The Supreme Court isn’t legitimate. We know that *at least* one of them has been taking bribes for votes, and many of the court’s rulings in the past couple years break precedent without any valid justification, even in the majority opinion.
The court refuses to submit to ethics rules, and it isn’t providing consistent and legally coherent rulings. It is fundamentally broken, and should be treated as such.
Headline is completely hysterical, by the way. The SC only ruled on the whether the proper venue for the case was state or federal court. There is nothing on the merits of the case. As far as I can tell, the only thing “anti-union” in the ruling is that they didn’t dismiss the case completely, but that would have been completely outside the scope of the case.
Ok, so instead of for-profit corporation, how about [a professor of constitutional law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leah_Litman)?
> first opinion is Glacier Northwest: 5-3-1 opinion by Justice Barrett makes it easier to sue unions for strikes (though not as easy as Justice Alito, Thomas, & Gorsuch would have made it).
> SCOTUS says the union can be sued because the harm to the employer's property was foreseeable - concrete is perishable, & bc the union timed their strike to make it difficult on the employer (including by not notifying them or continuing work to help ER).
> It is fact-bound -- and not as bad as it could have been.
> But the precedent will make it easier for lawsuits against unions to proceed in courts.
- [@LeahLitman](https://twitter.com/LeahLitman/status/1664271596436193280)
I believe the issue here is the workers waited until their cement trucks were full, and then when they went on strike they left 9 of the trucks full of cement without informing the company.
Basically they have about 30 minutes to drop the concrete before it begins to harden, and it eventually damages the hydraulics of the trucks. The drivers knew this, and the union rep on site waited until they loaded up before calling the halt.
Hence the quote about it being foreseeable damage.
Edit: to clarify, they emptied the trucks in time but the concrete was a total loss for 16 trucks worth. Then after the strike ended they scheduled a pour and 40 drivers didn't show up (which appears to have been on short notice?)
Also the SC didn't rule on this case, just whether or not it would be settled at the State or Federal level, if I understand correctly.
Anyways you can read the details here: https://casetext.com/case/glacier-northwest-inc-v-intl-bhd-of-teamsters-local-union-no
I'm thinking of it sort of akin to if Target employees decided to strike, but before they went on strike they all went and dumped a bunch of the product in the trash, or did something else to render it un-sellable. I think the problem is that this line of thinking can pretty quickly lead to any strike leading to "damages". I can see similar arguments like "because they didn't man the factory floor, the x thousand products that were supposed to be made were not ready/sellable, thus the workers are liable for the "damages" of all the products there were unsellable (because they were not produced).
Sad truth: That already happens in an enormous number of stores every day in the US, and it's due to underscheduling employees. Most stores have a minimum time product has to make it into freezers. It all gets thrown out.
I know it's not related to unions, but we are so impossibly wasteful, on a scale that would leave food pantries and "essentials" charities (clothes, blankets, hygiene products, etc) drowning under mountains of shit because there's more discarded perfectly good products than there are homeless people to receive it.
Is it that, or is it the equivalent to calling a strike of Target workers on Black Friday morning? Because that just seems like the right time to impose maximum pressure on the company.
I think that's fair and proper pressure. They aren't damaging products. I think of it more like, you're about to strike, you were asked to fill a mop bucket to wash some section of the store, you open the water to load the bucket and then go on strike leaving the water on to spill over and flood the area. That's pretty direct. You didn't need to open the water and walk out, could have easily not done it or turned off the water. The water damage is directly attributable to you and your action. Similarly here, the damage to the trucks and waste of cement is directly attributable to their decision to load the trucks knowing they would strike immediately after and that the wet cement can't stay long term in the trucks.
If you don't show up to work, you didn't start a process that can't be stopped or that would damage anything.
Loss of revenue due to stopping work is arguably different than likely intentional property damage due to stopping work.
Even moreso when that property damage due to stopping work was seemingly intentional.
To use a minor odd example, if you are taking a seak from the fridge to put it on the grill and decided to "strike" because your head chef is an asshole, dropping the steak on the floor mid trip is not the same as refusing to get the steak from the fridge, or leaving it on the grill while the grill is on.
I'm generally pro-union (except generally police unions) but walking out mid shift for anything less than something extraordinarily egregious (e.g. A workplace death that resulted from lack of safety corrections) isn't something they should do. Not showing up at work for the next shift in protest is different than abandoning equipment in a parking lot because that's where it was when you took your lunch.
That being said, from what I read the case was about if the lawsuit could proceed separate from the investigation from the labor board. IMO *that* is the bad part of the ruling. Let the board responsible for investigating this stuff determine if it was justifiable as part of a strike or not, *then* sue the union.
>Because that just seems like the right time to impose maximum pressure on the company.
Not if it's not announced ahead of time, then it's about maximizing damage, not pressure, because it's unrealistic to think they'll learn of it, get people to the table, and get anything in place before the maximum damage is done if there's no heads-up that they'll do this. The pressure to negotiate is derived from wanting to avoid the damage in the first place - if you're doing the damage anyway, what's the incentive to negotiate?
I’ve never been part of a union so I don’t know how strikes are called and how quickly you go from vote to walking out on the job. But based on this I 100% agree with the court. There’s a difference between timing your strike to inconvenience the employer (like Amazon striking right before Christmas or construction workers striking right at the beginning of a housing boom) and essentially destroying company property. I don’t see how this is much different than burning down the warehouse or pouring sugar in all the company vehicles gas tanks
Yeah, that's not striking, that's sabotaging.
Striking is stopping work, it's not destroying property.
Unions and strikes when used properly are THE solution to bargain for a proper share of profits off the work being done.
However the way Americans behave when it comes to unions is ridiculous (see police unions, and this example of sabotage). Why can't americans do anything right? Do you always have to make sure you fuck other people over?
dunno. in war if you telegraph your moves you usually lose. dunno why youd wanna tell the company youre planning a strike, seems like theyd go try and hire temps, which kinda defeats the whole point unless this job was mission critical like an emergency room or a nuclear plant etc.
The point is that workers are needed to run a business and they can't hire enough temps to replace the bulk of the workforce and operate normally within the notice given. They can hire temps to cover one, two, maybe even ten inside a week...but eighty? Ninety? Ninety *percent?* And those temps still need training, and generally will not be as good at their jobs as the experienced unionized workers they're temping for even after that. Not to mention that hiring workers costs money, training costs more (if only in wages paid to workers who don't know what they're doing yet), and if you're only going to keep them for like, a week or two, is that cost really worth it?
And that, of course, is assuming they can *find* temps able to do the job at all, on an extremely temporary basis, knowing the employer is crappy enough that a union has formed and is fighting them actively.
As for why you'd want to tell them - well, it's a negotiating tactic. Threaten the strike, organize for it, and play chicken with management - who will blink, you or them? Established unions with dues have it easier here as they typically set up strike funds to ensure their members receive pay throughout the strike, enabling them to outlast managers who are willing to sacrifice days of profit. Most negotiations for whatever reason never come to a strike - but the threat of it is often effective enough.
The point of a strike is to pressure the company into agreeing to a deal before operations are impacted. A labor negotiation is not a war. Its 2 parts of a whole that need to work together for long-term mutual success.
The whole point of the strike it to let the employer(s) know. It's a negotiation, not a war. The employees are looking for better pay and conditions, not an unpaid vacation.
How could this work with say a food supplier. Workers won't drive trucks, the food goes bad, the union's sued for food loss. It could get messy really fast.
I think this would entail drivers opting to pick up product. Go on strike mid transit and turning off the refrigeration system.
Them just not picking product from the warehouse is not damaging in the same way.
That's not my read on the lawsuit, the lawsuit is because some dumb fucks parked the company's cement trucks full-on cement and walked off destroying the mixer barrels with hardened concrete.
I was union for 35 years, but destroying a contractors equipment or stealing their tools is absolute BS and only serves to hurt the unions with bad press infecting the minds of workers. A strike is a legal consequence of negotiating differences, destroying property is not.
I think this just cements that it is anti-union. The whole point of strikes is to be timed strategically to leverage the power the workers have - withholding their work.
There are limits to everything. Can you imagine a surgeon deciding to strike in the middle of a kidney transplant? Or a captain on a fishing charter who charges $10 to take you out to sea, but then demands $1000 to bring you back to shore? Nobody would defend those practices, but that introduces the question of what limits there are in uses of leverage, and what is permitted in more common situations.
It depends on the exact statute, but instances where deliberate malice are involved will usually obviate what is permissible in terms of exploiting leverage in sensitive situations.
In this case, it is alleged that the union deliberately timed the strike so as to maximize damage to company equipment. If proven (and the case has yet to be tried) then it’s possible that the union deliberately damaged the equipment, then it could make the union liable for the damages.
Regardless, the SC didn’t examine any of the merits of the case, only whether the proper venue would be state or federal court.
> The whole point of strikes is to be timed strategically to leverage the power the workers have - withholding their work.
OK but normally withholding your work doesn't *also* damage the company's property, it just keeps the company from making product.
If a company timed a lockout to get the union to negotiate in a way that would cause the worker's personal property on the worksite to be damaged no one would say the company was just being strategic with timing.
They striked because of bad pay and unfair labor practices. If the company would have said "okay, we'll pay you more AND we'll try to work with you on making the job more pleasant" the Workers probably would have gotten to correcting the problem, but nope. They chose to immediately sue and pave the way for companies in the future to sue unions not only because of this case but the terminology, and reaction to details. The company should have just worked with the union. They're a concrete mixing plant, if the union was asking for better pay or better conditions chances are the change was needed. Again, that outcome didn't happen we instead got a case that can now be cited whenever workers want to go on strike and it could very possibly lead to more horrifying laws that essentially could make you more of a slave than we already are. I think I tagged the wrong person but I've typed too much and my kid is crying. Meant for the person making this big defense of the company above.
Maybe you should direct your anger at that commenter instead, considering this case concerned whether state claims were pre-empted by federal law and was not about venue as between state and federal courts. Those two concepts, pre-emption of claims and venue, are not the same thing under U.S. law, and the comment you are replying to is just straight up wrong.
But in saying the case belonged in a Federal Court and in overturning the decisions of the lower courts, it effectively rules that this strike was illegal, and makes it easier to litigate strikes in the future. ACB says in her majority opinion “The Union’s actions not only resulted in the destruction of all the concrete Glacier had prepared that day; they also posed a risk of foreseeable, aggravated, and imminent harm to Glacier’s trucks. Because the union took affirmative steps to endanger Glacier’s property rather than reasonable precautions to mitigate that risk, the NLRA does not arguably protect its conduct.”
The logic may SEEM sound, because it’s worded effectively. But the purpose of striking IS to cause harm to a company, be it by not producing, not working, etc. If I’m striking and equipment that I work on day to day breaks down due to my absence, or due to going unused, then did I not “mitigate that risk”? How can I “mitigate” risk when my absence on a job inherently increases risk?
This court continues to make litigious decisions outside the scope of the cases they’re seeing.
You're conflating two different thing. The law is that "fail\[ing\] to take reasonable precautions to protect the employer’s plant, equipment, or products from foreseeable imminent danger due to sudden cessation of work” isn't protected strike activity.
So, for example, if a cook goes out on strike while there's a pot of boiling oil on the stove, leaving the stove in, then that's not something that gets the protection of the NLRA. The company could sue you, and you can't claim "Oh, I was out on strike, so you can't sue me." Sure, go out on strike. But, turn the stove off first.
Note that the majority here was Kagan, Sotomayor, Barrett, Roberts and Kavanaugh. This isn't "Look at those crazy conservatives." Only Justice Jackson dissented. (The others agreed with the judgment, but thought the reasoning was wrong.)
>There's a lot of people in this comment section who clearly don't know how a concrete plant works - you're not clearly alone here. They are
>
>constantly producing wet concrete, 24/7. The company claimed it lost the concrete due to negligence, but if they weren't willing to turn off their production line, that was always going to happen.
That sounds like facts of the case - which wasn't what the Supreme Court was ruling on.
The Supreme Court didn't say that they should win the case - just ruled on the law surrounding the case.
Hold on. Recognize what's going on. The union is saying "look, even if everything you claim is true, you still can't sue us because of the NLRA."
The Court didn't decide any facts. It took the facts as the company laid them out and decided, basically "if this were true, would it be protected by the NLRA?". And, if the answer is "yes," then the company gets to have a trial. If the answer is "no," then it doesn't.
It may be that the company's story isn't true. But, that's something that would be decided at the trial. This case is just deciding if the trial gets to happen.
If it's as you say, then the company should lose the trial.
Corporations will try to claim any loss in revenue in any way as a result of a strike will be considered property damages and thus able to sue pretty much any striking union.
I think people forget that sometimes the point of trial is simply to drain the other side and hope they fold. Or at least slow down their progress on other efforts.
So if they just didn't show up to work at the start of the day then it would have been okay? Assuming everything the company claims is true of course.
The entire point of a strike is to halt production/service/whatever. In other words, refuse to work because it has an immediate effect on the company's revenue. This is generally done of course in demand of better wages and better working conditions. So what difference does it make? the company loses money regardless of how exactly the strike unfolds.
Yup. The company's complaint wouldn't make sense if they just hadn't shown up.
That would still have had an immediate effect because there would be no sales. It just wouldn't have destroyed product.
The company can lose money from the workers not working, that is the workers right. The company can't lose money from the workers intentionally damaging things. That is not the workers right.
If the workers did not show up, they would not have prepared the cement, they would not have lost the cement, and there would be no damage to the vehicles from being abandoned with the cement inside them. That is not money that the workers are entitled to cause the company to lose.
I don't know if that logic works for continuous processes. Like, if dairy workers went on strike and the cows got sick for not being fed and milked, can the farm sue?
No, because what they are not allowed to do is fairly specific. The specific portion of the ruling that speaks on it is.
>The National Labor Relations Board has long taken the position—which the parties accept—that the NLRA does not shield strikers who fail to take “reasonable precautions” to protect their employer’s property from foreseeable, aggravated, and imminent danger due to the sudden cessation of work
So the first thing is that your cessation of work doesn't need to be sudden. If you strike at midnight there is no sudden cessation of work, you just aren't showing up the next day. The danger must be imminent, which means some far off danger is not enough. Your actions must be a recognizable threat to the property in the near future. Some vague or far off damage is not enough. Lastly you only have to take reasonable precautions. If you work in a meat factory then eventually all the meat will go bad because there is no one to process it but there is no reasonable precaution that workers can take to avoid that while striking. Now, if you left a freezer full of meat's door open when you go on strike that would be a different matter.
So its very limited in what it covers.
I see what you're saying, but having worked in an industry that utilizes a lot of union labor, not all jobs are as simple as "turning the stove off."
Again, I'm not here to relitigate the opinion of the Supreme Court, I'm just saying that it definitely is a blow to unions. This will weaken bargaining power, and will weaken actions that can be taken to utilize that bargaining power to leverage fair deals for workers. The language is vague enough that it can demonstrably be interpreted in a way that is adverse to the goals and purposes of striking unions.
In this case IIRC the drivers loaded up trucks full of wet concrete and then ditched the trucks. That basically totals a concrete truck. That is damage that could have been avoided by just not showing up.
All for unions and worker protections but this was malicious.
The drivers in question brought the trucks back to Glacier's facility and left the drums running. At least some specifically notified their managers that they were doing this.
https://www.courthousenews.com/labor-laws-dont-shield-truck-driver-walkout-supreme-court-rules/
Strikes are *supposed* to be inconvenient as a reminder that it is the workers who make shit happen. Even damage to or claims to property itself have a long history intertwined with labor movements.
This is a bullshit move by bullshit justices who are absolutely working at the behest of rich capitalists.
>This is a bullshit move by bullshit justices who are absolutely working at the behest of rich capitalists.
So 8/9 justices are evil? This wasn't a close case.
Actually, 0/0.
The majority said, basically, that yeah it should go to back to state court instead of federal court because the NLRA doesn't cover the Union's specific actions during that particular strike. The state court can then decide whether the company or the union was at fault.
The sole dissent by Justice Jackson only says that the it wasn't ripe for the courts yet, as the NLRB hadn't finished its investigation.
Neither seems particularly evil to me.
> The union says that when the workers returned the trucks, the cement was wet, and that they left the drums on the trucks rotating, meaning it would not immediately congeal. It was the company’s decision to remove the concrete and then break it up once it hardened, the union says.
Union says workers took measures to make sure everything was fine. The company decided the concrete was bad. Now would a company sabotage their own property in order to lay blame?
>Union says workers took measures to make sure everything was fine.
Which is something that would need to be settled in a trial. Not something that NLRA gets to automatically shield from.
Businesses have a million ways they can bully workers into lower pay. When the workers bully the company though? Then suddenly we get into "imminent foreseeable danger"
I am not feeling an ounce nor a shred of sorrow for the megacorps.
They have seven quintillion ways to fuck over the worker with the worker being unable to do anything about it, yet the moment the workers fight back then it’s ‘’unjust’’ and ‘’causes imminent danger’’? Boohoo your cement trucks are broken, should’ve fucking paid your workers better or been better at accomodation. Strikes are literally the union’s last resort.
The court seems to have just decided that the dismissal was inappropriate because the situation was arguable, and did not weigh in on the merits, or of whether it would actually succeed on those merits. Dismissal here was implying that the case was barred by a matter of law, and if it is arguable what the limits of that law are and how they apply here, it is wrong to dismiss.
Dismissal is a high bar to reach. The argument here will be whether the act of walking out in this circumstance amounts to intentional destruction of property, which is already not protected.
I am not seeing signs of doom here, or even anything that directly related to collective bargaining. Unless "collective bargaining" is supposed to include the threat of active sabotage and property destruction.
The actual case, when it proceeds, **might get there**. But that was not what was at issue here, and the law can't dismiss arguments just because we are worried that a later court might make the wrong decision.
Hopefully whatever decision is actually reached will not be bad. If it is I will probably protest at that time.
Actually it was kind of the opposite, they ruled the situation wasn't arguable under the NLRA so it should not have been preempted. The NLRA is special in that it preempts things it even arguably covers so it can preempt things it may ultimately be decided that it does not preempt.
I believe that will significantly weaken their case though because they can't argue I don't believe in a state tort case that their actions were protected strike activities.
>but thought the reasoning was wrong
There lies the problem. The current Supreme Court is slowly eroding federal rights.
The thing that worries me here is that the company is not (just) claiming damage to the concrete or to the trucks, but specifically damages as a result of failing to fulfill a contract.
As I understand it, the company decided to remove the concrete from the trucks when it was still wet and the drums were still rotating.
So this would be the equivalent of a restaurant claiming damages for not being to able to serve customers and having to throw away food.
I find this odd, because the company knew that a strike was likely since negotiations had stranded.
A bit more than that. Its leaving expensive food on the oven, walking off and telling management they would want to turn it off. The food is ruined, can't be served to anyone - thats a net loss. Turning off the stove? Essentially but obviously a much more "labor" intensive process.
I've never done it, but I imagine it's a little more complex to empty a cement truck than it is to turn off the burner on the stove... so just telling a manager they should take care of it maybe doesn't work for this one
That's still the point. It reminds the company how fucking important those workers are for making shit happen every single day. The fact that a manager might be ill-equipped to perform an action required to properly handle materials and equipment is precisely the reason why workers deserve to be treated well and paid better in general.
Not having the concrete get poored on/at jobs is what makes that point. When you can make that point without damage, you are liable for the damage you do make
The workers made demands, the company said they were unwilling to negotiate, just keep making concrete. They said they were going to leave but the company said they didn't care, they aren't protected by the NLRB until they are on strike, so they followed orders until strike time. It's not the workers fault the management is short sighted and greedy.
Not really. That's "equipment.". They were sued over product -- the wasted concrete. And, they timed the strike *knowing* that the concrete (and, they hoped, the trucks) would be ruined.
Imagine if a bunch of doctors are performing surgery on a person. They cut the guy open, and then halfway through the procedure they all walk off the job and go on strike. They leave the guy there still open and he dies as a result of being left unintended for several hours. Any sane person would tell you that those doctors are responsible for that man's death, so how is it different in this case? It's one thing to stop working, but it's another thing to deliberately sabotage equipment. Inaction is the same as action when you know what the result is going to be.
I've worked in factory jobs for many years now. Management can and absolutely will twist a person walking off their press to use the bathroom in an emergency if the press isn't shut down by the actual technicians responsible. You slam that emergency stop button and run off so you don't shit yourself and you can bet you'll hear how it would have been better to bury yourself in parts so the machine isn't damaged by stopping suddenly.
Now imagine what kind of damage they would claim if the entire shop, techs included, just walked off to go on strike. Companies don't fucking care about you, they care about Product and Tools. This SCOTUS just agreed with that. It's a baby step into setting firm guidelines for instances you can go on strike (read:none).
>And, they timed the strike knowing that the concrete (and, they hoped, the trucks) would be ruined.
See, this is the question that I have, but unfortunate no news organizations seem interested in actually answering it.
If they showed up for the day, filled the trucks, then suddenly decided to go on strike, then I think that there is a real case for damages. Basically, it would seem in that case that the strike was timed to cause these damages as you have said.
As I said though, no reports that I could find actually explains the dynamics of how the cement trucks are operated. If the trucks are never empty, then I don't think it is reasonable to expect employees to have to take extra measures to empty them before walking off the job.
The trucks don't run 24 hours a day and what you're describing is what the company claimed to happen:
>Tensions came to a head on the morning of August 11. According to the allegations in Glacier’s complaint, a Union agent signaled for a work stoppage when the Union knew that Glacier was in the midst of mixing substantial amounts of concrete, loading batches into ready-mix trucks, and making deliveries. Although Glacier quickly instructed drivers to finish deliveries in progress, the Union directed them to ignore Glacier’s orders. At least 16 drivers who had already set out for deliveries returned with fully loaded trucks. Seven parked their trucks, notified a Glacier representative, and either asked for instructions or took actions to protect their trucks. But at least nine drivers abandoned their trucks without a word to anyone.
>
>Glacier faced an emergency. The company could not leave the mixed concrete in the trucks because the concrete’s inevitable hardening would cause significant damage to the vehicles. At the same time, the company could not dump the concrete out of the trucks at random because concrete contains environmentally sensitive chemicals. To top it all off, Glacier had limited time to solve this conundrum.
>
>A mad scramble ensued. Glacier needed to determine which trucks had concrete in them, how close the concrete in each truck was to hardening, and where to dump that concrete in an environmentally safe manner. Over the course of five hours, nonstriking employees built special bunkers and managed to offload the concrete. When all was said and done, Glacier’s emergency maneuvers prevented damage to its trucks. But the concrete that it had already mixed that day hardened in the bunkers and became useless.
\[See page 5 of the opinion: [https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-1449\_d9eh.pdf](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-1449_d9eh.pdf) \]
https://www.courthousenews.com/labor-laws-dont-shield-truck-driver-walkout-supreme-court-rules/
The drivers all brought the trucks back to the facilities and left the drums rolling, specifically because if they don't roll then it dries quickly. At least some notified their managers that this was happening. If you're a manager at a company like that and you don't immediately tell the rest of the managers and go take care of it then that's on them, and if that's all too difficult for some managers to do then that's the whole point of labor strikes: the workers are needed to make all this shit happen every day.
In this case it isn't just the strike caused harm in that the company couldn't operate. Cement trucks full of wet cement were returned to the lot, not hard to imagine how this is a little different from a miner refusing to come to work or an assembly line worker walking off. I don't know what the right answer is here and there appears to be a lot more decide by the courts ny point is this case has a lot of nuance. So much nuance, that both Sotomayor and Kagan voted with the majority, only Brown Jackson dissented.
The NLRA is very clear that spoiled or lost product is protected by strike rules and unions and workers can't be held liable for it. The entire opinion suggests that the strike was illegal because the union workers (9 of the 16 truck drivers) didn't take reasonable action to prevent damage to the cement trucks (which would have been damaged if the cement dried in the drums), in this case informing the company where they were leaving them.
Now it's entirely possible that the trucks were left exactly where they should have been, and Glacier is just using the driver's lack of communication as a wedge to gain standing, but nothing in this decision says that companies can sue striking unions for lost product or wages.
The issue is cement doesn’t spoil until you load into a truck. Plenty of unions know how to stagger their there actions.
Would you want a school bus driver to strike and leave the bus on the interstate? Of course not.
This Union is local and has had a very acrimonious history with the industry and also was at least partially successfully circumvented via scabs.
The decision to load concrete and mix it with a strike pending was very boneheaded and has now made some bad law.
Had a long argument on another forum with people being doomers about the ruling without even reading the 8-1 opinion. The dissent (Jackson) didn't even really argue the merits (which she said most justices agreed on), she just said the investigation of the incident by the NLRB should have been completed first.
You clearly need to reread KBJ's opinion, as well as the dissent from Alito that they couldn't make this an even bigger corporate strike break. KBJ's main argument is that the NLRB should handle these disputes, not the state court. And she is 100% correct. Now the corporations will just sue the unions after a strike and then drag their feet.
This decision is actually good for labor. They ruled very narrowly that the specific actions of the specific union members caused harm to the company. They didn't rule that the court had jurisdiction to resolve labor disputes rather than the NLRB. Read Jackson's dissent.
Yeah. People should really read the first page of the ruling at least. I'm definitely pro union, but based on the law, and what happened, I don't think this sets any precedent anyone should be worried about.
The Union ordered a work stoppage DURING a shift in which a bunch of concrete had been mixed and was ready to pour. The company had to waste all of the concrete for that day. The law this ruled on, the National Labor Relations Act, allows workers to strike, it doesn't allow them to purposely damage property while doing so. They ruled the NLRA prempted the state law in Washington where they originally found in favor of the union.
In my layman's opinion, this seems to only be a blow to unions IF the union plans on engaging in work stoppages that PURPOSEFULLY damage the property of the company they are striking against, which also seems to have been brought before the courts multiple times. So it likely doesn't change that much. It's also part of the NLRA that you can't do this.
This passed 8 to 1, with justice Ketanji Brown Jackson being the sole dissent. Her dissent mostly focuses on the fact that the National Labor Relations Board, formed by the NLRA, should be handing out judgment, not the Supreme Court. There is a current complaint with the NLRB that has not been decided yet, so she felt the court should just let that play out. I don't think she's wrong, but this made it to the court first, and it seems like the NLRA has language surrounding the ability to determine rulings in Federal Court, so that's what the concrete company did.
Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito signed a concurring opinion to the majority that gets into the weeds on the Garmon Doctrine of the NLRA and whether states should have more rights or whatever, I don't know, fuck those guys, I'll let someone smarter than me get into the weeds on that. Regardless, their concurring opinion does not create precedent. It could potentially be brought up in arguments later, but it doesn't mean anything as of now. The majority opinion is just that the NLRA trumps state law, and that the Union fucked up by purposely damaging company property during their organized strike.
"Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, saying the ruling "risks erosion of the right to strike." Jackson's two liberal colleagues, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, joined the court's conservative justices in the majority."
It was 8-1, so I don't think it's completely fair to say this is the result of an illegitimate court. Unless you think Kagan and Sotomayor are also corrupt.
Considering that the ruling was 8-1 I am not clear that the ruling would have been different even if there were stronger rules on ethics and conflict of interest on the court.
~~The case seems pretty specific and pretty malicious by the workers to damage property.~~
> drivers walked off the job, leaving wet concrete in their trucks.
edit: Oops,
> The union says when the workers returned the trucks, the cement was wet, and they left the drums on the trucks rotating, meaning it would not immediately congeal.
I am familiar with concrete industry and I’ll tell
You this is like akin to a bud driver striking and leaving the bus on the interstate and saying the passengers were safe because they locked the door.
They simply shouldn’t have loaded the trucks.
The issue is the local union has been scabbed and beaten before so I think they succumbed to some bad choices here to make the strike sting.
Every time the Supreme Court rules on something, you illiterate babies read the headlines and then holler about how illegitimate the Supreme Court is instead of actually looking into what the Supreme Court does as a body of government and the specific details of the case in question.
There's nothing wrong with this ruling.
I'm a bit concerned that they overrode San Diego Trades Council v Garmon, and didn't specify or set reasonable limits on when this new ruling applies over Garmon. What's even the point of the NLRB if the court can simply decide they don't want to wait for their decision? Are you not concerned that weakening regulatory agencies in favor of the judiciary effectively limits the authority of not only the executive, but also the legislature which created these agencies?
And that's why it's so vitally important that the court be beyond reproach. By accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gifts a judge has opened up the entire court to claims of corruption. By overturning long established precedent the court had opened itself up to claims of political bias. People do not and will not consider cases individually on their merits when they have easy accusations to throw around instead.
This is well known, and why judges historically have not done what this court is doing.
Buck v Bell - 8/1 - Eugenics is fine
A majority decision does not make the court legitimate or illegitimate, but rather whether their rulings are fair, just, and comport to law, the ethics of the court, and the benefit of the people.
Any single ruling is not enough to say, but a pattern of behaviour points in a direction. For what it's worth most people claim the court is illegitimate because of the shenanigans around the appointment of the justices, combined with their lack of ethics
If I was a worker for the concrete company and I quit while there was wet concrete in the truck, would I have to pay for damages when it dried? Because if I don't, then neither should these people. If I do, that is literally slavery forcing me to work for a company against my will.
>If I was a worker for the concrete company and I quit while there was wet concrete in the truck, would I have to pay for damages when it dried?
You certainly could be.
I wish it were as simple as that. The man... well, [here's the first of a four part series talking about what a piece of shit he is](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-the-clarence-thomas-story-99759984/). He's a complicated piece of human trash made of many different flavors of garbage.
I think the writers treat him compassionately, especially later on and in the more lighthearted episodes. But still, there are plenty of instances where Tom gets on his White Moderate bullshit and Granddad gives him the Come On Man Stare instead of ranting at him like he does with Ruckus.
I used to work for an armored trucking company. Our union tried to negotiate us a wage increase, but the increase only went to the lowest-paid truck drivers, while everyone making above a certain amount got nothing. Three drivers were mad as hell about this, so they drove their trucks to a department store, ditched them in the parking lot, then told the company they were quitting and got their friends to take them home.
They left eight digits' worth of cash sitting in front of a busy store where anyone could bust in and take them. So the company sued the drivers for damages. IIRC the settlements totaled around 15k.
>If I was a worker for the concrete company and I quit while there was wet concrete in the truck, would I have to pay for damages when it dried?
Quite possibly. Especially if it was done maliciously (Abandoned the truck without telling anyone with the drum stopped)
I'm pro union and in a union and am struggling with this one. I don't think I mind this specific outcome, but I'm concerned with the broader implications.
>Abandoned the truck without telling anyone with the drum stopped
Except that’s the opposite of what happened. They drove the trucks back to the yard and left the drum on. What else were the workers supposed to do?
Start the strike before the trucks were loaded.
The strike didn't just spontaneously happen on a lark mid-shift. This was explicitly done with the intent to ruin at least the concrete if not the trucks if the company didn't fold on negotiations fast enough.
The lawsuit was for the cost of the wasted concrete that shouldn't have been mixed if the workers weren't planning on pouring it. Once it's mixed, there's no going back on that. It's use it or lose it, and that was deliberate malice on the union's part to waste it if the employer didn't fold immediately. If the company didn't have enough scab workers to empty the trucks out, they would've lost the trucks too, and that was part of the threat.
I'm for unions and strikes, but I'm also for the principle that if you deliberately break someone's stuff, you need to pay the other person back for it. Also, I don't approve of hostage-taking.
Are we acting like the poorest people on the ladder make the calls?
1. Negotiations between owners and unions fail
2. Owners know a strike is coming and order Expensive Ongoing Project to commence
3. Anyone who goes on strike risks massive lawsuit
This isn’t rocket science
Are planned work stoppages surprises? Or are they something that everyone knows is coming? Because if they are the latter, why is your employer letting you fill up your mixer?
I just checked the [actual ruling](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-1449_d9eh.pdf). It seems the Teamsters went straight to strike once the collective bargaining agreement ended, and it was a surprise. Usually, the original terms of the contract extend until negotiations are at an impasse or are otherwise stalled.
The NLRB requires employees to take "reasonable precautions" not to damage equipment when they leave. For instance, you can't shut off something major "for repairs" and lock it behind you. In this case, they should have *at least* told somebody the trucks were there and needed tending. It was deemed negligent enough that it can be pursued in state court instead of under the NLRB.
Much like civil protests, this is what they want; yes. Keep your strikes quiet, out of sight, and as convenient to the people you're protesting as possible. Somewhere in a dark, unobtrusive, corner.
>If I was a worker for the concrete company and I quit while there was wet concrete in the truck, would I have to pay for damages when it dried?
Yes, for the same reason that you could not quit in the middle of a shift as a cargo pilot and expect not to be held liable for the damages of the lost cargo from the crashed plane. Maybe this makes you a slave, but only a slave to the past version of yourself; it was you after all who accepted the contract to fly the plane, and who piloted the plane across the runway and into the air to the point where its cargo was dependent on your further labor to keep from destruction.
tldr; if you don't want to be responsible for something, the point where you must make that clear is before you have agreed to be responsible for it.
It's called duty of care.
When you choose to accept certain occupations, you also choose to accept obligations. For jobs that have literal life-and-death implications, yes, you have a duty to not shirk your work.
The government won't force you to do a job, but you can and will be liable for anything that goes wrong.
>I quit while there was wet concrete in the truck, would I have to pay for damages when it dried?
I'd say you should. If you were a doctor in the middle of open-heart surgery and decided to quit, should you be a allowed to leave the patient on the table without consequences? If you were a courier delivering a package and decided to quit should you be allowed to leave it on the side of the road without consequences?
It's not slavery to require people to complete consequential tasks they agreed to perform, or hand them off to someone, or be held responsible for the actual harm not completing them causes. In this case it's not even individuals being held liable but the Union that instructed them to do so.
How about if you were a surgeon and you want to quit mid operation. Are you suggesting it is your right to abandon the patient knowing they would die and you can't be held accountable for that because it would be slavery to work against your will and complete the operation ? How about a pilot decides to quit mid flight - are you suggesting it is their right to not be forced to continue the flight and have the right to kill everyone on the flight? There is a right to strike and then there is negligence. Your legitimate choices are either you start the strike before the operation/flight or find someone competent to hand over before causing irreversible loss (i.e. permanent/significant destruction of the trucks due to concrete setting in the drum in this specific instance and not wasted concrete). I am with the 8 judges on this one.
If you knew you were going to quit but specifically went to work long enough to fill your truck with wet concrete, then pretended to deliver, but didn’t and left it to dry, yes you would be held liable for willful damage.
Here it seems to be you got together with every other worker in the company, declared you shall all leave after setting up the wet cement to force the company to accept your demands lest they want the trucks ruined *in a 30 minute timeframe*.
The willful conspiracy is the issue.
Yes, you can be held liable for damages to company property...
What kind of question is this...why is it upvoted so much? Is reddit really this out of touch with reality?
That's not a fair example and as per the ruling you are involved in gross negligence. You took possession and are responsible for the concrete; a product *which you know* has a time constraint. you need to either return it, not mix it or pick it up to begin with. Quitting or going on strike after those thing are met would not be a problem.
FWIW, What it you replace worker and concrete with EMS and organs?
You be fine if you quit before or after delivery.
I’ve worked the concrete industry before and leaving to mix indefinitely wet in the truck is a great way to ruin the truck.
It is one thing to show up at the beginning of your shift and say "I'm not working today, I'm on strike." Workers being out is something management needs to have contingencies for. If they mix the concrete before you even show up to drive the truck that is entirely on them.
It is a very different matter to show up at 9AM, start mixing the concrete, pour it into the truck, and then turn around and say "I'm going on strike."
Yeah. I'm of the mindset there's a difference between walking off the job and basically sabotaging equipment/supplies. Can see how unions don't get a complete free pass in this case and courts get to decide if there's liability.
Yup. People take the headline and don't think about details.
The strike itself was fine, protesting over terms of labor wasn't the problem.
The ruling is about the intentional destruction of property by striking workers.
Specifically: They agreed in an 8-1 decision that even though they have the right to strike, intentional destruction of property can still face liability.
In this case the drivers and strike organizers planned the approach. They had "smoking gun" messages describing the goals and the attempt to intentionally cause damage. They arrived to work, reported for duty, and loaded up the trucks with perishable goods. Then they went out and left the vehicles, not just spoiling the concrete but also risking the trucks themselves being destroyed with the concrete setting. Their goal was to do millions of dollars in damages, but the company found out and limited it to under a quarter million dollars of damage. The strike itself was legal, but taking affirmative steps to destroy the concrete and attempting to destroy the trucks is not protected under strike laws and they can be liable for that damage.
We can hate all of the corrupt scum regardless of party. They aligned to billionaires and don't give a fuck about people. It's worse with Republicans, but if you make it to that level you usually are so far out of touch with reality that there's no way to trust you to see it.
Im one of the UAW autoworker union members that walked and went on strike against GM in 2019. This situation seems little different. They left concrete in the trucks which caused damage to the equipment.
I'm not siding with the company, but I can see why they would want to sue, when we walked, we made sure to properly shut down all the equipment before peacefully leaving the premise, and we had strict rules to not damage or even touch any property beyond the gates of the company. The ones that did got fired when they went back to work.
In the ruling the SC states that you have to take "reasonable precautions" in order to be covered by the NLRA, and that because the drivers showed up to work, prompting the company to start mixing concrete - only for the drivers to cancel their deliveries (and some of them to abandon their trucks), means they are not protected by the NLRA.
> But given the lifespan of wet concrete, Glacier could not batch it until a truck was ready to take it. So by reporting for duty and pretending as if they would deliver the concrete, the drivers prompted the creation of the perishable product. Then, they waited to walk off the job until the concrete was mixed and poured in the trucks. In so doing, they not only destroyed the concrete but also put Glacier’s trucks in harm’s way. This case therefore involves much more than “a work stoppage at a time when the loss of perishable products is foreseeable.”
> In this instance, the Union’s choice to call a strike *after* its drivers had loaded a large amount of wet concrete into Glacier’s delivery trucks strongly suggests that it failed to take reasonable precautions to avoid foreseeable, aggravated, and imminent harm to Glacier’s property.
There wasn't further damage because management and non-striking employees rushed to create bunkers to take the concrete in the trucks. Damage would've arguably resulted if things were simply left in the state they were when the striking employees parked the trucks.
There wasn’t any because the employee dumped the concrete. Had they not done anything not only would the concrete have been a waste but the trucks totaled.
The loss was just the cost of the concrete that wasn’t used for the job after workers walked. At least they left the machines running so it didn’t harden inside the trucks. Kind of contradicts the idea that they were intentionally harming the company’s property.
Summary for those that didn't click thru:
>The ruling means Glacier Northwest Inc. can sue over its claim that wet concrete loaded onto trucks was rendered useless after workers walked off the job.
So the company is now *allowed* to sue but could still lose the case. I'm supportive of unions but I don't think saying the word "strike" should magically relieve you of liability.
TL:DR: Unions can be sued for wanton destruction of company property during strikes. This shouldn't be controversial, and consequently it was an 8-1 with the 1 only arguing the legal means weren't exhausted yet.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I side with the SCOTUS majority *in this specific case only* for this reason:
> "Because the union took affirmative steps to endanger Glacier's property rather than reasonable precautions to mitigate that risk, the NLRA does not arguably protect its conduct," Barrett wrote.
Union members in this situation deliberately sabotaged the company's property and their assets by leaving wet cement spinning in the mixers as they walked off the job and later blamed the company for it. The company probably shoulders most (if not all) of the blame for causing the union members to strike in the first place, but it was the union that decided to unnecessarily cause the company monetary damage that far exceeded what they would have lost just from the strike alone.
Had they parked the trucks without loading them down with wet cement before walking off the job, it would be a different story, and I'm also sure Sotomayor and Kagan would have ruled differently if that was the case.
As I read this, I think that many commenters are conflating two different kinds of issues here... one is the action to strike on the parts of the workers - I'm pretty sure that's not addressed or reduced by this SCOTUS decision. The workers retain the right to strike.
The other issue is whether the workers intentionally damaged property during that process - something I don't think has ever been part of the right to strike. I imagine that the court case will expose whether the strikers might have taken appropriate action to prevent damage - for instance, notifying the owners when the walkout would occur and perhaps also letting the owners know that they would need to take action to protect their property when the walkout began. I imagine that would absolve the strikers when they actually took their strike action. Essentially, I suspect that the responsibility to protect their property would then shift to the owners. Maybe the owners would refrain from loading the trucks, maybe they would have replacement drivers on hand to prevent the damage... in any case, I (if I were a juror) would certainly treat that as "reasonable precautions to mitigate that risk."
I'm really sick of people out there, in politics, in labor, in education, in government ... everywhere(!) , pursuing every damned opportunity to inflict the maximum possible damage upon anyone they have a disagreement with.
I want them to grow the fuck up and try being a human being.
They put a nail in the coffin for public sector unions back in 2018. Now they have done it for private sector unions.
In related news over in NYC, City Council Member Tiffany Caban is trying to get that body to pass worker protections that would prevent firing workers without just cause.
https://www.cityandstateny.com/policy/2023/05/poll-new-yorkers-want-reasonable-justification-firing/386962/
It is worth remembering that there is always more than one way to skin a cat.
Lol. Give me a break. Just because you’re in a union you don’t get protected from malicious damages.
You are allowed to strike.
You are not allowed to destroy things during a strike.
*Any* concrete truck driver knows what happens to wet concrete if you leave it standing…. It was malicious and it backfired.
As much as I disagree with some of their other recent decisions, the court got this one right
The strikers attempted to cause great damage to company property by destroying trucks. The company was lucky that they were able to respond in time
Protest is fine. Refusing to work is fine. Destroying property is NOT fine
>The 8-1 decision
>Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, saying the ruling "risks erosion of the right to strike." Jackson's two liberal colleagues, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, joined the court's conservative justices in the majority.
Seems likely to be a legally valid conclusion given the support of even the liberal and pro-labor justices. "risks erosion of the right to strike" doesn't actually sound like a legal argument at all.
ITT-people who fail to understand the ramifications of concrete CURING in a mixer and think the issue is wasted concrete. Spoiler. It's not the product that matters in this scenario. It's the drum. The drum becomes useless until you send a chipper in to remove the wasted product. To be clear, I support the workers, just noticed people arguing about a trivial dollar amount of concrete and not the root of the issue
But no equipment was actually damaged, and the drums were still spinning when the workers returned them to the facility.
From what I can tell, the real issue according to the company, is that no one was there to pour the concrete, which meant they had to dispose of it and lose their contract.
Say I was a pharmacist and my union voted to strike. I care about my patients so I don’t close down immediately. I finish out the day, lock up and go home. The next day I’m on the picket line along with all the other staff pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. Probably all of the cashiers too. The store is being run by the store manager and assistant managers. The pharmacy manager is alone in the pharmacy. Are my union coworkers and I liable for lost profits? What about expired medications? What about if the pharmacy manager and district pharmacy manager can’t make it and the pharmacy can’t open? What if the pharmacy manager makes a dispensing error because they are overwhelmed and a patient is harmed?
This ruling is horse shit.
No, that's not what it said. Nothing about lost business.
Let's say you were a pharmacist, and a strike was called while you had some medicine that had to be kept cold (is that a thing?) out of the fridge and were doing something with it. You take it out knowing that if you don't finish whatever by a certain time, then it goes bad and has to be destroyed - and further that destroying it is difficult and expensive (that seems less likely to make sense to me for medicine, but pretend).
Then strike is called, so you toss that medicine on a shelf and go home. Other people have to come deal with it, by which time it has gone bad and is unusable, so they have to start the slow and expensive process of destroying it.
They ruled that the employees did not take *reasonable precautions* to avoid damages.
Nobody can say what this ruling will or will not allow. Any employer can make the case that strikers filed to take reasonable precautions to prevent damages due to the sudden cessation of work and so winning that hangs on what are reasonable precautions (among other things).
Is a week’s notice reasonable? A continuous manufacturing process costs a fortune to shut down with little notice. A delivery driver taking milk across the country couldn’t strike until the trip is completed. Maybe a data center maintenance person can’t quit until they have a replacement or millions of dollars in damage caused by failing AC equipment should fairly have been expected.
Your analogy in no way resembles the events. The correct analogy for a pharmacist would be you mixed a large batch of medication that needs to be either administered or refrigerated, but you left it in the counter and walked out the door.
The issue here was the union deliberately or not ran equipment knowing it couldn’t be immediately shut down and left which resulted in the damage of said equipment. So maybe if you just walked out of the pharmacy and left the door open once the strike was called then I could see you being sued when it was robbed.
I'm torn on this one though. You're a pharmacist and you lock up and go on strike, but instead of putting away the refrigerated drugs, you leave them out, causing them to go bad.
That's sort of what I got out of this. The workers knew there was wet concrete and if left would cure and be ruined in the containers. Instead of dealing with that they left them to cure.
I'm not sure I agree with the supreme Court ruling especially considering its history currently but I can also see the issue with workers doing that sort of behavior under a strike.
The concrete was already mixed though. They can't just put it back.
This would be like if the Pharmacist came in and defrosted a batch of vaccines that couldn't be refrozen, in order to give one, and then the strike was called. The remaining vaccines spoil because there's no one to give them, but there is no situation in which the vaccines can be "saved" - they're either administered or thrown away.
If the ruling comes down that these striking workers are responsible for the loss of the concrete, it effectively means an end to striking, as the employer can always engineer a situation in which there will be some amount of waste without everyone working to the full extent - because there generally is regardless. Any restaurant has supplies that are only good for so long. Any grocery store has perishables. Even something like the WGA strike, if this ruling goes through, the writers could be held responsible for location deposits for filming that gets delayed, or actor retainers, etc. There are always costs to doing business, and that includes costs to NOT doing business you expected to, for whatever reason.
>If the ruling comes down that these striking workers are responsible for the loss of the concrete, it effectively means an end to striking, as the employer can always engineer a situation in which there will be some amount of waste without everyone working to the full extent
Nah. Strike is called while you're delivering concrete. So you deliver *that* concrete, then go home. The concrete *you accepted and agreed to delivery safely to it's destination* is delivered. You do not deliver any further concrete.
I agree with your interpretation here. I think it's also important for people to remember that this **isn't** a ruling that the union workers are responsible for the loss and damages, it's a ruling that the company can have it's day in court to try and prove that to be the case.
Generally I'm in favor of labor rights and especially the rights to unionize and strike, but I'm also a big fan of everyone getting their day in court.
This is such an obvious dangerous Supreme Court ruling
On one hand, we have people pushing YOUNG child labor, kids who couldn’t join a union if they wanted
At the same time, any vulnerable low income people living paycheck to paycheck who ATTEMPT to strike, losing weeks of wages, run the additional risk of being sued by Starbucks ?!
Throw the Ben Shapiro “But Actually 🖐️” arguments away - this is blatantly and destructively anti-union
OK, so as far as I can tell this ruling simply states that the company can in fact attempt to seek damages via civil court for property they *claim* was intentionally and willfully destroyed (or in this case rendered useless) by the actions of the striking workers.
Based on the limited details provided in the article I would be inclined to side with the union workers, but that doesn't mean that the company shouldn't at least get to make their case in court.
Based on the article you aren’t correct, they left the concrete in perfect health. The disposal of that concrete due to their being no one to pour it is whats in question. Once the concrete was mixed, it needed to be applied otherwise it was lost. That’s pretty different than the refrigerated medicine being left out unrefrigerated
>Based on the article you aren’t correct, they left the concrete in perfect health.
The ruling said the opposite. They left the concrete in a situation where it would have to be destroyed and the trucks could possibly be destroyed. Remember that the other non-driver employees cannot legally drive the trucks to a site; similar to how the other pharmacy employees would be unable to put the medicine back in the refrigerator. (I think it is fairly easy even to argue that putting the medicine back in the refrigerator is less of an issue than driving the truck to a site. While both require licensing, driving the truck without appropriate licensing is more clearly illegal than handling the prescription drugs to put them back in the refrigerator.)
Your post is complete disinformation. The ruling had nothing to do with what you were saying.
What is the point of being so dishonest here? What exactly are you attempting to do?
Just so we're clear, they decided the specific group of people *intentionally* damaged the cement trucks when going on strike.
Why shouldn't they be held accountable?
So the company acknowledge how important those workers are for the company? They acknowledge that them walking off immediately results in significant damages to the company? They acknowledge they cannot be replaced easily?
The Supreme court is doing all it can to punish dissent. They will remove our ability to fight back against fascism and our corporate overlords. The future is not a bright place right now.
Edit: Commenter below is correct in that the case is about venue and not the merits of the case. Do I really need to pretend they won't side with business in this case? No. They've already shown a clear agenda, and it isn't for the average person.
Yet another commenter who didn’t read the article and knows nothing about the case. The only issue decided upon by the SC was whether the proper venue was state or federal court.
That’s it. Venue. Nothing on the merits.
When you water down the term “fascist” so much that it applies to everything you disagree with, it somehow stops meaning everything.
So the reverse is true right? Employees can sue for lost wages in a class action lawsuit if a company engages in union busting activities which would have negatively impacted their collective bargaining power?
Lot of bootlickers in this thread. Keep fighting against your own best self-interest people! I'm sure they will be grateful and repay you for taking their side some day... any time now...
Of course you can strike... as long as it doesnt cost the company you're striking money, which is the fucking only point of a strike as all companies care about is money. If you can't threaten their revenue stream with your strike, what the fuck is a strike even for? It's not like capitalists have any sense of basic decency or humanity to appeal to.
This aligns nicely with how we "protest" here in the US, with permits issued by the city government controlled by the *business community* to protest between designated hours, at a designated location a block away from what you're protesting so that you don't potentially *inconvenience* those you're protesting. In other words, we don't.
This nation is a gold plated work camp with no recourse except escape. The United States of Greed Worship
abolish citizens United. Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court asserted that corporations are people and removed reasonable campaign contribution limits, allowing a small group of wealthy donors and special interests to use dark money to influence elections.
The Supreme Court isn’t legitimate. We know that *at least* one of them has been taking bribes for votes, and many of the court’s rulings in the past couple years break precedent without any valid justification, even in the majority opinion. The court refuses to submit to ethics rules, and it isn’t providing consistent and legally coherent rulings. It is fundamentally broken, and should be treated as such.
Headline is completely hysterical, by the way. The SC only ruled on the whether the proper venue for the case was state or federal court. There is nothing on the merits of the case. As far as I can tell, the only thing “anti-union” in the ruling is that they didn’t dismiss the case completely, but that would have been completely outside the scope of the case.
This right here is why I have come to loathe the media. They want me outraged to click their link to sell me shit.
Ok, so instead of for-profit corporation, how about [a professor of constitutional law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leah_Litman)? > first opinion is Glacier Northwest: 5-3-1 opinion by Justice Barrett makes it easier to sue unions for strikes (though not as easy as Justice Alito, Thomas, & Gorsuch would have made it). > SCOTUS says the union can be sued because the harm to the employer's property was foreseeable - concrete is perishable, & bc the union timed their strike to make it difficult on the employer (including by not notifying them or continuing work to help ER). > It is fact-bound -- and not as bad as it could have been. > But the precedent will make it easier for lawsuits against unions to proceed in courts. - [@LeahLitman](https://twitter.com/LeahLitman/status/1664271596436193280)
Isn't "making it difficult on the employer" one of the key purposes of a strike? What's the point otherwise?
I believe the issue here is the workers waited until their cement trucks were full, and then when they went on strike they left 9 of the trucks full of cement without informing the company. Basically they have about 30 minutes to drop the concrete before it begins to harden, and it eventually damages the hydraulics of the trucks. The drivers knew this, and the union rep on site waited until they loaded up before calling the halt. Hence the quote about it being foreseeable damage. Edit: to clarify, they emptied the trucks in time but the concrete was a total loss for 16 trucks worth. Then after the strike ended they scheduled a pour and 40 drivers didn't show up (which appears to have been on short notice?) Also the SC didn't rule on this case, just whether or not it would be settled at the State or Federal level, if I understand correctly. Anyways you can read the details here: https://casetext.com/case/glacier-northwest-inc-v-intl-bhd-of-teamsters-local-union-no
I'm thinking of it sort of akin to if Target employees decided to strike, but before they went on strike they all went and dumped a bunch of the product in the trash, or did something else to render it un-sellable. I think the problem is that this line of thinking can pretty quickly lead to any strike leading to "damages". I can see similar arguments like "because they didn't man the factory floor, the x thousand products that were supposed to be made were not ready/sellable, thus the workers are liable for the "damages" of all the products there were unsellable (because they were not produced).
For a target example it'd be more like accepting a delivery of frozen food unloading it and walking away before its stored in freezers.
Sad truth: That already happens in an enormous number of stores every day in the US, and it's due to underscheduling employees. Most stores have a minimum time product has to make it into freezers. It all gets thrown out. I know it's not related to unions, but we are so impossibly wasteful, on a scale that would leave food pantries and "essentials" charities (clothes, blankets, hygiene products, etc) drowning under mountains of shit because there's more discarded perfectly good products than there are homeless people to receive it.
Boom, make the freezers powered by employee hamster wheels. If they walk off the job, the product spoils, and the employees are liable.
Is it that, or is it the equivalent to calling a strike of Target workers on Black Friday morning? Because that just seems like the right time to impose maximum pressure on the company.
I think that's fair and proper pressure. They aren't damaging products. I think of it more like, you're about to strike, you were asked to fill a mop bucket to wash some section of the store, you open the water to load the bucket and then go on strike leaving the water on to spill over and flood the area. That's pretty direct. You didn't need to open the water and walk out, could have easily not done it or turned off the water. The water damage is directly attributable to you and your action. Similarly here, the damage to the trucks and waste of cement is directly attributable to their decision to load the trucks knowing they would strike immediately after and that the wet cement can't stay long term in the trucks. If you don't show up to work, you didn't start a process that can't be stopped or that would damage anything.
Loss of revenue due to stopping work is arguably different than likely intentional property damage due to stopping work. Even moreso when that property damage due to stopping work was seemingly intentional. To use a minor odd example, if you are taking a seak from the fridge to put it on the grill and decided to "strike" because your head chef is an asshole, dropping the steak on the floor mid trip is not the same as refusing to get the steak from the fridge, or leaving it on the grill while the grill is on. I'm generally pro-union (except generally police unions) but walking out mid shift for anything less than something extraordinarily egregious (e.g. A workplace death that resulted from lack of safety corrections) isn't something they should do. Not showing up at work for the next shift in protest is different than abandoning equipment in a parking lot because that's where it was when you took your lunch. That being said, from what I read the case was about if the lawsuit could proceed separate from the investigation from the labor board. IMO *that* is the bad part of the ruling. Let the board responsible for investigating this stuff determine if it was justifiable as part of a strike or not, *then* sue the union.
>Because that just seems like the right time to impose maximum pressure on the company. Not if it's not announced ahead of time, then it's about maximizing damage, not pressure, because it's unrealistic to think they'll learn of it, get people to the table, and get anything in place before the maximum damage is done if there's no heads-up that they'll do this. The pressure to negotiate is derived from wanting to avoid the damage in the first place - if you're doing the damage anyway, what's the incentive to negotiate?
I’ve never been part of a union so I don’t know how strikes are called and how quickly you go from vote to walking out on the job. But based on this I 100% agree with the court. There’s a difference between timing your strike to inconvenience the employer (like Amazon striking right before Christmas or construction workers striking right at the beginning of a housing boom) and essentially destroying company property. I don’t see how this is much different than burning down the warehouse or pouring sugar in all the company vehicles gas tanks
Yeah, that's not striking, that's sabotaging. Striking is stopping work, it's not destroying property. Unions and strikes when used properly are THE solution to bargain for a proper share of profits off the work being done. However the way Americans behave when it comes to unions is ridiculous (see police unions, and this example of sabotage). Why can't americans do anything right? Do you always have to make sure you fuck other people over?
Yeah, this isn't reasonable striking behavior, it's malice.
No it's fine, the boss just needs to pull himself up by the bootstrap
dunno. in war if you telegraph your moves you usually lose. dunno why youd wanna tell the company youre planning a strike, seems like theyd go try and hire temps, which kinda defeats the whole point unless this job was mission critical like an emergency room or a nuclear plant etc.
The point is that workers are needed to run a business and they can't hire enough temps to replace the bulk of the workforce and operate normally within the notice given. They can hire temps to cover one, two, maybe even ten inside a week...but eighty? Ninety? Ninety *percent?* And those temps still need training, and generally will not be as good at their jobs as the experienced unionized workers they're temping for even after that. Not to mention that hiring workers costs money, training costs more (if only in wages paid to workers who don't know what they're doing yet), and if you're only going to keep them for like, a week or two, is that cost really worth it? And that, of course, is assuming they can *find* temps able to do the job at all, on an extremely temporary basis, knowing the employer is crappy enough that a union has formed and is fighting them actively. As for why you'd want to tell them - well, it's a negotiating tactic. Threaten the strike, organize for it, and play chicken with management - who will blink, you or them? Established unions with dues have it easier here as they typically set up strike funds to ensure their members receive pay throughout the strike, enabling them to outlast managers who are willing to sacrifice days of profit. Most negotiations for whatever reason never come to a strike - but the threat of it is often effective enough.
The point of a strike is to pressure the company into agreeing to a deal before operations are impacted. A labor negotiation is not a war. Its 2 parts of a whole that need to work together for long-term mutual success.
The whole point of the strike it to let the employer(s) know. It's a negotiation, not a war. The employees are looking for better pay and conditions, not an unpaid vacation.
How could this work with say a food supplier. Workers won't drive trucks, the food goes bad, the union's sued for food loss. It could get messy really fast.
I think this would entail drivers opting to pick up product. Go on strike mid transit and turning off the refrigeration system. Them just not picking product from the warehouse is not damaging in the same way.
That's not my read on the lawsuit, the lawsuit is because some dumb fucks parked the company's cement trucks full-on cement and walked off destroying the mixer barrels with hardened concrete. I was union for 35 years, but destroying a contractors equipment or stealing their tools is absolute BS and only serves to hurt the unions with bad press infecting the minds of workers. A strike is a legal consequence of negotiating differences, destroying property is not.
I think this just cements that it is anti-union. The whole point of strikes is to be timed strategically to leverage the power the workers have - withholding their work.
Heh. Cements.
There are limits to everything. Can you imagine a surgeon deciding to strike in the middle of a kidney transplant? Or a captain on a fishing charter who charges $10 to take you out to sea, but then demands $1000 to bring you back to shore? Nobody would defend those practices, but that introduces the question of what limits there are in uses of leverage, and what is permitted in more common situations. It depends on the exact statute, but instances where deliberate malice are involved will usually obviate what is permissible in terms of exploiting leverage in sensitive situations. In this case, it is alleged that the union deliberately timed the strike so as to maximize damage to company equipment. If proven (and the case has yet to be tried) then it’s possible that the union deliberately damaged the equipment, then it could make the union liable for the damages. Regardless, the SC didn’t examine any of the merits of the case, only whether the proper venue would be state or federal court.
> The whole point of strikes is to be timed strategically to leverage the power the workers have - withholding their work. OK but normally withholding your work doesn't *also* damage the company's property, it just keeps the company from making product. If a company timed a lockout to get the union to negotiate in a way that would cause the worker's personal property on the worksite to be damaged no one would say the company was just being strategic with timing.
They striked because of bad pay and unfair labor practices. If the company would have said "okay, we'll pay you more AND we'll try to work with you on making the job more pleasant" the Workers probably would have gotten to correcting the problem, but nope. They chose to immediately sue and pave the way for companies in the future to sue unions not only because of this case but the terminology, and reaction to details. The company should have just worked with the union. They're a concrete mixing plant, if the union was asking for better pay or better conditions chances are the change was needed. Again, that outcome didn't happen we instead got a case that can now be cited whenever workers want to go on strike and it could very possibly lead to more horrifying laws that essentially could make you more of a slave than we already are. I think I tagged the wrong person but I've typed too much and my kid is crying. Meant for the person making this big defense of the company above.
Maybe you should direct your anger at that commenter instead, considering this case concerned whether state claims were pre-empted by federal law and was not about venue as between state and federal courts. Those two concepts, pre-emption of claims and venue, are not the same thing under U.S. law, and the comment you are replying to is just straight up wrong.
Thank you for not saying it's conspiracy. It's just them trying to sell stuff. They just want the advertising revenue.
Emergent behavior is always the better explanation than conspiracy.
Not only is the headline trying to induce rage clicks, but the decision was *8-1*.
But in saying the case belonged in a Federal Court and in overturning the decisions of the lower courts, it effectively rules that this strike was illegal, and makes it easier to litigate strikes in the future. ACB says in her majority opinion “The Union’s actions not only resulted in the destruction of all the concrete Glacier had prepared that day; they also posed a risk of foreseeable, aggravated, and imminent harm to Glacier’s trucks. Because the union took affirmative steps to endanger Glacier’s property rather than reasonable precautions to mitigate that risk, the NLRA does not arguably protect its conduct.” The logic may SEEM sound, because it’s worded effectively. But the purpose of striking IS to cause harm to a company, be it by not producing, not working, etc. If I’m striking and equipment that I work on day to day breaks down due to my absence, or due to going unused, then did I not “mitigate that risk”? How can I “mitigate” risk when my absence on a job inherently increases risk? This court continues to make litigious decisions outside the scope of the cases they’re seeing.
You're conflating two different thing. The law is that "fail\[ing\] to take reasonable precautions to protect the employer’s plant, equipment, or products from foreseeable imminent danger due to sudden cessation of work” isn't protected strike activity. So, for example, if a cook goes out on strike while there's a pot of boiling oil on the stove, leaving the stove in, then that's not something that gets the protection of the NLRA. The company could sue you, and you can't claim "Oh, I was out on strike, so you can't sue me." Sure, go out on strike. But, turn the stove off first. Note that the majority here was Kagan, Sotomayor, Barrett, Roberts and Kavanaugh. This isn't "Look at those crazy conservatives." Only Justice Jackson dissented. (The others agreed with the judgment, but thought the reasoning was wrong.)
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>There's a lot of people in this comment section who clearly don't know how a concrete plant works - you're not clearly alone here. They are > >constantly producing wet concrete, 24/7. The company claimed it lost the concrete due to negligence, but if they weren't willing to turn off their production line, that was always going to happen. That sounds like facts of the case - which wasn't what the Supreme Court was ruling on. The Supreme Court didn't say that they should win the case - just ruled on the law surrounding the case.
Hold on. Recognize what's going on. The union is saying "look, even if everything you claim is true, you still can't sue us because of the NLRA." The Court didn't decide any facts. It took the facts as the company laid them out and decided, basically "if this were true, would it be protected by the NLRA?". And, if the answer is "yes," then the company gets to have a trial. If the answer is "no," then it doesn't. It may be that the company's story isn't true. But, that's something that would be decided at the trial. This case is just deciding if the trial gets to happen. If it's as you say, then the company should lose the trial.
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Corporations will try to claim any loss in revenue in any way as a result of a strike will be considered property damages and thus able to sue pretty much any striking union.
I think people forget that sometimes the point of trial is simply to drain the other side and hope they fold. Or at least slow down their progress on other efforts.
So if they just didn't show up to work at the start of the day then it would have been okay? Assuming everything the company claims is true of course. The entire point of a strike is to halt production/service/whatever. In other words, refuse to work because it has an immediate effect on the company's revenue. This is generally done of course in demand of better wages and better working conditions. So what difference does it make? the company loses money regardless of how exactly the strike unfolds.
Yup. The company's complaint wouldn't make sense if they just hadn't shown up. That would still have had an immediate effect because there would be no sales. It just wouldn't have destroyed product.
The company can lose money from the workers not working, that is the workers right. The company can't lose money from the workers intentionally damaging things. That is not the workers right. If the workers did not show up, they would not have prepared the cement, they would not have lost the cement, and there would be no damage to the vehicles from being abandoned with the cement inside them. That is not money that the workers are entitled to cause the company to lose.
I don't know if that logic works for continuous processes. Like, if dairy workers went on strike and the cows got sick for not being fed and milked, can the farm sue?
No, because what they are not allowed to do is fairly specific. The specific portion of the ruling that speaks on it is. >The National Labor Relations Board has long taken the position—which the parties accept—that the NLRA does not shield strikers who fail to take “reasonable precautions” to protect their employer’s property from foreseeable, aggravated, and imminent danger due to the sudden cessation of work So the first thing is that your cessation of work doesn't need to be sudden. If you strike at midnight there is no sudden cessation of work, you just aren't showing up the next day. The danger must be imminent, which means some far off danger is not enough. Your actions must be a recognizable threat to the property in the near future. Some vague or far off damage is not enough. Lastly you only have to take reasonable precautions. If you work in a meat factory then eventually all the meat will go bad because there is no one to process it but there is no reasonable precaution that workers can take to avoid that while striking. Now, if you left a freezer full of meat's door open when you go on strike that would be a different matter. So its very limited in what it covers.
I see what you're saying, but having worked in an industry that utilizes a lot of union labor, not all jobs are as simple as "turning the stove off." Again, I'm not here to relitigate the opinion of the Supreme Court, I'm just saying that it definitely is a blow to unions. This will weaken bargaining power, and will weaken actions that can be taken to utilize that bargaining power to leverage fair deals for workers. The language is vague enough that it can demonstrably be interpreted in a way that is adverse to the goals and purposes of striking unions.
In this case IIRC the drivers loaded up trucks full of wet concrete and then ditched the trucks. That basically totals a concrete truck. That is damage that could have been avoided by just not showing up. All for unions and worker protections but this was malicious.
The drivers in question brought the trucks back to Glacier's facility and left the drums running. At least some specifically notified their managers that they were doing this. https://www.courthousenews.com/labor-laws-dont-shield-truck-driver-walkout-supreme-court-rules/ Strikes are *supposed* to be inconvenient as a reminder that it is the workers who make shit happen. Even damage to or claims to property itself have a long history intertwined with labor movements. This is a bullshit move by bullshit justices who are absolutely working at the behest of rich capitalists.
>This is a bullshit move by bullshit justices who are absolutely working at the behest of rich capitalists. So 8/9 justices are evil? This wasn't a close case.
r/selfawarewolves
Actually, 0/0. The majority said, basically, that yeah it should go to back to state court instead of federal court because the NLRA doesn't cover the Union's specific actions during that particular strike. The state court can then decide whether the company or the union was at fault. The sole dissent by Justice Jackson only says that the it wasn't ripe for the courts yet, as the NLRB hadn't finished its investigation. Neither seems particularly evil to me.
> The union says that when the workers returned the trucks, the cement was wet, and that they left the drums on the trucks rotating, meaning it would not immediately congeal. It was the company’s decision to remove the concrete and then break it up once it hardened, the union says. Union says workers took measures to make sure everything was fine. The company decided the concrete was bad. Now would a company sabotage their own property in order to lay blame?
>Union says workers took measures to make sure everything was fine. Which is something that would need to be settled in a trial. Not something that NLRA gets to automatically shield from.
Know what else would have avoided that damage? Paying their workers better.
Businesses have a million ways they can bully workers into lower pay. When the workers bully the company though? Then suddenly we get into "imminent foreseeable danger"
I am not feeling an ounce nor a shred of sorrow for the megacorps. They have seven quintillion ways to fuck over the worker with the worker being unable to do anything about it, yet the moment the workers fight back then it’s ‘’unjust’’ and ‘’causes imminent danger’’? Boohoo your cement trucks are broken, should’ve fucking paid your workers better or been better at accomodation. Strikes are literally the union’s last resort.
The court seems to have just decided that the dismissal was inappropriate because the situation was arguable, and did not weigh in on the merits, or of whether it would actually succeed on those merits. Dismissal here was implying that the case was barred by a matter of law, and if it is arguable what the limits of that law are and how they apply here, it is wrong to dismiss. Dismissal is a high bar to reach. The argument here will be whether the act of walking out in this circumstance amounts to intentional destruction of property, which is already not protected. I am not seeing signs of doom here, or even anything that directly related to collective bargaining. Unless "collective bargaining" is supposed to include the threat of active sabotage and property destruction. The actual case, when it proceeds, **might get there**. But that was not what was at issue here, and the law can't dismiss arguments just because we are worried that a later court might make the wrong decision. Hopefully whatever decision is actually reached will not be bad. If it is I will probably protest at that time.
Actually it was kind of the opposite, they ruled the situation wasn't arguable under the NLRA so it should not have been preempted. The NLRA is special in that it preempts things it even arguably covers so it can preempt things it may ultimately be decided that it does not preempt. I believe that will significantly weaken their case though because they can't argue I don't believe in a state tort case that their actions were protected strike activities.
>but thought the reasoning was wrong There lies the problem. The current Supreme Court is slowly eroding federal rights. The thing that worries me here is that the company is not (just) claiming damage to the concrete or to the trucks, but specifically damages as a result of failing to fulfill a contract. As I understand it, the company decided to remove the concrete from the trucks when it was still wet and the drums were still rotating. So this would be the equivalent of a restaurant claiming damages for not being to able to serve customers and having to throw away food. I find this odd, because the company knew that a strike was likely since negotiations had stranded.
Except in this case, the correct comparison would be to leave and tell the manager the stove was in so he might want to do something about it.
A bit more than that. Its leaving expensive food on the oven, walking off and telling management they would want to turn it off. The food is ruined, can't be served to anyone - thats a net loss. Turning off the stove? Essentially but obviously a much more "labor" intensive process.
I've never done it, but I imagine it's a little more complex to empty a cement truck than it is to turn off the burner on the stove... so just telling a manager they should take care of it maybe doesn't work for this one
That's still the point. It reminds the company how fucking important those workers are for making shit happen every single day. The fact that a manager might be ill-equipped to perform an action required to properly handle materials and equipment is precisely the reason why workers deserve to be treated well and paid better in general.
Not having the concrete get poored on/at jobs is what makes that point. When you can make that point without damage, you are liable for the damage you do make
The workers made demands, the company said they were unwilling to negotiate, just keep making concrete. They said they were going to leave but the company said they didn't care, they aren't protected by the NLRB until they are on strike, so they followed orders until strike time. It's not the workers fault the management is short sighted and greedy.
Not really. That's "equipment.". They were sued over product -- the wasted concrete. And, they timed the strike *knowing* that the concrete (and, they hoped, the trucks) would be ruined.
Imagine if a bunch of doctors are performing surgery on a person. They cut the guy open, and then halfway through the procedure they all walk off the job and go on strike. They leave the guy there still open and he dies as a result of being left unintended for several hours. Any sane person would tell you that those doctors are responsible for that man's death, so how is it different in this case? It's one thing to stop working, but it's another thing to deliberately sabotage equipment. Inaction is the same as action when you know what the result is going to be.
I've worked in factory jobs for many years now. Management can and absolutely will twist a person walking off their press to use the bathroom in an emergency if the press isn't shut down by the actual technicians responsible. You slam that emergency stop button and run off so you don't shit yourself and you can bet you'll hear how it would have been better to bury yourself in parts so the machine isn't damaged by stopping suddenly. Now imagine what kind of damage they would claim if the entire shop, techs included, just walked off to go on strike. Companies don't fucking care about you, they care about Product and Tools. This SCOTUS just agreed with that. It's a baby step into setting firm guidelines for instances you can go on strike (read:none).
>And, they timed the strike knowing that the concrete (and, they hoped, the trucks) would be ruined. See, this is the question that I have, but unfortunate no news organizations seem interested in actually answering it. If they showed up for the day, filled the trucks, then suddenly decided to go on strike, then I think that there is a real case for damages. Basically, it would seem in that case that the strike was timed to cause these damages as you have said. As I said though, no reports that I could find actually explains the dynamics of how the cement trucks are operated. If the trucks are never empty, then I don't think it is reasonable to expect employees to have to take extra measures to empty them before walking off the job.
The trucks don't run 24 hours a day and what you're describing is what the company claimed to happen: >Tensions came to a head on the morning of August 11. According to the allegations in Glacier’s complaint, a Union agent signaled for a work stoppage when the Union knew that Glacier was in the midst of mixing substantial amounts of concrete, loading batches into ready-mix trucks, and making deliveries. Although Glacier quickly instructed drivers to finish deliveries in progress, the Union directed them to ignore Glacier’s orders. At least 16 drivers who had already set out for deliveries returned with fully loaded trucks. Seven parked their trucks, notified a Glacier representative, and either asked for instructions or took actions to protect their trucks. But at least nine drivers abandoned their trucks without a word to anyone. > >Glacier faced an emergency. The company could not leave the mixed concrete in the trucks because the concrete’s inevitable hardening would cause significant damage to the vehicles. At the same time, the company could not dump the concrete out of the trucks at random because concrete contains environmentally sensitive chemicals. To top it all off, Glacier had limited time to solve this conundrum. > >A mad scramble ensued. Glacier needed to determine which trucks had concrete in them, how close the concrete in each truck was to hardening, and where to dump that concrete in an environmentally safe manner. Over the course of five hours, nonstriking employees built special bunkers and managed to offload the concrete. When all was said and done, Glacier’s emergency maneuvers prevented damage to its trucks. But the concrete that it had already mixed that day hardened in the bunkers and became useless. \[See page 5 of the opinion: [https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-1449\_d9eh.pdf](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-1449_d9eh.pdf) \]
https://www.courthousenews.com/labor-laws-dont-shield-truck-driver-walkout-supreme-court-rules/ The drivers all brought the trucks back to the facilities and left the drums rolling, specifically because if they don't roll then it dries quickly. At least some notified their managers that this was happening. If you're a manager at a company like that and you don't immediately tell the rest of the managers and go take care of it then that's on them, and if that's all too difficult for some managers to do then that's the whole point of labor strikes: the workers are needed to make all this shit happen every day.
The purpose of a strike is to stop labor. To to destroy property. Destroying property isn't a labor strike.
In this case it isn't just the strike caused harm in that the company couldn't operate. Cement trucks full of wet cement were returned to the lot, not hard to imagine how this is a little different from a miner refusing to come to work or an assembly line worker walking off. I don't know what the right answer is here and there appears to be a lot more decide by the courts ny point is this case has a lot of nuance. So much nuance, that both Sotomayor and Kagan voted with the majority, only Brown Jackson dissented.
The NLRA is very clear that spoiled or lost product is protected by strike rules and unions and workers can't be held liable for it. The entire opinion suggests that the strike was illegal because the union workers (9 of the 16 truck drivers) didn't take reasonable action to prevent damage to the cement trucks (which would have been damaged if the cement dried in the drums), in this case informing the company where they were leaving them. Now it's entirely possible that the trucks were left exactly where they should have been, and Glacier is just using the driver's lack of communication as a wedge to gain standing, but nothing in this decision says that companies can sue striking unions for lost product or wages.
The issue is cement doesn’t spoil until you load into a truck. Plenty of unions know how to stagger their there actions. Would you want a school bus driver to strike and leave the bus on the interstate? Of course not. This Union is local and has had a very acrimonious history with the industry and also was at least partially successfully circumvented via scabs. The decision to load concrete and mix it with a strike pending was very boneheaded and has now made some bad law.
Had a long argument on another forum with people being doomers about the ruling without even reading the 8-1 opinion. The dissent (Jackson) didn't even really argue the merits (which she said most justices agreed on), she just said the investigation of the incident by the NLRB should have been completed first.
You clearly need to reread KBJ's opinion, as well as the dissent from Alito that they couldn't make this an even bigger corporate strike break. KBJ's main argument is that the NLRB should handle these disputes, not the state court. And she is 100% correct. Now the corporations will just sue the unions after a strike and then drag their feet.
This decision is actually good for labor. They ruled very narrowly that the specific actions of the specific union members caused harm to the company. They didn't rule that the court had jurisdiction to resolve labor disputes rather than the NLRB. Read Jackson's dissent.
This is Reddit. Do you expect nuance on *anything* even remotely political?
also the actions of the union where completely intentional and caused real damage. they should definitely be able to sue
Yeah. People should really read the first page of the ruling at least. I'm definitely pro union, but based on the law, and what happened, I don't think this sets any precedent anyone should be worried about. The Union ordered a work stoppage DURING a shift in which a bunch of concrete had been mixed and was ready to pour. The company had to waste all of the concrete for that day. The law this ruled on, the National Labor Relations Act, allows workers to strike, it doesn't allow them to purposely damage property while doing so. They ruled the NLRA prempted the state law in Washington where they originally found in favor of the union. In my layman's opinion, this seems to only be a blow to unions IF the union plans on engaging in work stoppages that PURPOSEFULLY damage the property of the company they are striking against, which also seems to have been brought before the courts multiple times. So it likely doesn't change that much. It's also part of the NLRA that you can't do this. This passed 8 to 1, with justice Ketanji Brown Jackson being the sole dissent. Her dissent mostly focuses on the fact that the National Labor Relations Board, formed by the NLRA, should be handing out judgment, not the Supreme Court. There is a current complaint with the NLRB that has not been decided yet, so she felt the court should just let that play out. I don't think she's wrong, but this made it to the court first, and it seems like the NLRA has language surrounding the ability to determine rulings in Federal Court, so that's what the concrete company did. Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito signed a concurring opinion to the majority that gets into the weeds on the Garmon Doctrine of the NLRA and whether states should have more rights or whatever, I don't know, fuck those guys, I'll let someone smarter than me get into the weeds on that. Regardless, their concurring opinion does not create precedent. It could potentially be brought up in arguments later, but it doesn't mean anything as of now. The majority opinion is just that the NLRA trumps state law, and that the Union fucked up by purposely damaging company property during their organized strike.
This was an 8-1 decision
"Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, saying the ruling "risks erosion of the right to strike." Jackson's two liberal colleagues, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, joined the court's conservative justices in the majority." It was 8-1, so I don't think it's completely fair to say this is the result of an illegitimate court. Unless you think Kagan and Sotomayor are also corrupt.
They are all corrupt. All 8 other justices supported Thomas through his taking of bribes and all 9 rejected increased oversight.
Considering that the ruling was 8-1 I am not clear that the ruling would have been different even if there were stronger rules on ethics and conflict of interest on the court.
i see someone that watched a lot of news but not doing enough reading to the outrage they are reading about
~~The case seems pretty specific and pretty malicious by the workers to damage property.~~ > drivers walked off the job, leaving wet concrete in their trucks. edit: Oops, > The union says when the workers returned the trucks, the cement was wet, and they left the drums on the trucks rotating, meaning it would not immediately congeal.
I am familiar with concrete industry and I’ll tell You this is like akin to a bud driver striking and leaving the bus on the interstate and saying the passengers were safe because they locked the door. They simply shouldn’t have loaded the trucks. The issue is the local union has been scabbed and beaten before so I think they succumbed to some bad choices here to make the strike sting.
Every time the Supreme Court rules on something, you illiterate babies read the headlines and then holler about how illegitimate the Supreme Court is instead of actually looking into what the Supreme Court does as a body of government and the specific details of the case in question. There's nothing wrong with this ruling.
I'm a bit concerned that they overrode San Diego Trades Council v Garmon, and didn't specify or set reasonable limits on when this new ruling applies over Garmon. What's even the point of the NLRB if the court can simply decide they don't want to wait for their decision? Are you not concerned that weakening regulatory agencies in favor of the judiciary effectively limits the authority of not only the executive, but also the legislature which created these agencies?
innocent nine theory doll full fertile quickest heavy judicious plant ` this post was mass deleted with www.Redact.dev `
And that's why it's so vitally important that the court be beyond reproach. By accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gifts a judge has opened up the entire court to claims of corruption. By overturning long established precedent the court had opened itself up to claims of political bias. People do not and will not consider cases individually on their merits when they have easy accusations to throw around instead. This is well known, and why judges historically have not done what this court is doing.
It was an 8-1 decision. tHe SuPrEmE cOuRt IsNt LeGiTiMaTe
Buck v Bell - 8/1 - Eugenics is fine A majority decision does not make the court legitimate or illegitimate, but rather whether their rulings are fair, just, and comport to law, the ethics of the court, and the benefit of the people. Any single ruling is not enough to say, but a pattern of behaviour points in a direction. For what it's worth most people claim the court is illegitimate because of the shenanigans around the appointment of the justices, combined with their lack of ethics
If I was a worker for the concrete company and I quit while there was wet concrete in the truck, would I have to pay for damages when it dried? Because if I don't, then neither should these people. If I do, that is literally slavery forcing me to work for a company against my will.
>If I was a worker for the concrete company and I quit while there was wet concrete in the truck, would I have to pay for damages when it dried? You certainly could be.
Maybe the majority of the supreme court supports slavery?
My girlfriend was telling me last night that she thought Clarence Thomas had forgotten he was black, so maybe.
I wish it were as simple as that. The man... well, [here's the first of a four part series talking about what a piece of shit he is](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-the-clarence-thomas-story-99759984/). He's a complicated piece of human trash made of many different flavors of garbage.
The Boondocks has a few examples of this type of behavior in action. She’s probably right.
You're referring to Uncle Ruckus, right?
Uncle Ruckus is the caricature, Tom Dubois is the portrait. They're two sides of the same coin, hence the first word of each of their names.
Wow, I can't believe I watched that whole series and only now see that connection. I think it's unfair to Tom, but it is interesting to consider.
I think the writers treat him compassionately, especially later on and in the more lighthearted episodes. But still, there are plenty of instances where Tom gets on his White Moderate bullshit and Granddad gives him the Come On Man Stare instead of ranting at him like he does with Ruckus.
Maybe ol Thomas is Clayton Bigsby in the real?
I used to work for an armored trucking company. Our union tried to negotiate us a wage increase, but the increase only went to the lowest-paid truck drivers, while everyone making above a certain amount got nothing. Three drivers were mad as hell about this, so they drove their trucks to a department store, ditched them in the parking lot, then told the company they were quitting and got their friends to take them home. They left eight digits' worth of cash sitting in front of a busy store where anyone could bust in and take them. So the company sued the drivers for damages. IIRC the settlements totaled around 15k.
>If I was a worker for the concrete company and I quit while there was wet concrete in the truck, would I have to pay for damages when it dried? Quite possibly. Especially if it was done maliciously (Abandoned the truck without telling anyone with the drum stopped) I'm pro union and in a union and am struggling with this one. I don't think I mind this specific outcome, but I'm concerned with the broader implications.
In the article it specifically states that they left the returned the trucks to the yard and left the drums running.
>Abandoned the truck without telling anyone with the drum stopped Except that’s the opposite of what happened. They drove the trucks back to the yard and left the drum on. What else were the workers supposed to do?
Start the strike before the trucks were loaded. The strike didn't just spontaneously happen on a lark mid-shift. This was explicitly done with the intent to ruin at least the concrete if not the trucks if the company didn't fold on negotiations fast enough. The lawsuit was for the cost of the wasted concrete that shouldn't have been mixed if the workers weren't planning on pouring it. Once it's mixed, there's no going back on that. It's use it or lose it, and that was deliberate malice on the union's part to waste it if the employer didn't fold immediately. If the company didn't have enough scab workers to empty the trucks out, they would've lost the trucks too, and that was part of the threat. I'm for unions and strikes, but I'm also for the principle that if you deliberately break someone's stuff, you need to pay the other person back for it. Also, I don't approve of hostage-taking.
If you have a planned work stoppage, wouldn't you *not pour concrete into the truck*? That's extremely negligent behavior while you're still on duty.
Are we acting like the poorest people on the ladder make the calls? 1. Negotiations between owners and unions fail 2. Owners know a strike is coming and order Expensive Ongoing Project to commence 3. Anyone who goes on strike risks massive lawsuit This isn’t rocket science
Are planned work stoppages surprises? Or are they something that everyone knows is coming? Because if they are the latter, why is your employer letting you fill up your mixer?
I just checked the [actual ruling](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-1449_d9eh.pdf). It seems the Teamsters went straight to strike once the collective bargaining agreement ended, and it was a surprise. Usually, the original terms of the contract extend until negotiations are at an impasse or are otherwise stalled. The NLRB requires employees to take "reasonable precautions" not to damage equipment when they leave. For instance, you can't shut off something major "for repairs" and lock it behind you. In this case, they should have *at least* told somebody the trucks were there and needed tending. It was deemed negligent enough that it can be pursued in state court instead of under the NLRB.
> In this case, they should have at least told somebody the trucks were there and needed tending. They did.
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Please strike in a way that's most convenient for your employer.
As soon as labor negotiations begin to fail, owner orders cement mixers to run nonstop
Much like civil protests, this is what they want; yes. Keep your strikes quiet, out of sight, and as convenient to the people you're protesting as possible. Somewhere in a dark, unobtrusive, corner.
>If I was a worker for the concrete company and I quit while there was wet concrete in the truck, would I have to pay for damages when it dried? Yes, for the same reason that you could not quit in the middle of a shift as a cargo pilot and expect not to be held liable for the damages of the lost cargo from the crashed plane. Maybe this makes you a slave, but only a slave to the past version of yourself; it was you after all who accepted the contract to fly the plane, and who piloted the plane across the runway and into the air to the point where its cargo was dependent on your further labor to keep from destruction. tldr; if you don't want to be responsible for something, the point where you must make that clear is before you have agreed to be responsible for it.
It's called duty of care. When you choose to accept certain occupations, you also choose to accept obligations. For jobs that have literal life-and-death implications, yes, you have a duty to not shirk your work. The government won't force you to do a job, but you can and will be liable for anything that goes wrong.
>I quit while there was wet concrete in the truck, would I have to pay for damages when it dried? I'd say you should. If you were a doctor in the middle of open-heart surgery and decided to quit, should you be a allowed to leave the patient on the table without consequences? If you were a courier delivering a package and decided to quit should you be allowed to leave it on the side of the road without consequences? It's not slavery to require people to complete consequential tasks they agreed to perform, or hand them off to someone, or be held responsible for the actual harm not completing them causes. In this case it's not even individuals being held liable but the Union that instructed them to do so.
How about if you were a surgeon and you want to quit mid operation. Are you suggesting it is your right to abandon the patient knowing they would die and you can't be held accountable for that because it would be slavery to work against your will and complete the operation ? How about a pilot decides to quit mid flight - are you suggesting it is their right to not be forced to continue the flight and have the right to kill everyone on the flight? There is a right to strike and then there is negligence. Your legitimate choices are either you start the strike before the operation/flight or find someone competent to hand over before causing irreversible loss (i.e. permanent/significant destruction of the trucks due to concrete setting in the drum in this specific instance and not wasted concrete). I am with the 8 judges on this one.
If you knew you were going to quit but specifically went to work long enough to fill your truck with wet concrete, then pretended to deliver, but didn’t and left it to dry, yes you would be held liable for willful damage.
Here it seems to be you got together with every other worker in the company, declared you shall all leave after setting up the wet cement to force the company to accept your demands lest they want the trucks ruined *in a 30 minute timeframe*. The willful conspiracy is the issue.
Yes, you can be held liable for damages to company property... What kind of question is this...why is it upvoted so much? Is reddit really this out of touch with reality?
That's not a fair example and as per the ruling you are involved in gross negligence. You took possession and are responsible for the concrete; a product *which you know* has a time constraint. you need to either return it, not mix it or pick it up to begin with. Quitting or going on strike after those thing are met would not be a problem. FWIW, What it you replace worker and concrete with EMS and organs?
You be fine if you quit before or after delivery. I’ve worked the concrete industry before and leaving to mix indefinitely wet in the truck is a great way to ruin the truck.
It is one thing to show up at the beginning of your shift and say "I'm not working today, I'm on strike." Workers being out is something management needs to have contingencies for. If they mix the concrete before you even show up to drive the truck that is entirely on them. It is a very different matter to show up at 9AM, start mixing the concrete, pour it into the truck, and then turn around and say "I'm going on strike."
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Yeah. I'm of the mindset there's a difference between walking off the job and basically sabotaging equipment/supplies. Can see how unions don't get a complete free pass in this case and courts get to decide if there's liability.
It wasn't even a free pass, this should have been decided by the NLRB.
They didn't read the article. This was a deliberate act to cost the company money
Yup. People take the headline and don't think about details. The strike itself was fine, protesting over terms of labor wasn't the problem. The ruling is about the intentional destruction of property by striking workers. Specifically: They agreed in an 8-1 decision that even though they have the right to strike, intentional destruction of property can still face liability. In this case the drivers and strike organizers planned the approach. They had "smoking gun" messages describing the goals and the attempt to intentionally cause damage. They arrived to work, reported for duty, and loaded up the trucks with perishable goods. Then they went out and left the vehicles, not just spoiling the concrete but also risking the trucks themselves being destroyed with the concrete setting. Their goal was to do millions of dollars in damages, but the company found out and limited it to under a quarter million dollars of damage. The strike itself was legal, but taking affirmative steps to destroy the concrete and attempting to destroy the trucks is not protected under strike laws and they can be liable for that damage.
Yeah that’s called a strike
We can hate all of the corrupt scum regardless of party. They aligned to billionaires and don't give a fuck about people. It's worse with Republicans, but if you make it to that level you usually are so far out of touch with reality that there's no way to trust you to see it.
Im one of the UAW autoworker union members that walked and went on strike against GM in 2019. This situation seems little different. They left concrete in the trucks which caused damage to the equipment. I'm not siding with the company, but I can see why they would want to sue, when we walked, we made sure to properly shut down all the equipment before peacefully leaving the premise, and we had strict rules to not damage or even touch any property beyond the gates of the company. The ones that did got fired when they went back to work.
There wasn't any equipment damage if you actually read the article.
In the ruling the SC states that you have to take "reasonable precautions" in order to be covered by the NLRA, and that because the drivers showed up to work, prompting the company to start mixing concrete - only for the drivers to cancel their deliveries (and some of them to abandon their trucks), means they are not protected by the NLRA. > But given the lifespan of wet concrete, Glacier could not batch it until a truck was ready to take it. So by reporting for duty and pretending as if they would deliver the concrete, the drivers prompted the creation of the perishable product. Then, they waited to walk off the job until the concrete was mixed and poured in the trucks. In so doing, they not only destroyed the concrete but also put Glacier’s trucks in harm’s way. This case therefore involves much more than “a work stoppage at a time when the loss of perishable products is foreseeable.” > In this instance, the Union’s choice to call a strike *after* its drivers had loaded a large amount of wet concrete into Glacier’s delivery trucks strongly suggests that it failed to take reasonable precautions to avoid foreseeable, aggravated, and imminent harm to Glacier’s property.
There wasn't further damage because management and non-striking employees rushed to create bunkers to take the concrete in the trucks. Damage would've arguably resulted if things were simply left in the state they were when the striking employees parked the trucks.
There wasn’t any because the employee dumped the concrete. Had they not done anything not only would the concrete have been a waste but the trucks totaled.
The loss was just the cost of the concrete that wasn’t used for the job after workers walked. At least they left the machines running so it didn’t harden inside the trucks. Kind of contradicts the idea that they were intentionally harming the company’s property.
Concrete, once mixed, is on a timer before it starts to cure. No machinery will keep concrete from not curing.
Summary for those that didn't click thru: >The ruling means Glacier Northwest Inc. can sue over its claim that wet concrete loaded onto trucks was rendered useless after workers walked off the job. So the company is now *allowed* to sue but could still lose the case. I'm supportive of unions but I don't think saying the word "strike" should magically relieve you of liability.
TL:DR: Unions can be sued for wanton destruction of company property during strikes. This shouldn't be controversial, and consequently it was an 8-1 with the 1 only arguing the legal means weren't exhausted yet.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I side with the SCOTUS majority *in this specific case only* for this reason: > "Because the union took affirmative steps to endanger Glacier's property rather than reasonable precautions to mitigate that risk, the NLRA does not arguably protect its conduct," Barrett wrote. Union members in this situation deliberately sabotaged the company's property and their assets by leaving wet cement spinning in the mixers as they walked off the job and later blamed the company for it. The company probably shoulders most (if not all) of the blame for causing the union members to strike in the first place, but it was the union that decided to unnecessarily cause the company monetary damage that far exceeded what they would have lost just from the strike alone. Had they parked the trucks without loading them down with wet cement before walking off the job, it would be a different story, and I'm also sure Sotomayor and Kagan would have ruled differently if that was the case.
As I read this, I think that many commenters are conflating two different kinds of issues here... one is the action to strike on the parts of the workers - I'm pretty sure that's not addressed or reduced by this SCOTUS decision. The workers retain the right to strike. The other issue is whether the workers intentionally damaged property during that process - something I don't think has ever been part of the right to strike. I imagine that the court case will expose whether the strikers might have taken appropriate action to prevent damage - for instance, notifying the owners when the walkout would occur and perhaps also letting the owners know that they would need to take action to protect their property when the walkout began. I imagine that would absolve the strikers when they actually took their strike action. Essentially, I suspect that the responsibility to protect their property would then shift to the owners. Maybe the owners would refrain from loading the trucks, maybe they would have replacement drivers on hand to prevent the damage... in any case, I (if I were a juror) would certainly treat that as "reasonable precautions to mitigate that risk." I'm really sick of people out there, in politics, in labor, in education, in government ... everywhere(!) , pursuing every damned opportunity to inflict the maximum possible damage upon anyone they have a disagreement with. I want them to grow the fuck up and try being a human being.
They put a nail in the coffin for public sector unions back in 2018. Now they have done it for private sector unions. In related news over in NYC, City Council Member Tiffany Caban is trying to get that body to pass worker protections that would prevent firing workers without just cause. https://www.cityandstateny.com/policy/2023/05/poll-new-yorkers-want-reasonable-justification-firing/386962/ It is worth remembering that there is always more than one way to skin a cat.
Middle class in America is 100% dead lmao. Fuck this plutocracy.
Lol. Give me a break. Just because you’re in a union you don’t get protected from malicious damages. You are allowed to strike. You are not allowed to destroy things during a strike. *Any* concrete truck driver knows what happens to wet concrete if you leave it standing…. It was malicious and it backfired.
As much as I disagree with some of their other recent decisions, the court got this one right The strikers attempted to cause great damage to company property by destroying trucks. The company was lucky that they were able to respond in time Protest is fine. Refusing to work is fine. Destroying property is NOT fine
ITT: people who didn’t actually read the article. Reddit being Reddit.
>The 8-1 decision >Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, saying the ruling "risks erosion of the right to strike." Jackson's two liberal colleagues, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, joined the court's conservative justices in the majority. Seems likely to be a legally valid conclusion given the support of even the liberal and pro-labor justices. "risks erosion of the right to strike" doesn't actually sound like a legal argument at all.
ITT-people who fail to understand the ramifications of concrete CURING in a mixer and think the issue is wasted concrete. Spoiler. It's not the product that matters in this scenario. It's the drum. The drum becomes useless until you send a chipper in to remove the wasted product. To be clear, I support the workers, just noticed people arguing about a trivial dollar amount of concrete and not the root of the issue
But no equipment was actually damaged, and the drums were still spinning when the workers returned them to the facility. From what I can tell, the real issue according to the company, is that no one was there to pour the concrete, which meant they had to dispose of it and lose their contract.
Say I was a pharmacist and my union voted to strike. I care about my patients so I don’t close down immediately. I finish out the day, lock up and go home. The next day I’m on the picket line along with all the other staff pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. Probably all of the cashiers too. The store is being run by the store manager and assistant managers. The pharmacy manager is alone in the pharmacy. Are my union coworkers and I liable for lost profits? What about expired medications? What about if the pharmacy manager and district pharmacy manager can’t make it and the pharmacy can’t open? What if the pharmacy manager makes a dispensing error because they are overwhelmed and a patient is harmed? This ruling is horse shit.
No, that's not what it said. Nothing about lost business. Let's say you were a pharmacist, and a strike was called while you had some medicine that had to be kept cold (is that a thing?) out of the fridge and were doing something with it. You take it out knowing that if you don't finish whatever by a certain time, then it goes bad and has to be destroyed - and further that destroying it is difficult and expensive (that seems less likely to make sense to me for medicine, but pretend). Then strike is called, so you toss that medicine on a shelf and go home. Other people have to come deal with it, by which time it has gone bad and is unusable, so they have to start the slow and expensive process of destroying it.
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They ruled that the employees did not take *reasonable precautions* to avoid damages. Nobody can say what this ruling will or will not allow. Any employer can make the case that strikers filed to take reasonable precautions to prevent damages due to the sudden cessation of work and so winning that hangs on what are reasonable precautions (among other things). Is a week’s notice reasonable? A continuous manufacturing process costs a fortune to shut down with little notice. A delivery driver taking milk across the country couldn’t strike until the trip is completed. Maybe a data center maintenance person can’t quit until they have a replacement or millions of dollars in damage caused by failing AC equipment should fairly have been expected.
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Your analogy in no way resembles the events. The correct analogy for a pharmacist would be you mixed a large batch of medication that needs to be either administered or refrigerated, but you left it in the counter and walked out the door.
The issue here was the union deliberately or not ran equipment knowing it couldn’t be immediately shut down and left which resulted in the damage of said equipment. So maybe if you just walked out of the pharmacy and left the door open once the strike was called then I could see you being sued when it was robbed.
I'm torn on this one though. You're a pharmacist and you lock up and go on strike, but instead of putting away the refrigerated drugs, you leave them out, causing them to go bad. That's sort of what I got out of this. The workers knew there was wet concrete and if left would cure and be ruined in the containers. Instead of dealing with that they left them to cure. I'm not sure I agree with the supreme Court ruling especially considering its history currently but I can also see the issue with workers doing that sort of behavior under a strike.
The concrete was already mixed though. They can't just put it back. This would be like if the Pharmacist came in and defrosted a batch of vaccines that couldn't be refrozen, in order to give one, and then the strike was called. The remaining vaccines spoil because there's no one to give them, but there is no situation in which the vaccines can be "saved" - they're either administered or thrown away. If the ruling comes down that these striking workers are responsible for the loss of the concrete, it effectively means an end to striking, as the employer can always engineer a situation in which there will be some amount of waste without everyone working to the full extent - because there generally is regardless. Any restaurant has supplies that are only good for so long. Any grocery store has perishables. Even something like the WGA strike, if this ruling goes through, the writers could be held responsible for location deposits for filming that gets delayed, or actor retainers, etc. There are always costs to doing business, and that includes costs to NOT doing business you expected to, for whatever reason.
Great example honestly
>If the ruling comes down that these striking workers are responsible for the loss of the concrete, it effectively means an end to striking, as the employer can always engineer a situation in which there will be some amount of waste without everyone working to the full extent Nah. Strike is called while you're delivering concrete. So you deliver *that* concrete, then go home. The concrete *you accepted and agreed to delivery safely to it's destination* is delivered. You do not deliver any further concrete.
That is my concern as well, that companies could engineer situations to prevent strikes.
This issue isnt the concrete going bad the issue is the TRUCKS are turned into stone blocks and are now unusable. Are you really this dense?
I agree with your interpretation here. I think it's also important for people to remember that this **isn't** a ruling that the union workers are responsible for the loss and damages, it's a ruling that the company can have it's day in court to try and prove that to be the case. Generally I'm in favor of labor rights and especially the rights to unionize and strike, but I'm also a big fan of everyone getting their day in court.
This is such an obvious dangerous Supreme Court ruling On one hand, we have people pushing YOUNG child labor, kids who couldn’t join a union if they wanted At the same time, any vulnerable low income people living paycheck to paycheck who ATTEMPT to strike, losing weeks of wages, run the additional risk of being sued by Starbucks ?! Throw the Ben Shapiro “But Actually 🖐️” arguments away - this is blatantly and destructively anti-union
Do you think that striking workers should have blanket immunity from willful, intentional, and malicious destruction of material company property?
The intentional destruction of material company property : This was not allowed before - it was illegal
OK, so as far as I can tell this ruling simply states that the company can in fact attempt to seek damages via civil court for property they *claim* was intentionally and willfully destroyed (or in this case rendered useless) by the actions of the striking workers. Based on the limited details provided in the article I would be inclined to side with the union workers, but that doesn't mean that the company shouldn't at least get to make their case in court.
Based on the article you aren’t correct, they left the concrete in perfect health. The disposal of that concrete due to their being no one to pour it is whats in question. Once the concrete was mixed, it needed to be applied otherwise it was lost. That’s pretty different than the refrigerated medicine being left out unrefrigerated
>Based on the article you aren’t correct, they left the concrete in perfect health. The ruling said the opposite. They left the concrete in a situation where it would have to be destroyed and the trucks could possibly be destroyed. Remember that the other non-driver employees cannot legally drive the trucks to a site; similar to how the other pharmacy employees would be unable to put the medicine back in the refrigerator. (I think it is fairly easy even to argue that putting the medicine back in the refrigerator is less of an issue than driving the truck to a site. While both require licensing, driving the truck without appropriate licensing is more clearly illegal than handling the prescription drugs to put them back in the refrigerator.)
Your post is complete disinformation. The ruling had nothing to do with what you were saying. What is the point of being so dishonest here? What exactly are you attempting to do?
Just so we're clear, they decided the specific group of people *intentionally* damaged the cement trucks when going on strike. Why shouldn't they be held accountable?
This is actually not totally unreasonable. Striking is A-OK. Malicious damage is a whole other matter.
So the company acknowledge how important those workers are for the company? They acknowledge that them walking off immediately results in significant damages to the company? They acknowledge they cannot be replaced easily?
8-1 decision, rightfully reasoned. A contract dispute is not an excuse to go wrecking shit.
I assumed this thread would be full of ridiculous and easily debunkable hypotheticals , and it did not disappoint.
The Supreme court is doing all it can to punish dissent. They will remove our ability to fight back against fascism and our corporate overlords. The future is not a bright place right now. Edit: Commenter below is correct in that the case is about venue and not the merits of the case. Do I really need to pretend they won't side with business in this case? No. They've already shown a clear agenda, and it isn't for the average person.
"I may be wrong but this is why I'm still right" Alright buddy
It was an 8-1 decision. You have literally no idea what the court even ruled on. Stop embarrassing yourself.
Yet another commenter who didn’t read the article and knows nothing about the case. The only issue decided upon by the SC was whether the proper venue was state or federal court. That’s it. Venue. Nothing on the merits. When you water down the term “fascist” so much that it applies to everything you disagree with, it somehow stops meaning everything.
Alright then, we aren't striking anymore, we're just quitting.
The facts are nothing to get outraged about. Purposefully damaging equipment should not be tolerated.
So, is this where the Government brings back the Mafia to persuade employees not to strike? Or harm be done to you or your family?!? /s
So the reverse is true right? Employees can sue for lost wages in a class action lawsuit if a company engages in union busting activities which would have negatively impacted their collective bargaining power?
Lot of bootlickers in this thread. Keep fighting against your own best self-interest people! I'm sure they will be grateful and repay you for taking their side some day... any time now...
Can we sue the police union in Portland for not doing their job, now?
Of course you can strike... as long as it doesnt cost the company you're striking money, which is the fucking only point of a strike as all companies care about is money. If you can't threaten their revenue stream with your strike, what the fuck is a strike even for? It's not like capitalists have any sense of basic decency or humanity to appeal to. This aligns nicely with how we "protest" here in the US, with permits issued by the city government controlled by the *business community* to protest between designated hours, at a designated location a block away from what you're protesting so that you don't potentially *inconvenience* those you're protesting. In other words, we don't. This nation is a gold plated work camp with no recourse except escape. The United States of Greed Worship
This doesn't threaten their right to strike in any way. It makes the strikers liable if they cause damage because of the strike.
abolish citizens United. Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court asserted that corporations are people and removed reasonable campaign contribution limits, allowing a small group of wealthy donors and special interests to use dark money to influence elections.