Original article, subtitled Lee Sustar looks at the court order banning an LA teachers' strike last week in the context of the long history of anti-union judges intervening in labor struggles, viaSocialist Worker (US):
THE JUDGE who barred a one-day strike by Los Angeles teachers May 15 cited student safety as a primary concern.
What? The kids would be safer at school than at home? I wonder how long it's actually been since that's been the case in many schools?
In reality, Los Angeles County Superior Judge James Chalfant was acting on behalf of powerful political forces that want to break United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA). And by issuing a restraining order against the union--including threats of fines that would bankrupt it--Chalfant was following in a long American tradition of using "injunction judges" and other government intervention against workers' democratic right to strike.
The reply, of course, should be that teachers should have their one day strike anyway. Teachers, as with all workers, have the right to unionize and the right to strike. A judge issuing an injunction is a bar to that fundamental right.
By the late 19th century, the anti-strike injunction was already commonplace, as U.S. workers struggled to organize militant and effective labor organizations. The great railroad workers' uprising of 1877, the bitter fight for the eight-hour day in the 1880s and the dramatic Pullman rail strike of 1894 were all met with state repression. Strikebreaking by state militias--the forerunners of today's National Guard--was commonplace.
It's interesting that, in a period of economic collapse, the bosses who helped force that collapse still want to keep the workers at bay. A national work stoppage, IE a national one-day strike by all workers, might shake things up enough that the judges, politicos and bosses would start paying attention to workers and giving said workers their due. It certainly would give the Obama administration pause.
Invariably, the justification for these crackdowns was that the strikers were lawbreakers. And if there was no law on the books specifically banning a job action, there was always a judge--local, state or federal--who was happy to issue a restraining order barring workers from walking out. This scenario was so commonplace that workers called it "government by injunction."
Read the rest of the article. Shustar gives a good historical look at the practice of using the judiciary to help try to break unions, which sometimes worked, but (more importantly) sometimes didn't. If striking workers are to be treated as lawbreakers just for using their right to strike, then it should be seen that they are thought to be potential lawbreakers, period. It will be interesting to see if the Obama administration follows this practice, as other Democratic (as well as Republican) Presidents have in the past. Shustar leaves us with this point:
What's significant about Judge Chalfant's injunction in Los Angeles is that it highlights the agenda of political and business interests in furthering corporate-friendly "school reform"--the expansion of quasi-private charter schools, mandatory testing for kids and the abolition of job security for teachers.
To achieve that aim, these powerful forces are willing to resort to "government by injunction" and every other anti-labor tactic at their disposal. UTLA--and labor unions everywhere--will have to challenge this latest assault on workers' rights.