One New York public employee union —the New York State Nurses Association—is advocating for the abolition of the Taylor Law's no-strike rule. Other unions recognize that labor needs offensive weapons. Yet most are ambivalent or opposed.
“If collective bargaining is undermined in Canada, and the right to strike is part of their collective bargaining rights, our collective bargaining rights are also under attack in the United States”
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Red state workers are ahead of union leaders and Democrats in understanding that the right to strike is essential for workers.
For half a century, the loss of the right to strike has moved in lock step with the increase in income inequality. According to an International Monetary Fund study of twenty advanced economies, union decline accounted for about half of the increase in net income inequality from 1980 to 2012.
The following is the start of a Boston Review discussion on US workers' right to strike.
The decision is extremely important. Especially since the 1981 PATCO air traffic controllers strike – when President Ronald Reagan fired all the controllers, who struck over safety issues, and permanently replaced them – employers routinely fire striking workers and bring in “permanent replacements,” or threaten to, sometimes even before a strike begins.
"Right-to-work" is coming to the public sector. The key to survival is social movement unionism.
People have intrinsic rights that democratically elected legislatures sometimes violate. The right of working people to combine, to organise, is one of them
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