 |
| Photo Credit: United Steelworkers |
That's what's on the rise: Management attempting to exercise control over their workers -- in a brutal display of power. Give in to us or lose your paycheck right now.
February 6, 2012
When a contract expires and the union and the company bargain over a new one, there are a few possibilities. In the majority of cases, after negotiation, they come to an agreement, in all likelihood involving compromises on both sides. If they can't reach an agreement, a strike by workers is a possible outcome—but one that's declining in frequency, "just one-sixth the annual level of two decades ago," Steven Greenhouse reports. Another outcome, or perhaps cause, of stalled negotiations is becoming more common, though: The lockout, which has:
... grown to represent a record percentage of the nation’s work stoppages, according to Bloomberg BNA, a Bloomberg subsidiary that provides information to lawyers and labor relations experts. Last year, at least 17 employers imposed lockouts, telling their workers not to show up until they were willing to accept management’s contract offer.
We've
seen it in both the NFL and the NBA in the past year, of course. But in
many cases, companies lock out workers who are struggling even to stay
in the middle class, because they won't give up the things that might
put them in the middle class. Companies lock out workers to get them to
give up their pensions, to pay more for health care, to accept pay cuts,
to sacrifice job security. They rely on no one noticing (besides the
workers, for whom their contempt is already clear), and on any public
notice the lockouts do gain assigning blame at least equally to the
workers—after all, shouldn't they feel lucky just to have jobs, and be
willing to make whatever concessions management demands? As Charles Pierce wrote of the NBA lockout: READ MORE
No comments:
Post a Comment