The NFL Lockout would end in about 10 minutes if the NFL Players Association would refuse to take the field with scab refs. I think that might be a microcosim into not only Labor but our todays society. GoU and I recently had a conversation about this and crossing picket lines. While he said he never would, I said I wouldnt have a choice it would be deliver the load or get fired.
The NFL Players Association is only concerned about themselves not about other related Union Organizations. I think that we would find the same to be true to a certain degree in other private sector unions. As well in society, in my now almost 23 years of trucking never once has any labor organization attempted to organize a full truck load carrier. While at the same time LTL Union Carriers like Consoldated Freightways were bankrupted by their owners and the freight they used to haul been diverted to non-union subsidiaries. The exact same deal is now happening to Roadway-Yellow Freight. All this is going on as well as the death of other Union Shops while the Union leaders continue to spend 100's of millions of "donations" on the DNC and next to nothing on organizing non-union companies or saving current ones.
The AFL-CIO and Teamsters apparently have switched form an assiocation of oraganized labor to just another political organization. They fiddle, Rome Burns and you Union Guys blame Reagan. Go figure. In another 20 years there will be no more private sector unions, the teamster pension plan won't be able to make good on payments to their retirees and today when it is becoming obvious they need to make their last stand, they do nothing. Unions today are nothing like they were back when my dad was in the URW.
Sorry, glen, you don't understand. yes, we used to have things where if one group went on strike, ALL groups did in sympathy. However, one of the things that the National Labor Relations Act did was outlaw sympathy strikes. All union contracts have a "no strike/no lockout" agreement. During the life of the agreement, the union is forbidden to strike, and the company is forbidden to lock out the workers. The NFLPA negotiated a contract last year, so they can't strike, even in sympathy, until the contract expires. They have to play.
The NLRA was put into effect for a balance of power: The unions proved how powerful a sympathy strike and a
general strike could be. So, in return for legal recognition and forcing corporations to recognize and negotiate with unions, the unions gave up the weapon of general strikes.
However, in my way of thinking, since then, with the Taft-Hartley Act and other attacks upon unions since then, the corporations have taken away most of the legal rights of unions under the act. I am to the point that I think we should repeal the NLRA, and the unions can once again organize and strike across a city or a nation.
And glen, if the Teamsters TRIED to organize at your company, you would be one of the loudest voices against them. Sorry, I'm just not buying your bullshit.
GoU