STRIKES ARE SELFISH IMMORALITY THAT SHOULD BE BANNED
A) THE RIGHT TO STRIKE – A NEW SACRED COW
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. The relatively few exceptions are mainly just some people who work in government security services (e.g. police, army. prison officers) to maintain the power of government. In the United States of America , in contrast to most other Western countries restrictions or bans on going on strike extends not just to security services but also to most public sector workers. Bans on strike action in Western countries seldom even include those who work to preserve the lives of ordinary citizens as doctors are employed to do. That right to strike is modified in some countries to the extent that striking is only permitted after strikers themselves agree or vote to do so. Of course those people who are affected and inconvenienced and even laid off from their own work as a result of somebody else’s strike have no say over whether the strike takes place even though it may drastically affect them.
This supposed right to strike is somehow held to be sacrosanct 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. It has become totemic in the Western world that a worker somehow has the right to withdraw his labour in conspiracy with others for work he has been contracted to do and when taking up his job he had agreed to do. The actual reality of striking never seems to be properly, let alone well analysed. A rare (albeit partial) exception to this was Calvin Coolidge (who later became American President) who had proclaimed in 1919, ‘There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time’. I suppose most people have seen themselves as workers rather than employers or even as collaterally affected workers, let alone in this respect as part of society as a whole. However as I am not one to just automatically accept the orthodox or consensus view I will analyse, indeed dissect, this ‘sacred cow’ with a proper analysis of this supposed right and its consequences and advocate an alternative view.
B) STRIKING IS A NEWISH ‘INDUSTRIAL’ PHENOMENON
Of course 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. The same applied in rural farming settlements and in general until factories superseded cottage industries which started to occur during The Industrial Revolution. Yes, there were armed revolts or rebellions and indeed resistance, including sometimes violence against money collectors (be it for tax, debt or the church). However just withdrawing one’s labour in collusion and jointly with others was practically unheard of and very seldom, if ever, done. So apart perhaps from a very few sporadic instances striking was unheard of and just not done until about two hundred years ago. Until then it was impractical and self-defeating as it was very much a case of not working meant not eating and then consequently not living.
Then many people began to work in large factories such as mills and other industrial outlets. Then as the economist Adam Smith (1723-1790) pointed out (in his famous pin production example in The Wealth Of Nations) factories might profitably break down their production process into component parts. Thereby every worker just repeatedly worked on one part of the production process within an assembly line. That could however have adverse social or psychological effects. It made the work more tedious and boring than if workers went through all the processes needed to produce the product. Indeed more recently some factories, albeit a minority, have moved away from assembly line production for worker motivation reasons.
Furthermore the factory method itself produced more contact and conversation between workers than in agriculture (which is often quite lonely work wherein workers are often well spaced out across fields) as well as several types of ‘alienation’. There was alienation from nature – the nature of open fields was replaced by relatively cramped factory conditions. There was alienation from the product as one can hardly feel as connected to the product one had worked on as one would with the cow one had just milked and tended. There was alienation from the business owner, as factories were large scale rather than small family businesses worked by or in large part by family members, although in truth even in farms there had commonly been much absentee ownership.
That alienation and closer connection with other workers was liable to provoke discontent, militancy and difficulties. When workers became so to speak a small cog within a large machine, as workers they became unlikely to understand or sympathise with the reality of the economics and value of the business in which they were employed. Anyhow industrialisation led to the organisation or attempted organisation by workers of labour in larger enterprises and frequent labour disputes and sporadic striking. (There has always even after industrialisation in general been less worker militancy and less striking in smaller workplaces where fewer workers worked. Smaller workplaces naturally result in less militancy and more empathy between workers, management and owners.) It is also worth noting that during this early period of industrialisation striking was not the only phenomenon that got going as a result of these changes.
At least in England the Luddites got going and their modus operandi (method of operation) was to smash and break the then modern machinery that was changing their way of life. That is no longer condoned in the modern world and Luddite destruction as a response to problems has not become a sacred cow. It is not even thought legitimate in the modern world. How is that when striking is just a more subtle form of protest but just as sectarian as Luddism, threatening not the machinery but the company with destruction and in doing so making customers and suppliers suffer and often causing joblessness for extraneous third parties?
Of course prior to The Industrial Revolution there could be violent protests but they seldom aimed to destroy or threaten the livelihood of the people (employers) who gave them (employees) a livelihood. Nor did they make their neighbours suffer as a consequence of any action they might be selfishly pursuing to further their own personal goals. Modern industrial militancy is surely a result of the dehumanisation and widespread reduction in empathy that living and working in massive groups may (but I don’t think inevitably) cause.
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.
C) THE INTERDEPENDENCY OF A TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED SOCIETY
The other important change that industrialisation beginning with The Industrial Revolution 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 much reliant on people beyond their family or at most beyond their small community for their sustenance. Admittedly even before The Industrial Revolution there were a small minority of people such as craftsmen, bakers and traders who were dependent on their particular craft or trade to obtain a livelihood from those who were their customers for their supplies. True, kings and courts, aristocrats, priests and monks were also dependent on others, often via taxes, for their livelihood, but they were a smallish, traditional burden on those others who worked productively. Such interdependency in pre-industrial societies was relatively small and anyhow most people lived in small communities where people each knew each other and relationships were usually very personal. Furthermore the previous dependency of priests, kings and courtiers was buttressed by both mystique and such long tradition as to make it seem the natural and inevitable order of things that was seldom questioned (even if sometimes resented).
However industrialisation has now resulted in almost total interdependency by everybody on the work of others. Indeed there is not merely interdependency as to a degree existed (within families) before 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 shipping (or air) and land transport systems. Think for instance of how many component parts (as well as fuel or electricity) go into the manufacture of an automobile in an automobile assembly factory. This is interdependence and indeed efficiency of a high order.
Due to the modern vast population and density of population and to the high degree of job specialisation, nearly all of us are now so economically interdependent that we are individually unable to feed ourselves. Nor can we even individually obtain the necessary water to keep us alive which in past ages used to be personally collected by people from rivers or wells. Most of us are materially far wealthier and indeed healthier as a result of interdependence but that interdependence because of industrialisation became almost total. Individually we for example just cannot attain the specialist knowledge, say of medicine that maximises the benefits in less pain, modern cures and longer lives in modern times. Nor can we individually get the detailed knowledge of engineering that produces not only airplanes but also deep freezes and television sets and mobile phones. Nor could we individually assemble the many component parts that go into the production or even assembly of modern automobiles or even television sets.
However this huge interdependence in the modern world on others to supply our many needs and wants also creates great vulnerabilities to some small minorities of people who have become able to disrupt or sabotage the system or at least much and critical parts of the system. For instance an automobile manufacturer is reliant upon the supply of a huge number of component parts, often sourced separately from numerous manufacturers and suppliers, not to mention transportation between locations. The automobile manufacturer and component suppliers become mutually interdependent, especially if any are monopoly or near-monopoly businesses. If the workers in one company go on strike, the workers in others who almost certainly have no say in that dispute may have to be laid off work and lose their pay due to disrupted trade with the strike hit (no longer producing nor using components) business. Such collaterally damaged businesses may lose a lot of money, maybe even sufficient, in lost money to put them out of business.
That in itself not only adversely affects the collaterally harmed workers but also their dependent families. Indeed if a strike is of any significant length of time, the collaterally affected workers may not be able to afford to pay for their home by way of rent or mortgage. So landlords and home finance lending companies who are very remote indeed from the originating employer-employee dispute may also along with their businesses be very badly affected by that strike.
This serious collateral damage to other workers principle applies whether the strike is in the main auto manufacturer or in one of its key suppliers. However this is not an example where the wider general public is that seriously affected because there are rival auto manufacturers (and indeed they could import autos) and anyhow most people could probably wait several months to get a new auto. However there are other labour disputes that could adversely affect many more people, even almost everybody. For instance if dock workers, or even worse the electricity supply workers were to go on strike it would very soon or even practically immediately affect almost everybody in that interdependent society.
Almost everybody (except a small minority who may work off emergency generators on site) is dependent on a continuous supply of electricity from an outside contractor for their livelihoods (be it in an office or especially in a factory) and for their homes. They need electricity for light and most especially for temperature control and indeed for preserving food, let alone for their television or computer entertainment. The relatively few people who work in electricity generation could almost instantaneously severely damage the lifestyles of practically everybody and even the lives of some (such as those who need to take refrigerated insulin to stay alive). A strike by a relatively few workers in electricity generation could almost instantaneously disrupt and damage the lifestyles and quality of life of practically everybody. True, a couple of centuries ago and for most of human history people lived without electricity but people’s lives have been hugely improved by the use of electricity.
So one should seriously consider the morality of the relatively few people in key jobs in key industries upon whom virtually the whole of society is interdependent using that disproportionate power to disrupt and damage everybody else within that modern interdependent society. It is an interdependence from which everybody, including the strikers, benefit enormously in numerous ways. Can it then be proper for anybody who is fortuitously in a key, potentially choking position in this mutually beneficial chain of interdependence conspire with the few others in that same fortuitously key position of vulnerability for the whole interdependent system to exploit the vulnerability in the system just for his own selfish, sectarian personal financial advantage?
One should also add that the vulnerability of society to some smallish groups putting a chokehold on interdependence with collateral damage to the lives and often livelihoods of numerous people not party to that dispute is greatly increased when there is a monopoly supplier. Such monopolies usually arise from ‘public ownership’ of the activity. Public sector ownership of a sector of the economy makes the problems of strikes much worse in at least two significant ways. First, remoteness between employer(s) and employees is a significant cause of unrest and strikes. Almost by definition public ownership (amalgamating previously competing businesses) leads to large, usually very large workforces and because it is industry wide it also leads to more easily unionised and organised workforces. Reflecting that, now that unionisation is less popular, and big factories have almost disappeared in Western countries, the majority of the unionised workforce tends to be in the public sector. The second significant factor that makes strikes far worse and more pernicious is ‘monopoly’.
Where there is no monopoly, customers can usually, at least in the end, find alternative suppliers (mitigating the effect of strikes). That is scarcely possible in the public sector which is almost necessarily in a monopoly position. Indeed lack of monopoly is a strong deterrent against workers acting unreasonably or going on strike in the first place. Without monopoly that particular interdependence is more temporary if somebody or some company is able to find alternative suppliers or even workers in non-monopoly industries. Furthermore, unlike with their monopolistic counterparts strikers are in danger not just of losing business for their company (resulting in fewer workers and less money to pay them) but of bankrupting their company and so depriving themselves of their income not just temporarily but permanently. That tends to be a sobering thought that acts as a deterrent to strike action. ‘Workers’ may not be concerned about the collateral damage they do to others but they are likely to be very concerned about the damage they could be inflicting upon themselves. However where there is an industry monopoly there will probably be little such deterrent and sobering up. Workers are then aware that in the absence of an alternative, customers will usually have to remain with them and employers will usually have to continue the employment of strikers after the eventual end of the strike with society in the form of taxpayers picking up all the financial bills for both the disruption and the settlement.
A substantial damage that monopoly (usually public) ownership does is that it often makes it impossible for collaterally affected parties, including the general public, to circumvent and so mitigate the effects of the strike. That combination of circumstances not only encourages and prolongs strike action but also hugely weakens the negotiating position of so called ’employers’ (more accurately ‘managers’) in the public sector to hold out against the strike ‘demands’ even very unreasonable ‘demands’ of the strikers. This is yet another reason for countries having a private, competition-driven, diverse economy rather than putting everything in any activity sector into the essentially monopolistic non-competitive public sector. The vulnerability of everybody to choke-holds from small groups of ‘workers’ within our general modern interdependence is inevitably much greater in the monopolistic public sector rather than within a much more diverse, mutually competing private sector. That is a big minus point for public sector ownership compared to private sector ownership.
D) STRIKES (OR THE STRIKE WEAPON) ARE INEQUITABLE
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 so 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 very damaging in collateral damage to society.
There are many types of workers for whom striking is impractical or impossible. Obviously it is impractical to strike if one is genuinely self employed as apart from there being no employer to strike against. If a self-employed person does not work he is liable to run out of money and ultimately starve, as in human hunter-gatherer days. There are also groups of workers who have agreed (perhaps for reasons of conscience) not to strike or are banned from striking. This group of people banned by law from striking comprises usually mainly the people employed by the state (whether nationally or locally) to enforce the will of the state by the use of force. It usually comprises police, armed forces and prison officers.
So the state at its very core supposes it must afford itself vital protection not afforded to employers nor the general public from the potent and disruptive effects of striking. That is not fair nor equitable! Somehow this shield from striking and its effects does not usually even extend to stopping health workers, even emergency health workers such as doctors and ambulance workers from striking-hardly reasonable! Ill people, not to mention businesses can be allowed to die but the state’s leaders think the state itself cannot be allowed to suffer paralysis nor die! Anyhow the state’s own security workers are not (unlike others) generally permitted to coerce or disrupt the state itself by withdrawal of their labour, a protection afforded to few outside the state sustenance operation.
There are also many, many groups who may go on strike but nobody would even notice the difference! So though such people are technically allowed to go on strike, many workers cannot do so effectively in terms of the general public and perhaps even in terms of their own employer. Entertainers are in this group as are many bureaucrats or indeed ‘regulatory personnel’ as of course are people employed by pressure groups or as are equality or diversity officials! Also in this group are people who can readily be replaced by contract workers. The general public can easily survive without these types, at least for a very long time. For instance the actors’ strike in Hollywood (in 2023) was of no consequence : people could watch repeats rather than new films or readily do something else!
Then there are other groups whose going on strike may be an inconvenience, even a considerable inconvenience to others but it is not devastating. For instance if teachers/educators go on strike, it inconveniences parents who have to look after their children (much as they do during school holidays) but a strike would have to drag on for years (which teachers cannot afford) before it seriously affected education. That is why teachers try to focus their strikes on examination disruption, as though that is selective against the interests of some innocent third party bystanding people (indeed the children whose welfare teachers are employed to further!), it is more seriously inconvenient. That is more serious, but probably still at a medium, certainly not at a near-instantaneous, very serious, level of impact. Strikes by binmen that allow waste to accumulate are likewise at a medium level of impact.
However other ‘workers’ are in a position to turn the threat, and even more the actuality of striking into massive disruption and maybe suffering, thus turning striking to further their own selfish ends into a very potent weapon. Medical doctors striking, especially immoral though that is, can paralyse health care and cause deaths. Dock workers can quite soon have a paralysing impact and those who work in factories may cause layoffs and misery to huge numbers of other workers. Indeed even small numbers of workers within a factory may bring the whole factory as well as those that supply it to a standstill with maybe huge numbers of workers laid off.
Those who work in electricity or even gas generation or water supply can very soon paralyse society. So there are a considerable minority of ‘workers’ (‘workers’ as distinct from penpushers or nowadays keyboard pushers) who, unlike most people, can cause massive disruption and suffering by going on strike. So they can in effect use (‘industrial’) blackmail to get what they want from the rest of society. Ironically it is those who are already quite well paid who are best placed to take prolonged strike action as worse paid workers are more liable to have to live from hand to mouth and so cannot afford to lose for a period what income they have by going on strike! Accordingly it has generally been the better paid workers who have been most liable (in attempts to get yet more above average pay) to go on strike. So automobile workers, dockers, train drivers, coalminers, and hospital doctors have historically been more liable than other workers to go on strike!
In any event striking is and always has been a tactic that is hugely inequitable in terms of its availability to people. It is not available to many; is of very minimal use to many others (such as entertainers, bureaucrats or lawyers!) is of limited use to others (such as teachers) but can be devastatingly potent and harmful if used by the small minority of people who work in pivotal productive jobs in society. That is systemically very unfair. That is in itself an overwhelming justification why such a potent, threatening weapon or practice that is inherently available only to a small minority of people in society if they are ruthless enough to use it, should be outlawed and so be available (far more equitably) to nobody!
E) STRIKES ARE NECESSARILY COLLECTIVE AND ENTAIL CONSPIRACY, CONSPIRACY TO HARM!
However essential one’s function may be to the working of the country or continuance of a business, it is beyond the ability of just one worker to go on a meaningful strike. The business would survive and others won’t be affected if one person alone withdraws his labour any more than if that one person goes on holiday or goes off sick. To have a chance of success it must be a withdrawal of labour by all or at least most of the people engaged in that same work. It must therefore be coordinated so that preferably (from the point of view of the strike) everybody or at least most people employed for that activity at that particular choke point for the business and its customers collude in the simultaneous withdrawal of their labour so as to further their own sectarian objectives.
That is conspiracy, indeed conspiracy to harm others. All strikes if they are to be effective must necessarily entail that element of coercion ( which even if such coordination is relatively informal and spontaneous) that amounts to conspiracy, a conspiracy that harms the interests of others, a kind of blackmail! The blackmail arises from what amounts to the ultimatum that until the employer gives us what we, relatively few people, want we will continue to make life difficult (or even impossible) for people by collectively stopping doing what we were employed to do. In other, more normal situations blackmail is of course a serious crime. I say in respect of conspiracy to sabotage a business or a country, such collective organised blackmail should also be a crime!
F) STRIKES ARE SELFISH OR UNDEMOCRATIC (INDEED ANTI-DEMOCRATIC)
People go on strike for one of two reasons. Mostly it is to improve their own personal working conditions, usually their pay. Just occasionally people have gone on strike in support of a political agenda.
With respect to the minority, indeed small minority, of strikes aimed primarily at furthering a political agenda, that has no legitimate place within any democratic society. Elections where all adults have the same one vote is the legitimate forum for determining political direction and policies and not ‘industrial might’ (which in terms of power is very unequal with many people such as pensioners absolutely excluded). The notion that some group may go on strike or even threaten strikes to change or attempt to change the policies of a government elected (on an equal one adult person, one vote basis) to govern the country and accountable to the country at the next election is not merely illegitimate but also profoundly anti-democratic.
The other and usual reason for striking, improvement of one’s own working conditions (usually pay) is profoundly selfish, indeed immensely selfish. One could hardly be more selfish than to make others not involved in the trade dispute causing the strike, suffer anything from inconvenience to loss of one’s livelihood or even sometimes life so as to improve one’s own pay or working conditions. That is unacceptable selfishness by any group of self-interested partisans doing it. That is morally illegitimate, especially when (as I will outline) there are other alternatives available or potentially available to such discontented people. So striking should be legally illegitimate and banned. One’s selfishness is not a legitimate motive nor reason for causing damage to others nor for making others suffer. That surely is elementary ethics. One cannot even make one’s animal (such as a horse or a greyhound) suffer so that one wins prize money for getting it to run faster – so why should it be legitimate to make other humans suffer so as to improve one’s own working conditions or pay?
G) STRIKES HARM THIRD PARTIES
As I have emphasised 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 a dispute decades ago 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. Indeed it is usually impossible in the modern world to pursue strike action in our interdependent society without collateral damage to others, be they suppliers or customers. So such courses of action as strikes (which only a minority of people in a limited range of jobs could employ very effectively anyhow) should be prohibited.
H) THE ALTERNATIVE RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUALS
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. (This should often be possible in the private sector where there is competition but could be more difficult in monopoly public sector employment.
This is yet another reason why the private sector better serves people and the general public than does the public sector.) If a person cannot find a better or a better paying job for himself, it would suggest that grievances he might have about his pay or even working conditions are not that justified. What people should not have the right to do is conspire with other workers to choke or, in plain words, sabotage their workplace and damage other people’s employment or interests so as to further their own selfish personal interests.
So far as political strikes are concerned, in democracies all adults have the right both to vote and also to lobby politicians and others. Those are rights common to everybody. What people should not have the right to do in a democracy is to act in a damaging, disruptive way only available to a minority of even employed people (that is striking with real impact) so as to coerce changes. To coerce changes through ‘industrial action’ entails the upsetting of a democratic mandate received from the votes of the people as a whole in an election. That is not just undemocratic but anti-democratic.
So people do have individual rights to pursue their own interests, even selfish interests, by legitimate means. They should not have any collective rights to do so, least of all by sabotaging or attempting to sabotage the modern system of human interdependence through which we all now live and all benefit immensely in improving the comfort and quality of our lives.
I) THE IMMORALITY OF STRIKES
We have come through job specialisation to live in an interdependent economy and society. Job specialisation enables people to cease to be ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ and better enables people to become a real specialist and ‘a master of one trade’. That transformationally has made many people more productive and more able to gather and work with advanced technology and learn advanced specialisation. From that both society as a whole and almost every individual person within modern societies has become able to live longer, freer and more comfortable lives. However it breaks the anthropological direct
link between one’s work and physical survival, as was prevalent in hunter-gatherer and predominantly agricultural societies. It means most people now survive through some other people’s work (though not bureaucrats’ nor penpushers’ work!). It also makes the system and thereby society in general vulnerable to disruption or sabotage by a relatively few organised and conspiring people working at critical parts (choke-points) such as electricity supply or raw materials assembly within our modern interdependent economic system.
It is anyhow unethical (anti-ethical) for those relative few people employed at critical points in our modern interdependent system to exploit their power, disproportionate power, to disrupt (for their own usually selfish purposes) the modern system from which we all, including themselves benefit immensely. Furthermore such power only results from those employed in such (chokehold) jobs being both sufficiently ruthless and sufficiently conspiratorial to exploit it.
J) WHAT APPLIES TO ONE SHOULD APPLY TO ALL IN ETHICS
My next moralistic point is that some people (actually most people) cannot effectively strike and some people, mainly because they underpin the ability of government to use force to maintain itself (against lawlessness or even foreign aggression) cannot legally strike. If some people, many people cannot use the ruthless weapon of a strike that harms others, then nobody can morally use that weapon or disruption of striking. If, as American President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed (and I agree), ‘There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time’, then there is surely no right to strike nor disrupt against anybody’s interests. (Such disruptions would anyhow but for exemptions, I say unjustified exemptions, for strikers, be a ‘tort’ for which damages would be possible in conventional law anyhow.) I advocate this moral precept which is based on the concepts of ‘the public interest’ and ‘one law for all’.
In general (with limited exceptions based on exceptional circumstances in other spheres) what is legal for some adults should be legal for all adults and what is illegal for some adults should in principle be illegal for all adults. One should not have a morality based on the blurred and indefinite concept of whom the harm is to (whether it be the vague, and in borderline cases blurred, concept of ‘public safety’ or whether it be significant harm, disruption or inconvenience to the public at large).
So if striking is an illegal act for some, in moral terms it should be illegal for all.
I submit that morality so far as it concerns striking should be expressed and enforced in actual law by making all strikes (collectively engaged in) illegal in law and punishable, punishable sufficiently so as to deter, and stop strikes by law.
K) CONCLUSION
The ‘right to withdraw one’s labour’, both individually (which is usually ineffective and self-harming) and collectively in recent times has come to be considered as a basic human right (irrespective of any contractual obligations one may have entered into relating to one’s job). A right to strike has become something akin to a ‘sacred cow’. I have rather innovatively here done some proper analysis relating to this.
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 upon others. Second, inconveniencing or damaging or physically harming others, mainly third parties, is usually an essential element of 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 a conspiracy among people going on strike (as an individual protest or an individual withdrawal of labour is not effective). Seventh, I have found 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 usually state security related sectors in which striking is already generally 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 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 there can legitimately be any right to conspire or organise with others to withdraw one’s labour or to strike. Least of all can there legitimately be any such right within any free market, democratically governed society. Accordingly the ‘sacred cow’ status of striking is fundamentally mistaken and should be ended forthwith.
Geoffrey H L Berg