I was thinking about strikes this morning because a local teacher union wants to strike to get better pay for teachers among other things. Unfortunately in the state of Mass strikes of this sort aren’t legal. There are a variety of problems with strikes in general though.
The first problem is that the people who need to strike are often underpaid and can’t afford to go on strike. The second problem is that in an at will state employee can be easily fired. The third problem is scabs. Strikes are often ineffective because other non-union people are willing to step in and work during the strike. The fourth problem is that the government often steps in and sides with the big money conglomerates like we saw in the rail road strike. Making striking illegal is a great deterrent to dissuade the working poor. So strikes are bad for workers.
I started thinking about the game stop phenomena and the rail road strike and think I figured out what would be more effective. Instead of having workers strike we boycott in support of the workers. Basically we would support eachother and boycott one industry at a time until demands of the employees are met. This way employees can’t get punished.
So in the case of the rail road workers, we would just stop taking the train. This would be effective even if 100% don’t follow the boycott as if enough of us do it the pendulum will drastically swing in favor of the workers because the rail road would lose massive amounts of revenue. Much like we did with game stop we would have to work together to find and use alternative means of travel for awhile.
If it is effective we can move on to a different industry. It shouldn’t take very long before companies decide it’s in their best interest to avoid a boy cott.