Striking workers have made the collective decision to suspend their work for a period of time in order to achieve their goals, but locked-out workers exist in a kind of uncertainty. Without resorting to the reluctance of their work as an economic weapon, workers must play a game of waiting. They expect the company to decide that replacement and job insecurity are not economically feasible; they wait for the public to gather behind them and declare that it is wrong to lock down a worker; and they are waiting for the National Labour Relations Board (NLRB) to hopefully file a complaint claiming that the lockout is illegal. If you go to the picket line during a lockout, you can easily conclude that the impact on workers` rights is significant. The balance of power is already strongly focused on employers, and the right to refuse to work should belong exclusively to workers. Putting this power to stop work in the first place, to put it in the hands of the workers, is a step towards harmonising the conditions of competition in work. Another major change occurred under Reagan`s Labor Council in a case called Harter Equipment Inc., when the board changed its former position and maintained the use of temporary workers during an offensive lockout.34 The Labor Council, which sets labor policy and received considerable consideration from the courts, has now concluded that the lockout was a complete complement to the strike. The granting of substitute workers made the lockout a powerful economic weapon, as it allowed employers to engage in non-unionized work until workers gave in to all demands. As a result of this extension of the lockout and replacement indemnity, the NLRB filed relatively few complaints against the employers who initiated the lockout.
Requests under the Freedom of Information Act show that the NLRB filed only twenty-six complaints against employers from 2007 to 2014, while there were ninety-three lockouts during the same period. This means that the NLRB found that in only 28% of lockouts, there is sufficient evidence that the employer broke the law. Indeed, offensive and defensive lockouts – with the use of temporary replacement workers – were deemed authorized under the NLRA. Only if an employer combines the lockout with other anti-union activities will it violate the law.39 A lockout is a work stoppage or refusal of employment initiated by management during a labour dispute. [1] Unlike a strike where workers refuse to work, a lockout is initiated by employers or industry owners. Lockouts are usually implemented by simply refusing to admit employees to the company`s premises and may include replacing locks or hiring security personnel for the premises. Other implementations include a fine for showing up or a simple refusal to stamp on the clock. For these reasons, lockouts are called the antithesis of strikes. On the 31st. In May 2016, the NLRB issued an important decision limiting the employer`s use of replacement workers during a strike.44 The board found that the employer`s motivation is important in hiring replacement workers, and if the decision is made to discourage union membership, then the use of replacement strikers is a violation of the law. Ben Sachs, a Harvard law professor, argued that the decision brings “a bit of common sense” to the use of replacement strikers because he addressed longstanding tensions in the law where workers cannot be fired for strikes, but can be permanently replaced.45 It`s time for the NLRB to similarly bring some common sense to the use of lockouts.
and temporary replacement workers. One. An employer can only declare a lockout to force consent to a legitimate bargaining position. The perpetration of unfair labour practices, before or during the lockout, can make a lockout illegal. Q. What is the penalty for an illegal lockout? Two of the industries – manufacturing and utilities – that have experienced the highest number of lockouts have experienced significant growth since the Great Recession. Employment in public services has increased by 14% since 2012, bringing employment to its highest level since 2000. Similarly, manufacturing employment fell from a low of 13.2 million workers in 2010 to 14.5 million in 2015, an increase of nearly 10%. Despite this employment growth, the number of workers represented by unions in both industries has declined, with utilities down 6% since 2012 and manufacturing down 5% since 2010.17 However, some trade unionists see a positive side.
If workers have to take courageous steps to resist an abusive contract, triggering a lockout can put them in a better position than calling for a strike. Work stoppages are powerful tools, and this shift to lockout represents management`s capture of one of workers` most powerful economic weapons – another example of how the workplace is increasingly distorted in favor of employers. .