penalties.

But union leaders did so before - with some wins and some serious defeats depending on the contested conflict.

The details are instructive but the conclusion critical - rejecting the whole labour control system is necessary.

“Trade unionists need to envision a world where labour’s conception of striking prevails over that of management. Otherwise, labour can construct a solidarity grounded in weakness.”

Today with the power of giant US multi-national corporations unions not only have to develop the ability to take strike action locally and nationally but internationally.

International strike action is done but is limited to day protest stoppages or across some regions cross-border industrial action collective agreements. In response international labour solidarity has to challenge corporate power, and with the strike organized across countries.

Chapter 7 has a valuable articulation of the principles of labour rights.

“Labour must develop a working class perspective that establishes a set of principles that clearly justify the refusal to follow unjust and illegitimate restrictions on the right to strike. (p137) …it was labour’s agitation and the open and principled defiance of judicial orders, that won workers the right to strike and stop production.”

Unionists use other key principles to argue the case - such as

“labour is not a commodity”,