AFSCME Information Highway

Source: John A. Taylor, Labor Law Journal, Vol. 59 no. 2, Summer 2008

...In reality, the strike, dubbed by some as "the strike to end all newspaper strikes" was doomed from the moment the unions, without adequate planning and preparation, launched their ill-fated walk out.

The unions' lack of preparedness stands in sharp contrast to the extensive planning and preparation the employers engaged in for at least three years leading up to the strike. So extensive were the employers' strike plans that even such details as researching "ways to fill vending machines and get hot meals for round-the-clock workers in case of a walkout" were carefully thought out...

Posted by Info Center at 2:45 PM in Labor Unions | Strikes | Permalink

Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, USDL 08-0202, February 13, 2008

Major work stoppages idled 189,000 workers for 1.3 million workdays in 2007, the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. In 2007, the largest major work stoppage in total days idle was between the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and the Writers Guild of America East and West, with 10,500 workers accounting for 409,500 lost workdays. The largest work stoppage in number of workers was between General Motors Corporation and the United Auto Workers, with 74,000 General Motors workers involved in the two day work stoppage.
Includes:
▪ Work stoppages involving 1,000 or more workers beginning in 2007
▪ Work stoppages involving 1,000 or more workers, 1947-2007

Posted by Info Center at 10:35 AM in Strikes | Permalink

Source: United American Nurses, Press Release, November 13th 2007

Beckley, WV - The nearly 700 striking nurses at Appalachian Regional Health Care (ARH), represented by the Kentucky and West Virginia Nurses Associations/United American Nurses, AFL-CIO, are speaking out to call public attention to the underhanded and violent tactics exhibited against them by the hospital during their strike, which began Oct. 1. ARH has escalated its intimidation of striking nurses from hired security guards on the picket lines who routinely harass nurses to video surveillance of striking nurses to, it now appears, orchestrating the burning of the car of one of the union staff on hand to assist the nurses.

Related article:
Nurses' Strike Drags on in Appalachia
Associated Press, November 16, 2007

Posted by Info Center at 12:15 PM in Health Care Workers | Strikes | Permalink

Source: Eileen Prendiville and Mischa Gaus, Labor Notes, #344, November 2007

Leading a strike that one hospital administrator said cost her $1 million a day, 5,000 registered nurses at 10 Northern California hospitals in the Sutter Health chain walked off their jobs for two days in mid-October. Five facilities locked out striking nurses for an additional one to three days when the strike, the largest among nurses in a decade, was over.

Posted by Info Center at 4:24 PM in Health Care Workers | Strikes | Permalink

Source: Melanie Evans, Modern Healthcare, Vol. 37 no. 41, October 15, 2007
(subscription required)

One of healthcare's biggest nurses unions squared off against more than a dozen California hospitals last week, the latest example of labor's push to exercise its clout across the healthcare industry.

Posted by Info Center at 11:18 AM in Health Care Workers | Strikes | Permalink

Source: Jennifer L. Worley, Labor Studies Journal, Vol. 32 no. 1, March 2007
(subscription required)

This article analyzes the 1985 Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel strike and places it in the context of the declining American steel industry and deteriorating relationship between the steel companies and the United Steelworkers of America. Within the hostile 1980s economic and political climate, steelworkers at Wheeling-Pitt unleashed a repertoire of bargaining tactics that would help them achieve at least some of their demands while preventing the company's liquidation. Besides exploring the reasons why steelworkers struck a bankrupt company and how they secured their demands, the article demonstrates how the strike offered new strategies for negotiating with capital at a time when unions' options were severely limited.

Posted by Info Center at 4:52 PM in Collective Bargaining | Labor History | Strikes | Permalink

Source: Lance Compa, Perspectives on Work, Summer 2006, Volume 10, no. 1

United States labor law on workers’ right to strike meets international human rights standards—up to a point. The law does not ban strikes in the private sector. Unlike many countries that nominally allow strikes but create onerous procedural obstacles (Mexico is a prime example), the United States, aside from modest notice requirements, lets workers decide to strike. In a handful of states, public-sector workers can strike.

So far, so good. But beyond this point, U.S. labor law and practice deviate from international standards. In the public sector, most strikes are prohibited even with no threat to public health or safety (the main proviso developed by the International Labor Organization). In the private sector, employers’ power to permanently replace workers who exercise the right to strike effectively nullifies that right.

Posted by Info Center at 4:22 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Strikes | Permalink

Source: Joseph A. McCartin, Perspectives on Work, Summer 2006, Volume 10, no. 1

August 3, 2006, marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of an event that many in organized labor would prefer to forget. On that date in 1981, more than 12,000 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) walked off their jobs with the Federal Aviation Administration. When 11,325 of them refused to heed a back-to-work order issued by President Ronald Reagan and end their illegal walkout within forty-eight hours, they were discharged and permanently replaced.

In the immediate aftermath of the PATCO strike, many commentators predicted it would mark a turning point in the history of U.S. labor relations. A quarter century later, the strike’s importance is even easier to grasp. Just as the infamous Homestead strike set the tone for labor-capital conflict at the end of the nineteenth century, the PATCO strike helped establish the pattern for labor relations in the late twentieth century. Since that ill-fated walkout, organized labor has been in a state of continuous decline.

Posted by Info Center at 4:03 PM in Labor History | Strikes | Permalink