Who Gains by Strikes?

January 7, 1963

It is easy to point to those who do not gain by a strike. Let us look at the present newspaper strike in New York City.

1—Not the employers. Their losses are direct and heavy; some papers may not be able to sustain them. If they are forced to settle on the strikers’ terms, or even on terms higher than they offered to avoid the strike, they will be saddled with higher labor costs. If they try to compensate by raising the price of their papers or of their advertising, they will sell less of both. When, like the steel companies, employers are in foreign competition, they will lose business to their foreign competitors.

2—Not the public. The New York public loses by being deprived of the full daily information that only newspapers can supply. Department stores lose. Specialty stores lose. The owners of small newsstands and stationery stores lose. From every strike the public suffers at least inconvenience and sometimes serious hardship. It is deprived, while the strike lasts, of the particular product or service that the strikers helped to supply. And if the strike is settled by an excessive increase in wages, the public must pay a higher price for that product or service.

3—Not the whole body of workers. They constitute the overwhelming majority of consumers. They suffer the same inconvenience or hardship as the rest of the public during a strike. They also must pay higher prices afterward for the product or service supplied by the former strikers. This reduces the purchasing power of their wages. Workers in other industries often lose their jobs as a result of a strike. If some of them receive less pay at their jobs than the strikers did at theirs, they are not allowed to apply for the jobs that the strikers have voluntarily vacated. The “solidarity” in the interests of “all labor” is a myth. The wage gains of one group of workers as a result of a strike are nearly always at the expense of other workers through the higher prices that the others must pay.

4—Do even the strikers themselves gain from a strike? The truth is that they can do so only under very special and unusual conditions. Even when they “win” a strike they may lose—especially if the strike is prolonged, or if they win excessive gains. What labor is mainly suffering from today is too many victories.

In the New York newspaper strike, the printers were receiving a basic wage of $141 a week. The publishers offered an increase to $149 a week over a two- year period. The printers asked an increase to $160.

WHAT STRIKERS LOSE

For the first year the publishers offered an increase of $4.25 a week. The printers asked an increase of $10, or $5.75 more. By striking they lose $145.25 a week. Even if they win their full $10 demand, therefore, it will take them 25 weeks, or almost half a year of work, to make up for every week lost on strike. Even if they were to win their whole fantastic “package” demands, now estimated at an increase of $38 a week, they could win them only by throwing several newspapers out of business and thousands of employees out of work.

Anyone who thinks this prediction overdrawn should look at the record of the 1959 steel strike. This ran for 116 days, with an average wage loss of $2,100 per worker. If we compare the workers’ wage increase with what they would have got if they had accepted the steel companies’ last offer before the strike, we find that in the three years since the settlement they have made up less than half the losses they suffered. That is, those who have remained employed have done so. But as a result of the increased labor costs imposed on the steel companies, fewer have remained employed. Total nonagricultural employment in September 1962 was 63.1 million in 1958, an increase of 8.6 percent. But employment in steel mills dropped from 601,100 in 1958 to 565,900 in September 1962, a fall of 5.8 percent.

We may yet have to revise our labor laws, ceasing to force employers to bargain only with a specified union, and ceasing to permit intimidatory picket lines, if only to prevent shortsighted unions from committing economic suicide.