STRIKES ARE SELFISH IMMORALITY THAT SHOULD BE BANNED
Modern political ‘thought’ and certainly the political consensus in the West now accepts as a given that employees with relatively few exceptions have the right to collectively go on strike. This supposed right to strike is somehow held to be sacrosanct like a ‘sacred cow’ even when it is done by wealthy doctors in pursuit of even more money at the expense (both in health and usually in taxes) of the people they are supposedly dedicated and certainly employed to care for. This supposed right to strike has become totemic in the Western world. The actual reality of striking never seems to be properly, let alone well analysed.
Originally when people were hunter gatherers living in small groups, striking was so impractical as to be impossible. If people had gone ‘on strike’ and did not work, they would not eat and would then starve to death.
Anyhow, whatever its rights and wrongs, striking is a phenomenon that pretty much started as a result of the large workplaces The Industrial Revolution and industrialisation brought into being. An important change that industrialisation, beginning with The Industrial Revolution had brought was much greater interdependency between people. When most people were hunter-gatherers or worked on farms, people were largely self-reliant or at least not that much reliant on people beyond their family or at most beyond their small community for their sustenance. However industrialisation has now resulted in almost total interdependency by everybody on the work of others. Indeed there is not merely interdependence as to an extent existed before (within families) but a long chain of interdependence. In general a modern factory is dependent on not just one component part (as a baker would be on wheat or a weaver on cotton or wool) but on a great many component parts as well as on a power supply and shipping (or air) and land transport systems.
Of course some groups such as pensioners, students and the unemployed (including the disabled) cannot strike to better or attempt to better their lives or effect change. Unlike voting which is one person, one vote and therefore equitable, striking is extremely inequitable as between people. Even among those in work, the effect of striking ranges from the ‘impossible to do’ via the negligible and medium in impact to the extremely potent which is extremely damaging in collateral damage to society.
Strikes are not just disputes between employers and employees but cause harm, ranging from mere inconvenience to severe harm (or occasionally even death) as collateral damage to people who are not party to the dispute. Indeed in most cases in our interdependent modern societies most of the effect is upon third parties. For instance I remember decades ago a dispute in a British automobile factory. I think it was a toolmakers’ strike at Chrysler in 1978. Then 150 workers in a factory struck to get more pay, causing 8,000 other workers (53 times as many) to be laid off work, to say nothing of workers in support industries and all their families. That is simply immoral and unacceptable as ‘collateral damage’. People have no moral right and should have no legal right to pursue their own selfish pay or other claims in such a damaging way to others.
Though I say people should not have the right to be party to collective ‘strike action’ nor even threats of strikes, they do have very important rights as individual people. Since the abolition of slavery (and serfdom) working people do have the very important individual right to resign from their job and the potential to obtain alternative employment. If people don’t like their pay or working conditions and think they could or should do better, they have the important individual right to seek what they think of as better employment to better match their ability. If a person cannot find a better or better paying job for himself, it would suggest that grievances he might have about his pay or even working conditions are not that justified.
Upon analysis I find first that striking is only realistically available to employed (or in effect employed or quasi-employed) workers and then only for a smallish minority of them, located at the sharp end of key functions. It is only a small minority of workers, such as hospital doctors or electricity generation workers, that can realistically have a virtually immediate and seriously damaging impact on others. Second, inconveniencing or damaging or physically harming others, mainly third parties, is usually an element of striking, or at least effective striking. Third, striking is generally pursued for the sake of strikers’ own personal and selfish interests. Fourth, striking relies for its effectiveness upon our modern society having become very interdependent which has generally been to the great benefit of everybody in society but that has made society as a whole particularly vulnerable to the collective withdrawal of labour by key groups of workers. For instance those workers who can disrupt or shut off power (energy supplies) or other supplies may force industrial processes to grind to a halt through lack of essential supplies. Fifth, striking relies on ruthlessness, the ruthlessness of people to disrupt others, others not party to the dispute over which there is a strike. Sixth, strikes require a conspiracy, that is conspiracy among the people going on strike (as an individual protest or an individual withdrawal of labour is similar to what in effect occurs during a person’s sick leave or vacation leave and is not effective). Seventh, I have pointed out people have alternative individual rights (such as changing jobs) to individually improve or attempt to improve their lot in life.
Accordingly I conclude that it is essential for the interests of society in general that strikes are banned in some key sectors (over and above the sectors, usually state security sectors, such as police and armed forces, in which striking is already banned) because of the harm, sometimes extreme harm, striking can do to society in general. Furthermore I contend in moral terms that if striking as a technique should not be available to some people, it should in equity, particularly in a democratic society, not be available to anybody. Therefore striking should simply be banned for everybody. It often results after all in ‘human cruelty’. So just as (indeed more justifiably than) needless cruelty to animals, entailing making life difficult for pet animals (say by disrupting their food or withholding veterinary care) is banned, so too striking that makes life difficult for humans should also be banned.
So upon analysis ‘sacred cow’ though it may have become, I do not agree that there can legitimately be any right to conspire or organize with others to withdraw one’s labor or to strike. Least of all can there legitimately be any such right within any free market, democratically governed society. Accordingly the legality of the ‘sacred cow’ of striking is fundamentally mistaken and should be ended forthwith.
Geoffrey H L Berg – The Guru Of Rational Politics