I want to say something to other Union people

[ThomWV]

I was a Union member all of my working life. I never held a Union office, I just paid my dues and went to meetings. I went less than some but more than many. Somewhere back there there came a time when our Local was pretty much broke. I was a Government Employee, it was a Local of the American Federation of Government Employees, we worked in a Government owned facility. Management was not overly hostile but certainly was no friend of labor. Our Union Vice President (at that time, later to take the reigns) faced quite a challenge, getting another dime of dues out of Federal Employees. The VP talked to me a week or so before the meeting and told me what he was going to say and asked what I thought about it. I told him I'd get back to him but didn't until he gave his side of the story at the Union Meeting. So, he spoke and then I raised my hand and asked to be able to say something as well. No problem.

Here (in short version) is what I said to my fellow Union Members. 'Our Union has very little money in its account. The only way to solve that problem, if you think its a problem, is to raise our dues. But for us to keep up with inflation we are going to have to raise our dues so what we are really here to decide is by how much. We have all seen the expenses and know that there aren't any problems of extravagant spending, its just a matter of our dues not being sufficient for the Union to build up any sort of a fund. We are Government Employees and as such are bared from striking. And so if management is unresponsive to a legitimate demand what does that leave us? There is only one answer, that is that if we have a legitimate grievance with the management of this organization and no satisfactory solution can be found our only recourse is to take them to court. We do not have enough money in the Kitty to pay a decent Lawyer a full day's wages.'

From there I went on to (successfully) recommend that we voluntarily increase our dues by something like twice as much as our Union VP wanted. Today that is a strong local.

In today's environment a strike is about as useful to workers as 12th Century armor would be agains a modern US Infantry squad. The wealth of the overseers has become so great that the cost of a strike is an annoyance at most. There are industrialists who would sooner shut a plant down that respond to Union demands and everyone of us knows it. And so what is to be done? If you can not strike what do you have left. The answer today is just the same as it was in that Local meeting all those years ago. You must increase your war chests and take them to Court. Sue the wallets off of them, bring injunctions, stop them from stopping you.

As union membership as a percentage of the workforce hits new lows year after year the effectiveness of strikes becomes increasingly less. But even though our numbers grow smaller our ability to use the legal system remains a potentially effective tool in attaining demands. Even a small number of workers can sue big and win.

And that's my spiel for the day. Strikes are the flintlocks of the union's arsenal, for today's fight we need to step up to the nuclear option, the Law.

[mike_c]

1. my union has a strong legal representation team AND if we strike...

...it will still mean something. I belong to the California Faculty Assoc and if we strike, we'll shut down the largest University system in the world (at least I think it's still the largest). That will still have significant impacts that no deep pocketed management can overcome!

[Riley18]

2. In Florida only the teacher's union had enough money (in the millions)

to launch the lawsuits against the anti-worker bills recently passed here. Now the police unions and other FRS unions have joined in the lawsuits.

[bemildred]

3. Public support is essential to successful strikes.

Without that, you are better off with other methods, And I quite agree about using their own methods against them.

[Xicano]

4. The union I'm in (ILWU) has a strong strike fund and if we strike they will feel it plenty

The same goes if enough people strike in a nation wide general strike. Reason? Because their power relies upon not just how much wealth they own, but, equally if not more so it relies upon market stability. Lose stability and much of the wealth they own evaporates because the true wealth are the goods and services, not the paper used to facilitate the trading of these goods and services. And its we the 99% who produce those goods and services. So, what good is their paper wealth when production of the true wealth stops? You can't eat dollar bills. You can't wear a credit card. You can't drink a check book. You can't golf using a stock certificate. You can't sail on a bond note.

So, their power rests ultimately in OUR hands through our labor. Without enough of it they have no power. Take enough of it away from them and their power could evaporate away like Queen Mab at the end of the movie Merlin.