Stop Me Before I Vote Again

elements of the legal super structure of repression

"...during this period of relative harmony, the judicial and political systems were ... entrapping the unions in a.. web of repressive measures that collectively make up what Burns calls “the system of labor control.” "

"The system, which developed gradually from the late 1930s through the 1960s, functions as an organic whole. No one piece destroyed the strike on its own; rather, each element carefully reinforces all the others."

One of the system’s remarkable aspects is how juridically unorthodox it often is:... many court decisions clearly contradict the stated text of the National Labor Relations Act. "

"...a few details :

• the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, explicitly made solidarity a crime by outlawing the secondary strike — the crucial technique of striking or picketing in support of workers at another firm. In one blow, the production-halting potential of strikes was drastically curtailed. Tellingly, under current law, peacefully standing outside a toy store handing out fliers urging a boycott is considered protected speech if done by a college anti-sweatshop activist; but it is an illegal act subject to fines and arrest if done by a union worker employed in a striking shop."

• ...freedom of contract was swept aside in the 1959 Landrum-Griffin Act, which declared null and void voluntary agreements between an employer and a union exempting the workers from handling “hot cargo” — that is, products made in struck shops.

•... a series of court decisions have ruled on the “intermittent strike.” This is a particularly effective technique in which workers strike for only an hour or two without physically leaving their jobs, making orderly management practically impossible while leaving workers largely invulnerable to replacement by scab labor
....the intermittent strike has been ruled to be an unprotected strike act and therefore punishable by firing....the finding ... clearly runs counter to the literal text of the National Labor Relations Act .... "

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for you anti state direct action types
note this goal :

push "the state " back

back out of "shop floor struggles "
at least as far back
as the "intent " of the wagner act
pushed it

worthy of separate consideration

"the Supreme Court’s 1938 decision in NLRB vs. Mackay Radio"

gives "... employers the right to permanently replace striking workers."

"... the “Mackay doctrine” discovered a previously unknown distinction between “discharging” striking workers – which the court acknowledged was not permitted by the NLRA – and merely “replacing” them permanently with scabs."

"... the United States remains one of the few democratic countries in the world where strikers can be permanently replaced."

the bit for the pwog nation scorning herd:

" the contradictory profile of the labor “progressives” who have taken leadership roles throughout the AFL-CIO in the last fifteen years."

" ...many formerly progressive policymakers accepted the new, management-centric order that was being created within the movement by the employer onslaught of the 1980s. Adapting their own ideas to match this new conservative reality, these activists created the one-day strike, the corporate campaign, and social unionism—tactics that functioned comfortably within the existing structures imposed by management and the legal system."

"...main ideas can be summed up as follows:

Unions must only fight within the bounds of the law

1.Workers and the workplace are not at the center of the struggle

2.Middle-class progressive staffers know more than workers and thus should take a lead role in union strategy

3.Progressive union staffers do not have different material interests than rank-and-file workers

4.Building organization, rather than confronting management, should be labor’s main mission

5.One can accept the fundamentals of capitalism and still devise effective trade union tactics

6.Ultimately, workers must rely on the power of the government in order to make gains

7.Militancy is naïve and should be marginalized

8.To argue that unions need to break free from the current labor system is too radical

"Meanwhile, today’s generation of young radicals, like the progressive labor bureaucrats have spent all of their formative years living in the era of capitalist realism — the era of There is No Alternative."

"...each tenet of the union bureaucrat philosophy ... finds its distorted mirror-image in the views of the young anti-union radicals."

"...the prevailing attitude in certain precincts of the Occupy movement is that unions by their very nature will never break the law. "

"That workplaces are not at the center of the struggle."

" That middle-class intellectuals and full-time activists should take the lead role in strategy"

" these groups do not have different material interests than rank-and-file workers."

" building “communes,” rather than confronting capital, should be the movement’s main mission."

" one can tacitly resign oneself to the permanence of capitalism and neoliberalism and still devise effective movement tactics. "

"The irony is poignant."