Supreme court attacks workers’ right to strike

By Workers Strike Back. Published June 1, 2023

The Supreme Court just released its decision in the anti-union case Glacier Northwest v. Teamsters.

This decision is an attack on workers’ most important tool to defend ourselves against the bosses: the strike. In ruling against the actions of our union siblings, the concrete workers who bravely struck Glacier Northwest over the company’s rampant abuse and intransigence in negotiating a fair contract, the Supreme Court has dealt a setback to all working people.

The right to strike is fundamental, and Workers Strike Back will continue fighting alongside workers everywhere. Yet in today’s decision the Supreme Court, by an 8-1 majority that includes two Obama-appointed justices, essentially hands bosses everywhere a loaded weapon to try to intimidate workers from striking by threatening to sue them if they do. This comes just months after the Biden administration, with support from Democrats in Congress, banned railroad workers from striking.

This decision could allow bosses to drag unions through the courts every time there is a strike, circumventing the National Labor Relations Board, in order to recoup lost revenue from strikes and make unions pay.

Today’s ruling also comes on the heels of last year’s Dobbs ruling by the same court revoking our basic right to reproductive choice. Then, as now, Democrats and leading position-holders in unions and women’s organizations shamefully refused to mount any meaningful grassroots fightback, just as they refused to defend the railroad workers’ fundamental rights.

This stands in sharp contrast to the energy and initiative demonstrated by grassroots union and community activists and leaders around the country. When Seattle-area workers, including Workers Strike Back organizers, first heard in January of the Supreme Court’s pending Glacier Northwest decision, they sprang into action. We brought forward resolutions in union locals and 11 organizations in Seattle adopted resolutions calling on the labor movement to educate members and mobilize protests locally and nationally to fight back against the pending court ruling. 

On May 6, more than 200 union members and community supporters turned out for a rally in Seattle. The rally was endorsed by 21 unions and community groups, part of Workers Strike Back’s National Week of Action to defend the right to strike. 

Workers Strike Back also organized rallies in New York City, Houston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Worcester (MA), Minneapolis, and Alabama.

Disgracefully, rather than join the grassroots momentum to defend the right to strike, the elected leaders of the Martin Luther King County Labor Council, the top elected union leadership in the Seattle area, shunned repeated invitations to participate in the rally, and even refused to disseminate information about the rally to other union members.

Some union leaders who failed to organize and fight against this ruling are now arguing that today’s decision is not as bad as it could have been, because it did not fully overturn the longstanding precedent that bosses can’t sue workers in state court for engaging in strike activity that is “arguably” protected by the National Labor Relations Act. That sort of legal dicing offers little comfort to workers fighting every day for rights on the job. 

As a result of today’s decision we can expect bosses will try to intimidate workers from striking by invoking the Glacier Northwest decision. Bosses will know that even if their lawsuits are not ultimately successful, the threat of them alone will be a powerful weapon to try to prevent workers’ going on strike. That is the danger of the Glacier Northwest decision.

Some union leaders also are shamefully arguing that today’s court decision shows why workers should elect more Democrats. This is doubling down on an utterly failed strategy. Two Democratic appointees to the Supreme Court were among the majority in today’s decision. A Democratic president with help from Democrats in Congress - including self-described progressives like Pramila Jayapal and AOC - cut the legs out from under railroad workers last fall. And for years Democrats failed to codify basic workplace organizing and reproductive justice rights into law when they held the White House and super-majorities in Congress. The Democratic Party is not a party for working people. It is part of the political duopoly that serves the interests of Wall Street and big business.

This undeniable track record of the Democratic Party’s anti-worker attacks plus the appalling inaction of the AFL-CIO and other leading labor bodies in the runup to today’s decision shows precisely why workers must form their own independent groups, like Workers Strike Back, and a new party for working people, to organize in workplaces and on the streets against the bosses and their political servants.

We also cannot be intimated by the threat of legal action. Under capitalism the laws are always written in the interests of big business and the elite. Worker organizing has always been under threat from legal attacks and the forces of the state, and unions and strikes were once themselves totally illegal. The American labor movement was born out of illegal strikes, and to rebuild a fighting labor movement, we will also have to defy this and other unjust laws written by the bosses.

That will require bold leadership and militant action, not pandering to Democrats who betray us again and again. Unfortunately, most of the current labor leadership has not been up to the task, so the rank-and-file urgently needs to get organized and take the lead.

We urgently need to get organized to defend ourselves and fight back!

👉If you are in Seattle, join Workers Strike Back Monday, June 5 @ 6 pm for our monthly meeting to discuss the struggle by PCC grocery store workers to win a $25/hour minimum wage and an end to the “no strike” clause. RSVP now!

👉If you are in New York, attend the launch of Workers Strike Back in NYC on Friday, June 9 @ 6 pm at BMCC with Kshama Sawant, Briahna Joy Gray, Ralph Nader, Amazon KCVG workers, and more! RSVP now!

👉Plan to join our National Week of Action, “Prime Time to Unionize Amazon”, July 12-18, alongside Amazon’s annual “Prime Day”. Rallies and other events are being organized around the country, including in Seattle outside Amazon’s corporate headquarters and at Amazon’s KCVG Air Hub in Kentucky where workers are fighting to unionize.

👉Donate to Workers Strike Back! Help us build a labor movement that will take MILITANT action to overcome these escalating and increasingly frequent attacks from the bosses and their political servants in both parties. Donate $25, $100, or $500 now!