Why There Is No Moral ‘Right to Strike’
fee.org
fee.org
This method is recognized by Catholic social teaching as legitimate in the proper conditions and within just limits. In this connection workers should be assured the right to strike, without being subjected to personal penal sanctions for taking part in a strike.
While admitting that it is a legitimate means, we must at the same time emphasize that a strike remains, in a sense, an extreme means. It must not be abused; it must not be abused especially for "political" purposes. Furthermore it must never be forgotten that, when essential community services are in question, they must in every case be ensured, if necessary by means of appropriate legislation. Abuse of the strike weapon can lead to the paralysis of the whole of socioeconomic life, and this is contrary to the requirements of the common good of society, which also corresponds to the properly understood nature of work itself.
John Paul II, Laborem Execrens, 1981
> Assume that the physician (the employee) goes on strike. His ultimatum: “You pay me twice the fee I am now getting or I quit! Moreover, I shall use force to prevent any other physician from attending to your ailment. Meet my demands or do without medical care from now on.”
fee.org is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_for_Economic_Educat... which is a conservative think tank like the cato institute
If it's a bad argument, it's a bad argument whether it's from a conservative think tank or from someone else. If it's a good argument, it's a good argument whether it's from a conservative think tank or from someone else.
It's up to you to show that is a good or bad argument, rather than committing the logical fallacy of poisoning the well.
This is the fallacy of circular reasoning.
>>It's a bad argument because it's a bad argument[, not because it came from Cato]
They also imply the bad of the argument is obvious. I do not entirely agree and believe their comment would be improved with just a bit of work.
They did not seriously intend to present a circular fallacy.
Just saying.
Also, you're being too generous to assume there's an unstated justification for why it's is a bad argument. Pretty obvious that there isn't, they just assume anything said by the authors must be bad because tribes.
That's a common speech pattern and often the intent is basically as I stated.
Cato does, in fact, produce many bad arguments. Now they don't get it all wrong. They have produced good material. That said, I personally do not consider them reputable.
And if we want to be pedantic, "especially the part where they claim that the source has a history of bad arguments" would make my "argument" an ad-hominem fallacy, or perhaps poisoning the well, but not circular reasoning. But again, as I said, the argument is bad independent of the people who made it.
It's a bad argument.
"Moreover, I shall use force to prevent any other physician from attending to your ailment".
It is a particularly bad argument when applied to physicians. The American Medical Association is effectively a labor union of doctors with monopoly control over licensing and legal practice of medicine --- the only such union in the country. Which helps explain why the average US physician earns over $350K a year.
Is it only illegal for physicians and not sanitation workers, baseball players, or actors?
During the baseball strike of 1994-95, MLB teams hired replacement players. No one used force to prevent it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_...
Union workers have a right to strike. They don't have the right to use force to prevent others from doing their job. In fact, lots of picket lines in recent years have featured a police presence to enforce this.
Can a scab walk past the picket line and take their job?
Yes --- legally, they absolutely can. And anyone who tries to use force to prevent them can be arrested.
Its a business group not a labor union (it has more in common with the Chamber of Commerce than the AFL-CIO), and it doesn’t have monopoly control over licensing or the legal practice of medicine (which is controlled by state agencies in each state.)
The National Board of Medical Examiners which administers the US Medical Licensing Exam just happens to be made up of AMA members. You can't get licensed in any state without passing this exam first.
Do you think someone else is responsible? Who would these mystery people be?
This test is the gateway to a license to practice medicine. No other union has this sort of legal control over their own industry.
They can easily use this test to limit the number of people who are licensed to practice medicine and thus keep salaries of their membership high.
Are you aware of the pass/fail rate on the license exams?
You don't even have to use force. Just erecting entry barriers is good enough. This is why business cartels can form even without using force (not even indirectly). Cartels are considered illegal conspiracies against the public. If unions didn't have protected rights in law, then they'd just be considered labour cartels and also rendered illegal.
Example? I'll wait.
Just erecting entry barriers is good enough.
A barrier that can prevent entry is the use of force --- and illegal.
There's no legal block to you creating your own company to compete with TSMC or Apple or Google, yet, you won't be able to do it. The sheer amount of effort it needs to compete makes it impractical. Entry barriers are usually created by the effectiveness of the incumbents and lack of any way to get customers when you're the worst option.
Qualitatively, the two scenarios are the same, they differ only in degree. The action is the same, the outcome is only more destructive in one vs the other. But if there is a moral right to strike, it applies to both professions because a right is universal and absolute.
This is a ridiculous argument designed to strip away the only power working people have against corporations.
You may call that "opportunism", likely using the neutral definition "putting self-interest before other interests when there is an opportunity to do so, or flexibly adapting to changing circumstances to maximize self-interest" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunism .
If you have a problem with that, what then is the moral right to form a limited liability company? How are companies not just opportunism by the owners of the company?
Which brings us back to the topic at hand: striking is not a moral right either.
Okay, you have your definition and you can dream of some utopian world where everyone practices your own morality.
The thing is, all you've done is shift the topic to what 'injustice' means.
The US court case which established the right to strike, Commonwealth v. Hunt, specifically highlights how union action is not necessarily injustice but may have a "proper purpose". Quoting https://web.archive.org/web/20150123211142/http://www.lovkoa... :
"The manifest intent of the association is, to induce all those engaged in the same occupation to become members of it. Such a purpose is not unlawful. It would give them a power which might be exerted for useful and honorable purposes, or for dangerous and pernicious ones. If the latter were the real and actual object, and susceptible of proof, it should have been specially charged. Such an association might be used to afford each other assistance in times of poverty, sickness and distress; or to raise their intellectual, moral and social condition; or to make improvement in their art; or for other proper purposes. Or the association might be designed for purposes of oppression and injustice. But in order to charge all those, who become members of an association, with the guilt of a criminal conspiracy, it must be averred and proved that the actual, if not the avowed object of the association, was criminal."
The moral argument is that you have the right to do as you wish, limited to legal and moral restrictions. You need to demonstrate that the result causes injustice, not assume it exists.
> I personally am not an opportunistic person in that sense.
I personally find it very boring to have a discussion with people who make up their own non-standard definitions to justify their position.
> striking is not a moral right either
Then why should anyone care? Many legal things in the US are not based on moral rights. Where is the moral right to fire an employee? What is the moral right to restrict the presidency to persons 35 or older?
The crux of the decision is:
> We think, therefore, that associations may be entered into, the object of which is to adopt measures that may have a tendency to impoverish another, that is, to diminish his gains and profits, and yet so far from being criminal or unlawful, the object may be highly meritorious and public spirited. The legality of such an association will therefore depend upon the means to be used for its accomplishment. If it is to be carried into effect by fair or honorable and lawful means, it is, to say the least, innocent; if by falsehood or force, it may be stamped with the character of conspiracy.
If you use legal methods to form and carry out a union, then it is fine.
The moral right to strike is the same as the moral right to form a company.
Archive.org tells me Commonwealth v. Hunt is not mentioned in the two page appendix essay "There Is No Moral Right to Strike" of "The Coming Aristocracy" at https://archive.org/details/comingaristocrac0000leon_p8i8/pa... .
The argument hinges on a definition that a strike is a "coercion to force unwilling exchange or to inhibit willing exchange", which is a something Commonwealth v. Hunt addressed over a century previous.
I thought most US employment was "at will" and employees can be terminated for almost any reason?
Sections 53-60 of his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (2013) make a strong case in favor of looking at economics through the lens of ethics.
As a flavor, it begins:
No to an economy of exclusion
53. Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say “thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.
Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a “throw away” culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the “exploited” but the outcast, the “leftovers”.
nah i'm a first party
I posted this because it is a different approach to strike, which impacts technology businesses increasingly. I read, nay, I seek out all kinds of material, across spectra and axes. How else would I learn and improve myself?
The only two choices in intellect is either to stagnate or grow.
Without careful study you may end up degrading yourself and others.
Just because you like reading urban legends doesn't mean you should spread the falsehood described at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlight_flashing#Urban_legen... , at least, not without the context that it should be treated as false.
You look down on everyone that disagrees with you and do no critical thinking.
The author's argument, such as it is, seems to be that striking workers have no moral right to prevent employers from hiring scabs as this is an infringement on the right of the scab and employer. It's basically bullying, they argue.
But in our system it's actually not workers who hold most of the power. That would be the oligarchy or ruling class which owns the vast majority of all their is to own. Unasked by the author is why society should allow so few to control such a large proportion of the resources? Isn't it immoral for so few to have so much while the majority suffers? Isn't it immoral for employers to force workers to compete for crumbs in their own country? Why, yes it is.
As citizens, we asked ourselves is there any reason that we should allow oligarchs to hold all the cards? There are some advantages to an entrepreneurial society, but there must be forces to counter the power of the rich or else society will suffer. So as a counterbalance to this power, we grant strikers the right to prevent scabs from being hired.
If we did not, employers would enjoy a race to the bottom where everyone in the working classes suffer to a greater extent than the scabs do in this scenario. So the morality of the strikers actions is assured as they are working toward the greater good.
This race to the bottom, of course, is the goal of the author. He's carrying water for the oligarchs, who don't want any counterbalance to their unjustified power.The argument is made in bad faith and transparently self-serving.
So there you have it. Heuristics work. And no, I'm not responsible for reading all the bullshit bad actors pay to shovel out. The whole point of this firehose of bullshit is not to contribute to legitimate social discourse, but to derail any such discourse from happening in the first place. If the working classes can't conceptualize our relationships to power, then we can't oppose those who hold power unjustly. As a citizen, you should know this. It is on the test.
"Any argument making a different point from the one I want to make is derailing the discussion." You can't just frame a discussion the way you want it to play out and then when other people say wait, there's another aspect ofthis we want to explore, just say they're not part of the discussion. We were having a nice discussion about whether the right to strike is fundamental, moral or absolute, and you are trying to derail it by dismissing it outright, surely you can see that?
So maybe it's not me that's having trouble with critical thinking Maybe championing wrong and regressive billionaire propaganda is not something you need to do, especially since you have no talent for it. None of the points you made held up to scrutiny, and let's be honest, you didn't even make much effort.
No, not comprehension, it has nothing to do with that. You can comprehend a topic presented without alignment with the source. The source may create a bias for how much authority you will give to the argument presented. Perhaps it’s zero, perhaps it’s more and you are willing to put aside a bias against the source to consider the argument.
Honestly I think all such comments should be considered intellectually incurious and banning offences here, given the pride in aggressive moderation. It's just so tedious that every time someone posts something from a conservative source, half the comments will be exhortations from leftists to automatically ignore the article based on an endless stream of insinuations and ideological babbling.
If you have a problem with the article then let's hear it. If you have a problem with the people saying it because they aren't in your tribe, then please butt out of the conversation so the rest of us can have a proper discussion.