Labor Relations Laws

Labor Relations Laws

The Great Railroad Strike of 1992

The most popular means of transport in the 1920s was by rail. Furthermore, railroads were significant to the nation during that period of World War 1, and the then-president Woodrow Wilson made the whole rail of America national to facilitate war effort. He even instructed the United States Railroad Administration, USRA, to overlook the system of the railroad. Under the supervision of USRA, the rail employees benefited a moment of prosperity, as there was an increase in their salaries, and they worked eight hours a day (Howell, 2017).

However, when war came to an end, the government ordered the return of railroads back to their private owners as it is under the Transport Act of 1920. After that, a nine-member panel, Railroad Labor Board, began supervision of the railroads during their return to private control. The companies were then ordered by the RLB to reduce the salary of workers in 1921 due to the drop in postwar productions and increased quantity of labor force. In the following year, after a lot of chaos that emerged in the gathering of railroad workers, the RLB ordered for reduction of salaries for the second time. As a result of this, the American railway unions produced ballots for the strike. Maintenance workers, skilled tradesmen, mechanics, electricians, and railway shop men were the most affected by the slashing of wages. The seven unions which represented these employees agreed and voted for the strike. The Great Railroad Strike then commenced on 1^ST, July 1992, as a total number of shopmen and maintenance workers exceeding four hundred thousand quitted the job (Howell, 2017).

The railroads never minded about the strike, but instead, they immediately started recruiting employees to resume the vacant positions left by the strikers. President Warren Harding and RLB chairperson Ben Hooper were the government officials, which stimulated the neglecting of the striking employees by the companies. They argued that the railroad employees had neglected their arbitration rights. Chaos continuously emerged amongst the law enforcement officers who supported railroad companies, company bearers, strikers, and strikebreakers. Most of the strikers demonstrated peacefully through legal ways, even though a number of them threatened and physically attacked the strikebreakers, and sabotaged properties of the company. The officers who were guarding the companies also used violence on them. They even shoot in groups of strikers.

At the end of the demonstration period, not less than ten individuals lost their lives, most likely strikers, and their family members who helped them protest, and one company guard. Even though the RLB tried to make a small effort of minimizing the demonstration, but then-President Harding gave a declaration to the companies to employ the strikebreakers permanently as stated under the outlaw resolution, and enlightened them on the drawbacks of the complaints of the strikers. The companies got support from Chairman Hooper, Attorney General Harry Daugherty, U.S. Marshalls, and National Guard units, were to ensure that the railroad and strikebreakers are protected (Brecher, 2015).

Reasons Why the Unions, And Workers Were Defeated

According to Chaison (2018), it was very unusual for the unions and workers to fail in this period as in the other significant strikes, they won. The defeat was because a lot of the disagreements were squared locally, and not internationally as it was supposed to be. They failed because; the US national guard was summoned as per state by different governors of the country. These troops reinforced the protection of the companies by use of weapons. As they guarded the properties of the railroad and facilitated the security and protection of the strikebreakers. Therefore, the force of the demonstrations was limited.

The US Attorney General Harry Daugherty propelled the defeat of demonstrating railway workers by the federal government so that the railroad industry could be at peace. He harshly fined the strikers with a practice of conspiracy equivalent to Lenin and Zinoviev. He even sent the Marshals to help in the protection of the company’s properties, and to defeat the strike. At some points, there was a random selection of assistant US Marshals from groups of thugs that were gathered by the railways.

The Attorney General who was against the strike, and most specifically the unions, forced for national actions to be taken against the attacks. On 1^ST September, Judge James Wilkerson ruled picketing, striking, and many other activities of unions as illegal. The ruling was commonly known as the Daugherty Injunction, the significant extreme verdict in the history of the US, going against much constitutional freedom of speech, and free assembly. It successfully facilitated the breakdown of the demonstration. Even though the majority opposed the injunction, and many of the sympathy demos closed down some railroads completely, but the stick finally stopped, as there were deals made by the shop men with the railroads locally (Craypo, & Nissen, 2019).

Cooperation between Labor, And Management As Supported By Labor Management 

The objectives of the labor-management, as supported by Dobbins & Dundon (2017), are to improve productivity, facilitate democracy in the industry, limit chaos, and conflicts. The main aim is to make sure that both parties are benefiting and not quarreling on the division of the profits. Each party has to do its roll by cooperating with others. Therefore, both parties can outweigh reactive remedies with positive approaches. Through this, the union and management benefit by minimizing the expenses and time incurred.

Through cooperation, management, and labors can come up with methods of minimizing costs and serve their customers in a very decent manner. The savings can facilitate the maximization of the company’s gains, and improved union’s contract. The success and productivity of the industry rely on the perfect and clear union-management correlation. Both the labors and management are considered equal in the success and progress of the industry.

The specific objective of such cooperation is to generate a perfect circumstance where both labors and management are fully cooperating during the identification of challenges arising at the place of work, finding proper remedies to them. The main thing here is that the perfect working together between the employees and managers on factors that concern both of them can lead to a better and productive place of work.

This procedure, however, brings it out that workers should cooperate in the decisions made daily affecting their roles. The procedure designs help the partners to restructure tasks to facilitate the tackling of challenges as a group, promote teamwork, improvise technologies, and create sharing of information. Many skilled individuals have it that people are the main constituent of productivity. Successful companies in the US also promote productivity through individuals. Productivity via individuals is less costly.

Noe (2017) argued that assets only facilitate the possibility of things, but individuals facilitate the occurrence of those things. Individuals determine the differentiation between failure and success. Besides, the leaders of unions are prone to the opposition to improvements. Its reduction can only be through free and voluntary cooperation. The workers take in remedies and work extremely harder whenever they tackle the challenges facing them together. They do not oppose changes when they acknowledge the fruits of changes and that the changes will not negatively impact them in any way.

Both management and labor unions care about productivity at the place of work and the company since, in its absence, management cannot offer a united workforce that with increased salaries, job security, and gains.

References

Brecher, J. (2015). The deCLine of strikes. In The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History (pp. 112-120). Routledge.

Chaison, G. N. (2018). Union mergers in hard times: The view from five countries. All Press.

Crapo, C., & Nissen, B. (Eds.). (2019). Grand designs: The impact of corporate strategies on workers, unions, and communities. Cornell University Press.

Dobbins, T., & Dundon, T. (2017). The illusion of sustainable labor-management partnership. British Journal of Management, 28(3), 519-533.

Howell, D. (2017). Respectable Radicals: Studies in the Politics of Railway Trade Unionism. Routledge.

Noe, R. A., Hollenbeck, J. R., Gerhart, B., & Wright, P. M. (2017). Human resource management: Gaining a competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.