Strike

[Guest]

Has everyone the right to remove their labour, even if disrupts others.......

 

Greek labour unions staged a 24-hour strike on Thursday that canceled hundreds of flights, shut public offices and severely disrupted local transport, in the first major industrial action to cripple the austerity-weary country in months.

 

Private sector union GSEE and its public sector counterpart ADEDY called the walkout to protest against planned layoffs and pension reform demanded by European Union and International Monetary Fund lenders who have bailed out Greece twice.

 

All Greek domestic and international flights were canceled after air traffic controllers joined the strike. Trains and ferries also halted services. Hospitals worked on emergency staff while tax and other local public offices remained shut.

[StoneSoup]

I remember once reading about an air traffic controllers strike in Portugal. The head of government simply announced "Effective tomorrow morning, all air traffic controllers are conscripted into the army. If you don't show up for work, the Military Police will be looking for you. If apprehended, you will face a summary trial, and you will then be executed by sundown."

 

The strike was over immediately.

 

Tough love.

 

Cheers!

SS

[Flashermac]

<< Harry Truman: Members of the Congress of the United States:

 

I desire to thank you for this privilege of appearing before you in order to urge legislation which I deem essential to the welfare of our country.

 

For the past two days the nation has been in the grip of a railroad strike which threatens to paralyze all our industrial, agricultural, commercial, and social life.

 

Last night I tried to point out to the American people the bleak picture which we faced at home and abroad if the strike is permitted to continue.

 

The disaster will spare no one. It will bear equally upon businessmen, workers, farmers and upon every citizen of the United States. Food, raw materials, fuel, shipping, housing, the public health, the public safety—all will be dangerously affected. Hundreds of thousands of liberated people of Europe and Asia will die who could be saved if the railroads were not now tied up.

 

As I stated last night, unless the railroads are manned by returning strikers I shall immediately undertake to run them by the Army of the United States.

 

I assure you that I do not take this action lightly. But there is no alternative. This is no longer a dispute between labor and management. It has now become a strike against the Government of the United States itself.

 

That kind of strike can never be tolerated. If allowed to continue, the government will break down. Strikes against the government must stop.

 

I appear before you to request immediate legislation designed to help stop them.

 

The benefits which labor has gained in the last thirteen years must be preserved. I voted for all these benefits while I was a member of the Congress. As President of the United States, I have repeatedly urged not only their retention but their improvement. I shall continue to do so.

 

However, what we are dealing with here is not labor as a whole. We are dealing with a handful of men who are striking against their own government and against every one of their fellow citizens, and against themselves. We are dealing with a handful of men who have it within their power to cripple to entire economy of the nation.

 

I request temporary legislation to take care of this immediate crisis. I request permanent legislation leading to the formulation of a long-range labor policy designed to prevent the recurrence of such crises and generally to reduce the stoppages of work in all industries for the future.

 

The legislation should provide that, after the government has taken over an industry and has directed men to remain at work or to return to work, the wage scale be fixed either by negotiation or by arbitrators appointed by the President, and when so fixed, it shall be retroactive.

 

This legislation must be used in a way that is fair to capital and labor alike. The President will not permit either side—industry or workers—to use it to further their own selfish interests or to foist upon the government the carrying out of their selfish aims.

 

Net profits of government operation, if any, should go to the Treasury of the United States.

 

As a part of this temporary emergency legislation I request the Congress immediately to authorize the president to draft into the armed forces of the United States all workers who are on strike against their government.

 

Word has just been received that the rail strike has been settled on terms proposed by the President.

 

These measures may appear to you to be drastic. They are. I repeat that I recommend them only as temporary emergency expedients and only in cases where workers are striking against the government.

 

I believe that the time has come to adopt a comprehensive labor policy which will tend to reduce the number of stoppages of work and other acts which injury labor, capital, and the whole population.

 

The general right of workers to strike against private employers must be preserved. I am sure, however, that adequate study and consideration can produce permanent long-range legislation which will reduce the number of occasions where that ultimate remedy has to be adopted. The whole subject of labor relations should be studied afresh.

 

I make these recommendations for temporary and long range legislation with the same emphasis on each. They should both be part of one program designed to maintain our American system of free enterprise with fairness and justice to all the American citizens who contribute to it. I thank you. >>

 

 

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5137/

[My Penis is hungry]

Without organised labour, and the ability to strike most of the comforts people enjoy today, women voting, women working, children not being legal slaves, 40 hour weeks, holidays, would not exist.

 

I strongly believe in and support the right to strike,

[Flashermac]

Tell that to Hun Sen.

[Specialist]

Without organised labour, and the ability to strike most of the comforts people enjoy today, women voting, women working, children not being legal slaves, 40 hour weeks, holidays, would not exist.

Simply false.

 

Back in the day, labor relations were BRUTAL. Union organizers frequently found their houses dynamited and their families targeted by goon squads. If management didn't want the union, the union didn't get anywhere.

 

12-14 hour work days were considered normal, and those workers were EXHAUSTED, long before the end of the day. Tired workers make mistakes. Mistakes cost money, injuries, and machine damage. The first few companies that adopted an 8-hour day and a 40-hour week saw their scrap, rework, and accident rates decline dramatically, almost instantly, because the workers were no longer dead on their feet.

 

This caused their profit margins to skyrocket, which allowed them to cut their prices to their customers, and wage all-out business war on their competitors.

 

The 40-hour work week became the norm, at least in the United States, because the competitors, still on the old system, realized that there was no possibility of their surviving the business war unless they adopted the same, enlightened policies.

 

Women working is a much more recent thing. It is a direct result of World War II, in which every able-bodied man was needed for the military, and the women were literally all that were left to build the needed war materiel.

 

The fact that today's US economy effectively REQUIRES all women to work is an economic abomination, caused by outrageous tax, interest, and inflation rates. We have thousands of years of history that shows that the traditional stay-at-home mother, or at least one stay-at-home parent, is far better for taking care of children, and we have a few decades of data now that shows that households where there is no stay-at-home parent, for whatever reasons, tend to have BAD outcomes, at far higher rates.

[My Penis is hungry]

You really need to read some history books.

[Guest]

Clay pit strike Cornwall England 1913

 

[Specialist]

You really need to read some history books.

I have. The problem is that I have also had access to primary sources, people who were actually there, who I could ask what really happened, to cross-check what is written in some of those books.

[My Penis is hungry]

Of course I forgot your 187 years old.