Tournament: NSD Camp Tournament | Round: 1 | Opponent: Aashrith Kossireddy | Judge: Animesh Joshi
1AC – Advantage
For Cars Spec – my favorite one is the first movie.
Plan
Plan text: A just government ought to recognize an unconditional right of workers to strike.
Definition of unconditional right to strike:
NLRB 1 National Labor Relations Board; “Legislative History of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947: Volume 1,” Jan 1985; https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=7o1tA__v4xwCandrdid=book-7o1tA__v4xwCandrdot=1 Edited for gendered language
As for the so-called absolute or unconditional right to strike—there are no absolute rights that do not have their corresponding responsibilities. Under our American Anglo-Saxon system, each individual is entitled to the maximum of freedom, provided however (and this provision is of first importance), his their freedom has due regard for the rights and freedoms of others. The very safeguard of our freedoms is the recognition of this fundamental principle. I take issue very definitely with the suggestion that there is an absolute and unconditional right to concerted action (which after all is what the strike is) which endangers the health and welfare of our people in order to attain a selfish end.
The right to strike entail 2 different types of strikes: economic and unfair labor practices.
NLRB 2: The National Labor Relations Board is an independent agency of the federal government of the United States with responsibilities for enforcing U.S. labor law in relation to collective bargaining and unfair labor practices. “The Right to Strike” No Date AA
Strikes for a lawful object. Employees who strike for a lawful object fall into two classes: economic strikers and unfair labor practice strikers. Both classes continue as employees, but unfair labor practice strikers have greater rights of reinstatement to their jobs. Economic strikers defined. If the object of a strike is to obtain from the employer some economic concession such as higher wages, shorter hours, or better working conditions, the striking employees are called economic strikers. They retain their status as employees and cannot be discharged, but they can be replaced by their employer. If the employer has hired bona fide permanent replacements who are filling the jobs of the economic strikers when the strikers apply unconditionally to go back to work, the strikers are not entitled to reinstatement at that time. However, if the strikers do not obtain regular and substantially equivalent employment, they are entitled to be recalled to jobs for which they are qualified when openings in such jobs occur if they, or their bargaining representative, have made an unconditional request for their reinstatement. Unfair labor practice strikers defined. Employees who strike to protest an unfair labor practice committed by their employer are called unfair labor practice strikers. Such strikers can be neither discharged nor permanently replaced. When the strike ends, unfair labor practice strikers, absent serious misconduct on their part, are entitled to have their jobs back even if employees hired to do their work have to be discharged.
Advantage 1 – Warming
Climate strike participants get arrested now.
Scanlan 19 Quinn. Quinn Scanlan. Voting, campaigns and elections for @ABC. “Jane Fonda arrested in climate change strike outside Capitol”. 10-11-2019. ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jane-fonda-arrested-climate-change-strike-capitol/story?id=66209415.
Academy Award winning actress Jane Fonda, 81, was arrested by police with a group of about a dozen protesters Friday after being warned repeatedly to leave the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Inspired by youth climate activists like Sweden's Greta Thunberg, 16, who herself recently came to Washington to testify in front of Congress, Fonda, who, throughout her long career, has engaged in activism, dating as far back as the Vietnam War, recently told ABC News that while she's in the nation's capital, every Friday, she'll attend "Fire Drill Friday," a weekly event featuring scientists, celebrities and activists addressing the various facets and impacts of climate change. The event title is a play on Thunberg saying during a speech at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland in January, "I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is." "11 o'clock every Friday morning come get arrested with me or choose not to it doesn't matter," told ABC News in an earlier interview about her planned effort. Fonda said she decided to leave her home, and comfort zone, through the holidays, and move to Washington for four months, because she wanted to "make a commitment to" the issue of climate change. In an interview with ABC News Deputy Political director MaryAlice Parks for an episode of of ABC News Live's "The Briefing Room," Fonda said that while they bear no blame for causing it, the kids are leading the charge on fighting climate change. "They're saying, 'Come on, you know, you're taking our future away from us. We need -- we need you to support us.' And so grandmas unite," she said. "I want to stand with them and raise up... their message. This is -- this is serious... This is a crisis unlike anything that has ever faced humankind." Stressing she was not being hyperbolic, Fonda said this is the "one issue" that matters because it "will determine the survival of our species," and said that's why she'll be attending Fire Drill Fridays weekly. David Swanson/AP, FILE Actress and activist Jane Fonda talks to a crowd of protestors during a global climate rall...Read More "I think every single human being has to say, 'What can I do to put this at the forefront?'" she said. "(With) everything that's going on in the news, well, we have to fight our way through that and find ways to get climate change in people's minds." The esteemed actress pushed back against criticism that Hollywood's presence could make climate change a more polarizing issue. "What we're facing is so important and so urgent, it doesn't matter. Those -- those things don't even matter," she told Parks. "This is the future. This is whether we're going to survive." Fonda also said that the United States needs "to lead the way" on this issue, so that other countries who contribute heavily to greenhouse gas emissions, like China and India, "follow suit." While she's been passionate about this issue for "decades," she credits her current endeavors on Thunberg's recurring protest outside Swedish parliament, and other student climate strikers around the world for taking on this issue so passionately.
Strikes incentivize companies to take climate action seriously.
Ivanova 19 Irin. Work, tech, climate and data for @CBSNews. Priors: @HuffPost, @CrainsNewYork, @newmarkjschool. “These businesses are closing for Friday's climate strike”. 9-20-2019. No Publication. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/global-climate-strike-businesses-close-their-doors-in-time-for-climate-strike-2019/.
Thousands of people are planning to walk out of work or school on Friday to press global leaders for solutions to rapidly escalating climate change. And while it was students who started the movement, more and more workers—and even companies—are joining them in support. Some businesses are letting workers take the day off to protest, while others plan to close their doors outright. They tend to be small or mid-sized businesses — most of the country's largest corporations have yet to weigh in on the strike, although plenty of people who work at them might yet participate when walkouts are set to start Friday afternoon. Here are the ways workers and companies are supporting the strike. Walkouts Amazon is expected to see more than 1,500 employees walk out, with the largest contingent exiting its Seattle headquarters, as they push the company to cut ties with fossil-fuel companies and stop funding groups that deny climate science. The company on Thursday announced it would make its operations carbon-neutral by 2040 and run entirely on renewable energy within a decade. More than 900 Google workers and unknown numbers of workers from Facebook, Atlassian, Cobot, Ecosia, Microsoft and Twitter are vowing walkouts. The strikers have details at Tech Workers Coalition. Some smaller companies are giving workers paid time off to participate in the walkouts. These include Atlassian, Sustain Natural, Grove Collaborative and others. Closures Ben and Jerry's corporate offices in South Burlington, Vermont, will be closed during the strike on Friday, while shops worldwide will either be closed or open later than usual. The company is also stopping production at its manufacturing plants in Vermont and the Netherlands, according to Adweek. "We recognize that climate change is an existential threat to our planet and all its inhabitants, and therefore we are proud standing with the youth-led movement demanding bold action in response to the climate emergency," a spokesperson said. Patagonia is closing its retail stores for 24 hours on Friday. "For decades, many corporations have single-mindedly pursued profits at the expense of everything else — employees, communities and the air, land and water we all share," CEO Rose Marcario wrote on LinkedIn. "Capitalism needs to evolve if humanity is going to survive." Lush Cosmetics will close its manufacturing facilities and retail outlets on September 20 in the U.S. and on September 27 in Canada. It's also halting online sales on Friday. Badger Balm is closing for the day and giving workers paid time off to demonstrate or volunteer. The company is also donating 5 of online sales from September 16 to 27 to AmazonWatch.org to aid in preserving the shrinking Amazon's ecological systems, it said. Burton, the outdoor retailer, is closing its offices and owned retail stores on September 20th or 27th (depending on their country of location). It also won't make any online sales for 24 hours on Friday. SodaStream, the seltzer maker owned by PepsiCo, is shuttering its headquarters and closing e-commerce on Friday. Digital doings and more The heart of the strike will be in the streets, but that doesn't mean the action stops there. More than 7,000 companies have pledged to draw attention to the protest by either donating ad space or putting banners on their sites. Participants include Tumblr, WordPress, Imgur, Kickstarter, BitTorrent, Tor, BoingBoing, Greenpeace, Change.org, among many others.
This uniquely harm POC – it’s part of a system of intentional racism that directly targets black people.
Covert 16: Covert, Bryce. Bryce Covert is a contributor at The Nation and a contributing op-ed writer at The New York Times. Her writing has also appeared in The Washington Post, the New Republic, New York magazine, Slate, and others, and she won a 2016 Exceptional Merit in Media Award from the National Women’s Political Caucus. She has appeared on ABC, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, and other outlets. “Race Best Predicts Whether You Live Near Pollution” The Nation, 2016 EM/ GC
When asked directly whether environmental racism was at play in Flint’s water crisis, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder replied last month, “Absolutely not.” But the city’s money-saving shortcuts have now poisoned, with their own tap water, up to 8,000 children as well as many other residents, most of them black. “Environmental racism” describes the fact that people of color and low-income people are most likely to be situated near sources of contamination and away from clean water, air, and soil. A city like Flint, where more than half of the population is black in a state that’s nearly 80 percent white, and where the poverty rate is above 40 percent, is a textbook case, whatever Governor Snyder says. Across the country, African Americans are more than twice as likely as whites to live in a home with substandard plumbing. More than 1 percent of black people live in houses without potable water and modern sanitation, compared to less than 0.5 percent of whites. They are also, understandably, twice as likely as white people to mistrust the water that flows from their taps and to say that more regulation is needed. It’s not just water: A 1987 report found that race was the most significant predictor of a person living near hazardous waste. Communities that were located near multiple commercial hazardous-waste facilities or a landfill had three times the amount of minority residents as communities that were far away from such dump sites. The Government Accountability Office found in 1983 that black people made up the majority of communities near landfills. Decades later, a 2007 report found that things were actually worse: Communities near commercial hazardous-waste facilities consisted mainly of people of color. Finally, people of color are exposed to a level of nitrogen dioxide—which emanates from cars and industrial sources and can cause respiratory problems—at an average rate 38 percent higher than white people. The location of black and brown communities near sources of pollution springs from racist government policy that can be traced back to the early part of the century. In the 1930s, federal housing agencies redlined black neighborhoods, locking black people into crowded city centers, while helping white people flee to the more pleasant suburbs. In Flint, for example, maps from the time show these neighborhoods literally colored in red. Redlining exacerbated poverty in the black community as black people were shut out of the wealth accumulation accessed by whites through cheap home loans. By the mid-1960s, Flint was 94 percent segregated. As the authors of A Twenty-First Century U.S. Water Policy write, “Whereas many of the water-related impacts of urbanization are related to local planning and permitting decisions, it is also local-level planning that has influenced the concentration of low-income communities and communities of color into marginal urban geographies.” VISIT CUBA WITH THE NATION! Once they were trapped in the inner city, these communities were routinely selected as dumping grounds for urban sources of pollution and contamination. With few resources and little political clout, poor black communities were ill-equipped to resist their new role. The facilities that are the most noxious polluters are disproportionately located near communities of color. Flint residents have grappled with environmental racism long before the latest crisis. In the 1990s, residents fought against an air permit for a steel “mini-mill,” which would operate within the city limits and spew 100 tons of lead and other pollutants into the air each year, adding to the existing air pollution generated by the Genesee Power Station.
Advantage 2 – Work Conditions
Working conditions are bad and getting worse – the pandemic has exacerbated these pressures.
Olen 21: Helaine Olen is a contributor to Post Opinions and the author of "Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry" and co-author of "The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated." Her work has appeared in Slate, the Nation, the New York Times, the Atlantic and many other publications. She serves on the advisory board of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and lives in New York City with her husband, sons and poodle daughter. “Americans’ work conditions are terrible. No wonder many don’t want to go back.” June 2, 2021 AA
Such dissatisfaction and tensions can be seen across the U.S. workforce. In the wake of employers complaining about positions they can’t fill, a narrative has emerged of (lazy) Americans refusing to get off unemployment. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has declared today’s worker shortage a “crisis.” But the pandemic recession and fledgling recovery point a fresh lens at an old issue: Millions of Americans earn less than a living wage. It’s no surprise that many don’t want to return to unsatisfactory workplace conditions. Unhappiness has been building for some time over low pay, uncertain hours, and few protections against bullying bosses or workplace abuse. Recall that the Fight for $15 movement emerged in 2012 against low pay, poor workplace conditions and the right to organize. What started with fast-food workers branched into retail, leisure and other sectors. The #MeToo movement revealed the continuing mistreatment of women in a variety of workplaces. Meanwhile, the United States, unlike other first-world economies, mandates no vacation days. Some 23 percent of American workers have no paid vacation and 22 percent lack paid holidays. Pushback against organized labor and state right-to-work laws mean most Americans can easily be fired at any time. Little wonder that burnout is a societal phenomenon. The pandemic amplified some of these pressures — and has prompted some workers to demand better. Support for unions is up, with even Hollywood producers trying to form one. Other workers are voting with their feet. Prudential’s annual Pulse of the American Worker survey, published in April, found that one in five respondents had changed professions since covid-19 hit. Half don’t plan to return to their previous field. The top reasons? A search for better life balance and pay. As Anthony Klotz, an associate professor of management at Texas AandM University, recently told Bloomberg, it’s possible a “great resignation is coming.” So far, attention has been focused on the low-wage, high-pressure jobs hit hard by last year’s shutdowns — dining establishments, ride-sharing. Restaurant owners across the nation are claiming they can’t find enough help. Taxis for hailing are few and far between in New York, D.C. and other cities. Uber is offering bonuses in an effort to lure back drivers. Extended unemployment benefits, including a $300 weekly federal supplement — generous by American standards — are likely playing a role in many workers’ reluctance to return. Several Republican governors and corporate CEOs have argued this. Many people “don’t particularly feel like going back to work,” JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon recently told the Senate Finance Committee. Why should that surprise anyone? In the restaurant and hospitality industry, many workers still receive the tipped federal minimum wage of $2.13 an hour. The restaurant industry accounts for more sexual harassment claims than any other sector, with incidents citing customers and co-workers. In recent years, top chefs including Momofuku’s David Chang were revealed to rage at workers on the job. “People are forgetting that restaurant workers have actually experienced decades of abuse and trauma. The pandemic is just the final straw,”Crystal Maher, a restaurant worker in Austin, recently told The Post. But white-collar work wasn’t in a healthy state either. Even before covid-19, the pressure to work long hours was immense, with many survey respondents admitting to checking emails after hours and during vacation. With the viral threat receding, many corporate honchos want their office workers back on premises. A large majority of those who began working remotely last year are less enthusiastic — and told Prudential they want to continue working from home, at least one day a week. More than four in 10 said they would try to find a new position if their employer demands a full-time return to the workplace. The pandemic made us familiar with the idea of “essential workers” without defining them — or their needs. It’s yet another facet of the conversation on compensation and working conditions that U.S. society has avoided for years. The United States is famous as a place where people identify with their work; in many circles, you are what you do to earn a paycheck. The pandemic was a wake-up call. It abruptly severed workplace ties for many while leaving others — deemed essential but treated like they were disposable — toiling in less than safe conditions. Today’s “worker crisis” is really a debate about the terms and conditions under which our jobs are performed, and how much we should be paid for them. Think of it as a great reconsideration, one worker and workplace at a time.
And, this disproportionately affects Black Americans – especially Black women.
Weller 19: Christian E. Weller is a senior fellow at American Progress and a professor of public policy at the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. His area of expertise includes retirement income security, macroeconomics, money and banking, and international finance. He is also a research scholar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute and an institute fellow at the University of Massachusetts Boston’s Gerontology Institute. Prior to joining the Center, he was on the research staff at the Economic Policy Institute, where he remains a research associate. “African Americans Face Systematic Obstacles to Getting Good Jobs” December 5, 2019, AA
These differences are not new, and the longest labor market expansion on record has not eliminated them. African Americans have always been more vulnerable in the labor market. They regularly experience higher unemployment rates and work in worse jobs, which feature lower pay and fewer benefits, than whites. Moreover, they tend to work in jobs that are less stable than those held by white workers. For example, African American workers often see their unemployment rates go up sooner than white workers when the economy sours, and their unemployment rates also take longer to decline when the economy improves than is the case for whites—a phenomenon often described as “last hired, first fired.” Moreover, unemployed Black workers look longer to find and secure a new job than do white workers. The labor market experience for African Americans has historically been worse than that for whites, and this continues today. There are several factors that have contributed and continue to contribute to this. These include repeated violent oppression of African Americans such as the riots that destroyed Black business owners’ wealth on the Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921, codified segregation, legal racial terrorism during the almost century long period from Reconstruction to the civil rights era, systematic exclusions of African Americans from better-paying jobs, and continued occupational segregation.4 Despite notable improvement, today’s Black workers still have a harder time than whites securing good employment. For Black women, the intersection of race and gender bias has had a combined effect on their labor market experiences, too often devaluing their work and confining their opportunities.
Worst, Black workers are barely represented in decision making roles.
Connley 21: Courtney Connley is a careers reporter for CNBC Make It. Prior to joining CNBC, she worked as a freelancer for Cosmopolitan and a freelancer for Black Enterprise magazine, where she eventually worked her way up to careers editor. During this time, she created daily content for Black Enterprise’s website and worked with the research team to create content for annual lists like the Most Powerful Women in Corporate America and the B.E. 100s, which spotlights the nation’s largest Black-owned businesses. “Why Black workers still face a promotion and wage gap that’s costing the economy trillions” April 16, 2021, AA
Today, Black workers are overrepresented in low-wage entry-level jobs and underrepresented in senior leader and executive roles. In the U.S. private sector, Black workers make up 12 of the entry-level workforce and just 7 of the managerial workforce, according to McKinsey and Company. The higher you go, the fewer Black professionals you see. At the senior manager and VP level, Black workers make up just 5 of the workforce, and at the SVP level, just 4. At the very top, only around 1 of Fortune 500 CEO spots are held by Black leaders. If the current trajectory continues, McKinsey and Company estimates that it could take 95 years before Black employees reach parity at all levels in the private sector. “Black workers, on average, are not being hired, promoted or paid according to what would signal their level of productivity based on their experience or their education,” Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s program on race, ethnicity and the economy, tells CNBC Make It. And “it absolutely impacts everything. It impacts your family’s economic security.” On average, Black men are paid just $0.71 for every dollar paid to white men, according to EPI. Black women, who face both gender and racial barriers, are paid just $0.63 for every dollar paid to white men. Over the course of a 40-year career, the National Women’s Law Center estimates that Black women stand to lose close to $1 million due to this disparity. These racial gaps in the labor market are linked to several structural inequities, according to McKinsey and Company, including Black workers’ underrepresentation in regions with high job growth opportunities and overrepresentation in industries with low growth and low wages, such as entry-level healthcare jobs, retail and food services. And in the corporate world, Black workers face ongoing challenges like bias and discrimination, a “broken rung from entry-level to manager roles,” lack of support from supervisors and tokenism that continues to hold them back and can even force them out the door.
Strikes work at making progressive changes – teachers prove.
Beckett 18: Ben Beckett is an American writer in Vienna. “Public Sector Workers Should Have the Right to Strike” 08.13.2018 AA
Politicians have plenty to fear from striking public workers. The public sector remains a comparative bastion of union strength, with unions representing about 38 percent of public sector workers nationwide, compared to about 7 percent of workers in the private sector. In New York state, about 72 percent of public sector workers are in unions, versus 15 percent in the private sector. This year alone, in Arizona, Oklahoma, and West Virginia, striking teachers won major concessions from hostile, right-wing state governments. Reactionary politicians and capitalists from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to the forces behind the Janus case understand the potential power of public unions to advance progressive causes — that is precisely why they have attacked them so viciously. Public sector workers occupy a strategic place in the labor market because so many of their jobs are critical to society’s functioning. That means the potential power of withdrawing their labor is magnified beyond their immediate job site. The recent teachers’ strikes were so effective because school closures forced thousands of parents to significantly alter their routines. The New York City transit strike of 2005 lasted only three days, but because it made transportation across the city extremely difficult, it was estimated to cost the city and businesses hundreds of millions of dollars in lost fares and revenue. And while conditions vary, public sector strikes generally have a lot of public support. One reason for that is from nurses to teachers to welfare workers, better conditions for the people they serve are often among public workers’ core demands. Even when strikes are not linked directly to social demands, a majority of Americans do not support weakening public sector unions. However, for unions, a comparison between the West Virginia teachers’ strike and the New York City transit strike is instructive. West Virginia teachers organized parents and community members for months ahead of the strike. They tied their working conditions to children’s learning conditions, making clear how their demands would benefit virtually everyone. Transit workers did not make such arguments, and support for their strike was nowhere near as high as that of the teachers. Public sector unions have to make clear that when they walk off the job, they are striking to benefit the people they serve as much as themselves. When schools are closed, when buses don’t run, when trash goes uncollected and mail undelivered, it affects not just the employer, but nearly everyone. The pressure on government bosses to settle is therefore extremely high. And when public sector workers strike, they have the power to win transformative victories. From both elected officials’ and union heads’ reaction to Nixon’s right-to-strike proposal, we can see that neither side wants to face this prospect. We should make them.
The right to strike fights concentration of power while reducing inequality.
IER 17 Institute of Employment Rights. The IER exists to inform the debate around trade union rights and labour law by providing information, critical analysis, and policy ideas through our network of academics, researchers and lawyers. “UN Rights Expert: Right to strike is essential to democracy”. 3-10-2017. . https://www.ier.org.uk/news/un-rights-expert-right-strike-essential-democracy/.
The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Maina Kiai, has reminded member states of the International Labour Organization (ILO) – including the UK – that they have a positive obligation to uphold the right to strike. Speaking at an ILO meeting on Monday 06 March 2017 in Geneva, Kiai argued that the right to strike is fundamental to the preservation of democracy. “The concentration of power in one sector – whether in the hands of government or business – inevitably leads to the erosion of democracy, and an increase in inequalities and marginalization with all their attendant consequences. The right to strike is a check on this concentration of power,” he explained. The right to strike has been established in international law as a corollary to the right of freedom of association for decades, and is enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights as Article 11. As a member state of the ILO and of the EU, the UK is legally obliged to uphold the right to strike, although through the Trades Union Act 2016 and the anti-trade union laws that preceded it, the government is making it harder and harder for trade unions to take industrial action. Kiai criticised such actions, saying government’s have a duty not to impede workers’ ability to take industrial action. “I deplore the various attempts made to erode the right to strike at national and multilateral levels,” the expert said, reminding delegates: “Protest action in relation to government social and economic policy, and against negative corporate practices, forms part of the basic civil liberties whose respect is essential for the meaningful exercise of trade union rights. This right enables them to engage with companies and governments on a more equal footing, and Member States have a positive obligation to protect this right, and a negative obligation not to interfere with its exercise.”
The plan spills over to challenge other facets of racism
Jones 20: Charisse Jones covers retail and workplace issues. “'Whatever it takes': Thousands of workers could join Strike for Black Lives, walking off jobs Monday to protest racial inequality” July 20, 2020 AA
Workers protested across the USA on Monday, going on strike, walking off the job and marching on city hall to demand an end to systemic racism in the workplace and their communities. The Strike for Black Lives, organized by a coalition of unions, social justice and civil rights groups, was set to take place in an 160 cities, including New York, San Francisco and St. Louis, linking the fight against police brutality to a broader call for racial equity. Planned actions ranged from daylong strikes by fast-food workers to nursing home aides, custodians and others walking off the job at midday for eight minutes and 46 seconds, the length of time a white Minneapolis police officer pinned down George Floyd, whose death led to a nationwide movement to protest police killings of African American men and women. It was not immediately clear how many people participated Monday, but organizers said they expected thousands of workers, from Uber drivers to farmworkers, to take part. The Strike for Black Lives calls on companies to increase pay, offer benefits such as paid sick leave and allow workers to unionize as part of a broader effort to root out bias that hinders the ability of Black people to achieve economic and social equity. In New York City, Sen. Chuck Schumer addressed more than 150 protesters gathered in front of Trump International Hotel demanding better protections and benefits for essential workers in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. “Today, we’re here to demand from those in power, including the man whose name adorns the building, that it’s time to dismantle white supremacy and combat police brutality,” said Kyle Bragg, president of 32BJ, a union representing more than 170,000 office janitors, security workers and doormen on the East Coast, according to The Associated Press. “Until we have racial justice, we cannot have economic, climate or immigrant justice,” Bragg said. Organizers said 1,500 janitors in San Francisco went on strike early Monday and will rally with other workers around City Hall. In Chicago, fast-food workers planned to call for better pay and benefits by marching and riding through the city in a car caravan. "With the Strike for Black Lives, we are uniting the interconnected fights for racial and economic justice,” Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, said in a statement. “Workers from across the country are coming together because we can no longer ignore the deadly impacts of structural racism in America’s economy, especially in the middle of a pandemic that is devastating communities of color.” Federal unemployment benefit going away:Some homeowners expect struggle to pay mortgage Saving for retirement or a house? These are the top 10 long-term investing tips beginners need to know The killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain and numerous other African Americans, along with the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus on Black and Hispanic communities, spurred an intense national conversation about the presence and impact of systemic racism. A wide range of organizations and unions support the effort, including the SEIU, United Farm workers, the Fight for $15, MoveOn and the American Federation of Teachers. Some organizers called out Walmart and McDonald's, which they said express support for Black lives while exploiting African American workers by paying low wages and offering few workplace protections or benefits. Black employees at a corporate-owned McDonald's in Lakeland, Florida, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit Friday, saying they were subjected to a racist and toxic work environment, then retaliation, such as reduced hours and grueling tasks, when they complained. "We want to build a country where Black lives matter in every aspect of our society, including our workplaces," Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, a representative of the Movement for Black Lives, said during a media call. "These same companies whose profits are made from the exploitation of Black workers have not changed their policies." In an emailed statement, McDonald's USA said, “We stand with Black communities across the globe in our commitment to address unacceptable racial injustices and are disappointed that these allegations do not reflect the high standards we hold ourselves accountable to every day across all areas of our business. We take these claims seriously and will review the complaint once it has been filed and take actions accordingly.”
The right to strike ensures a process of collective bargaining – without it, it would force workers to work against their will.
Croucher 11 Croucher, Richard, Mark Kely, and Lilian Miles. "A Rawlsian basis for core labor rights." Comp. Lab. L. and Pol'y J. 33 (2011): 297. Yoaks
There is another right for us to address here under the first principle. Even the right to bargain collectively as asserted by the ILO is, taken in isolation, a hollow right. It is necessary to have the possibility of recourse to industrial action in some form to back one’s bargaining position in order for a right to bargain to be substantive. If it is illegal for workers to take any action opposing an employer’s interests, then the right to bargain is meaningless, since the employer is free to ignore workers’ attempts to negotiate. We therefore must consider not only the rights to organise and bargain collectively, but also the right of labour to act collectively. The paradigmatic form of such a right of labour, the one most often discussed, is the right to strike, though other forms of industrial action exist. A right to strike is often mooted and has been seriously considered by the ILO for adoption as a declared right, though the ILO has not heretofore put it forward as a core right in the way it has other rights. That the ILO should be relatively conservative in asserting the rights of labour is unsurprising, given its tripartite structure and diplomatic position. However, the ILO has in various places outside of its most fundamental documents acknowledged that the right to bargain collectively implies a right to strike.39 The right to strike appears as a special and controversial case, then, but we argue that from a rights perspective it is a simple, fundamental freedom. The right to conduct industrial action is in effect that to withdraw their labour in some way (quitting, striking, going slow) unless collective demands are met. As individuals, every worker, if they are not a slave (and slavery is explicitly not permitted under Rawls’s first principle) has a right to withdraw their own labour, and might of course threaten this in individual negotiations with their employer. Effectively, what occurs in industrial action is a pooling of individual rights into collective rights, via the individual freedom to associate with our peers, and in this respect we may still discuss these collective rights qua individual rights under Rawls’s first principle of justice. That is, individuals may be said to have an individual right to join in collective industrial action to improve their conditions. Of course, it will be argued that there is no right to strike if it involves a breach of contract. However, no contract can literally force labour – if it did that, it would breach the right to freedom from slavery. Rather, it can only schedule penalties, typically financial, where labour is not performed. In effect, as long as the freedom to contract is limited by the right to freedom from slavery, there is an implied freedom to strike. Thus, it is because of the very lack of complete freedom to make contracts that prevents us having a primary right to bargain that we do have a primary freedom to strike. We cannot, according to Rawls, sign away our basic freedom to refuse to do any particular job.40 Of course, a complete ban on bargaining would make striking pointless. We can say we have a fundamental right to strike, but that we won’t want to exercise it unless we also have a right to bargain. And we will now argue that there a substantive right to bargain collectively is assured under the second principle of justice.
Strikes are key to gain higher wages and benefits – GM proves.
Isidore and Yurkivech 19: Vanessa Yurkevich is a Business and Politics correspondent, covering the intersection of business and politics across CNN's television and digital platforms. Chris Isidore is a senior writer for CNN Business, where he covers the auto industry, airlines, labor and all other manner of breaking financial news. “The long General Motors strike is finally over, as workers approve labor deal” October 25, 2019, AA
The long General Motors strike is finally over, as members of the United Auto Workers union voted in favor of a four-year labor deal to end the walkout. The rank-and-file members voted 57 in favor of the deal, according to the union. The labor contract was reached between union and company negotiators on Oct. 16, but strikers remained on the picket lines until it was ratified. GM plants will resume work as soon as possible, with some workers returning over the weekend and others on Monday, according to two company sources familiar with plans. The strike by nearly 50,000 hourly GM workers started Sept. 16, nearly six weeks ago. It is the largest against a US business since the last GM strike 12 years ago. But that strike was over in less than three days. This strike is the longest auto industry work stoppage in more than 20 years, and the longest nationwide auto strike in 50 years. GM has lost about $1.75 billion due to the walkout, according to an estimate from Anderson Economic Group, a Michigan research firm. The deal was reached between union and company negotiators more than a week ago, although members stayed on the picket line until the ratification process could be completed. Strikers have received strike benefits of only $275 a week. That’s far below the more than $30 an hour that veteran UAW members make. The new contract will pay the hourly workers an $11,000 signing bonus, which should help them recoup much of their lost wages, although GM was offering a signing bonus even before the strike started. Under the deal, wages for most veteran workers will rise by 6 during the four-year life of the contract to $32.32 an hour. The union also won a way for many temporary workers to be hired as permanent employees as well as a quicker end to the two-tier wage system instituted after the 2009 bankruptcy than was in the previous contract language. The union also got the company to drop its demand that workers pay a larger percentage of their own health care costs. Terry Dittes, the union’s chief negotiator, said that the strikers’ “sacrifice and courageous stand addressed the two-tier wages structure and permanent temporary worker classification that has plagued working class Americans.” GM also praised the deal and the workers. “We delivered a contract that recognizes our employees for the important contributions they make to the overall success of the company, with a strong wage and benefit package and additional investment and job growth in our US operations,” said a statement from GM CEO Mary Barra. But the union failed in its efforts to save three plants – an assembly line in Lordstown, Ohio, and transmission plants in Warren, Michigan, and Baltimore, where GM halted operations earlier this year. The union wanted GM to shift some of its production from Mexico, where the company built more than 800,000 cars and trucks last year, back to US plants, but GM refused. While most of the autoworkers at those three plants have found jobs at other GM factories, many had to relocate to take those jobs. Anger among both union leadership and rank-and-file about those plant closings raised doubts about whether this labor deal would pass. But after nearly six weeks on the picket lines, workers were apparently willing to accept the closings for a chance to get back to work. The union announced it will now focus on reaching a new labor deal for workers at Ford (F). The union had put negotiations with Ford (F) and Fiat Chrysler (FCAU) on a back-burner while it sought the deal with GM (GM).
Framing
As oppression is based in unwarranted power imbalances, the Role of the Ballot is to Endorse the Position that Better Ruptures Dominant Power Hierarchies. Solutions to critical issues must be discussed through pragmatic approaches within hegemonic power structures.
Kapoor: Kapoor, Ilan Ilan Kapoor is a Professor of Critical Development Studies at the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada “The Postcolonial Politics of Development”, Routledge 2008 AA
There are perhaps several other social movement campaigns that could be cited as examples of a ‘hybridizing strategy’.5 But what emerges as important from the Chipko and NBA campaigns is the way in which they treat laws and policies, institutional practices, and ideological apparatuses as deconstructible. That is, they refuse to take dominant authority at face value, and proceed to reveal its contingencies. Sometimes, they expose what the hegemon is trying to disavow or hide (exclusion of affected communities in project design and implementation, faulty information gathering and dissemination). Sometimes, they problematize dominant or naturalized truths (‘development = unlimited economic growth = capitalism’, ‘big is better’, ‘technology can save the environment’). In either case, by contesting, publicizing, and politicizing accepted or hidden truths, they hybridize power, challenging its smugness and triumphalism, revealing its impurities. They show power to be, literally and figuratively, a bastard. While speaking truth to power, a hybridizing strategy also exploits the instabilities of power. In part, this involves showing up and taking advantage of the equivocations of power — conflicting laws, contradictory policies, unfulfilled promises. A lot has to do here with publicly shaming the hegemon, forcing it to remedy injustices and live up to stated commitments in a more accountable and transparent manner. And, in part, this involves nurturing or manipulating the splits and strains within institutions. Such maneuvering can take the form of cultivating allies, forging alliances, or throwing doubt on prevailing orthodoxy. Note, lastly, the way in which a hybridizing strategy works with the dominant discourse. This reflects the negotiative aspect of Bhabha’s performativity. The strategy may outwit the hegemon, but it does so from the interstices of the hegemony. The master may be paralyzed, but his paralysis is induced using his own poison/medicine. It is for this reason that cultivating allies in the adversarial camp is possible: when you speak their language and appeal to their own ethical horizons, you are building a modicum of common ground. It is for this reason also that the master cannot easily dismiss or crush you. Observing his rules and playing his game makes it difficult for him not to take you seriously or grant you a certain legitimacy. The use of non-violent tactics may be crucial in this regard: state repression is easily justified against violent adversaries, but it is vulnerable to public criticism when used against non-violence. Thus, the fact that Chipko and the NBA deployed civil disobedience — pioneered, it must be pointed out, by the ‘father of the nation’ (i.e. Gandhi) — made it difficult for the state to quash them or deflect their claims
States must specifically consider marginalized groups, since excluding some perspectives creates a flawed epistemology that makes answering ethical questions impossible.
Medina 11: Medina, Jose contributing author for the Oxford University Press “Toward a Foucauldian Epistemology of Resistance: Counter-Memory, Epistemic Friction, and Guerrilla Pluralism”. Foucault Studies, 1(12), 9–35. 2011 DD
Foucault invites us to pay attention to the past and ongoing epistemic battles among competing power/knowledge frameworks that try to control a given field. Different fields—or domains of discursive interaction—contain particular discursive regimes with their particular ways of producing knowledge. In the battle among power/ knowledge frameworks, some come on top and become dominant while others are displaced and become subjugated. Foucault’s methodology offers a way of exploiting that vibrant plurality of epistemic perspectives which always contains some bodies of experiences and memories that are erased or hidden in the mainstream frameworks that become hegemonic after prevailing in sustained epistemic battles. What Foucault calls subjugated knowledges are forms of experience and remembering that are pushed to the margins and render unqualified and unworthy of epistemic respect by prevailing and hegemonic discourses. Subjugated knowledges remain invisible to mainstream perspectives; they have a precarious subterranean existence that renders them unnoticed by most people and impossible to detect by those whose perspective has already internalized certain epistemic exclusions. And with the invisibility of subjugated knowledges, certain possibilities for resistance and subversion go unnoticed. The critical and emancipatory potential of Foucaultian genealogy resides in challenging established practices of remembering and forgetting by excavating subjugated bodies of experiences and memories, bringing to the fore the perspectives that culturally hegemonic practices have foreclosed. The critical task of the scholar and the activist is to resurrect subjugated knowledges—that is, to revive hidden or forgotten bodies of experiences and memories—and to help produce insurrections of subjugated knowledges. In order to be critical and to have transformative effects, genealogical investigations should aim at these insurrections, which are critical interventions that disrupt and interrogate epistemic hegemonies and mainstream perspectives (e.g. official histories, standard interpretations, ossified exclusionary meanings, etc). Such insurrections involve the difficult labor of mobilizing scattered, marginalized publics and of tapping into the critical potential of their dejected experiences and memories. An epistemic insurrection requires a collaborative relation between genealogical scholars/activists and the subjects whose experiences and memories have been subjugated: those subjects by themselves may not be able to destabilize the epistemic status quo until they are given a voice at the epistemic table (i.e. in the production of knowledge), that is, until room is made for their marginalized perspective to exert resistance, until past epistemic battles are reopened and established frameworks become open to contestation.
Prefer ongoing violence over securitized impact scenarios.
Jackson 12: Jackson, Richard. Director of the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Otago “The Great Con of National Security.” Richard Jackson Terrorism Blog, 8/5/12. MZ
It may have once been the case that being attacked by another country was a major threat to the lives of ordinary people. It may also be true that there are still some pretty serious dangers out there associated with the spread of nuclear weapons. For the most part, however, Most of what you’ve been told about national security and all the big threats which can supposedly kill you is one big con designed to distract you from the things that can really hurt you, such as the poverty, inequality and structural violence of capitalism, global warming, and the manufacture and proliferation of weapons – among others.¶ The facts are simple and irrefutable: you’re far more likely to die from lack of health care provision than you are from terrorism; from stress and overwork than Iranian or North Korean nuclear missiles; from lack of road safety than from illegal immigrants; from mental illness and suicide than from computer hackers; from domestic violence than from asylum seekers; from the misuse of legal medicines and alcohol abuse than from international drug lords. And yet, politicians and the servile media spend most of their time talking about the threats posed by terrorism, immigration, asylum seekers, the international drug trade, the nuclear programmes of Iran and North Korea, computer hackers, animal rights activism, the threat of China, and a host of other issues which are all about as equally unlikely to affect the health and well-being of you and your family. Along with this obsessive and perennial discussion of so-called ‘national security issues’, the state spends truly vast sums on security measures which have virtually no impact on the actual risk of dying from these threats., and then engages in massive displays of ‘security theatre’ designed to show just how seriously the state takes these threats – such as the x-ray machines and security measures in every public building, surveillance cameras everywhere, missile launchers in urban areas, drones in Afghanistan, armed police in airports, and a thousand other things. This display is meant to convince you that these threats are really, really serious.¶ And while all this is going on, the rulers of society are hoping that you won’t notice that increasing social and economic inequality in society leads to increased ill health for a growing underclass; that suicide and crime always rise when unemployment rises; that workplaces remain highly dangerous and kill and maim hundreds of people per year; that there are preventable diseases which plague the poorer sections of society; that domestic violence kills and injures thousands of womxn and children annually; and that globally, poverty and preventable disease kills tens of millions of people needlessly every year. In other words, they are hoping that you won’t notice how much structural violence there is in the world.¶ More than this, they are hoping that you won’t notice that while literally trillions of dollars are spent on military weapons, foreign wars and security theatre (which also arguably do nothing to make any us any safer, and may even make us marginally less safe), that domestic violence programmes struggle to provide even minimal support for womxn and children at risk of serious harm from their partners; that underfunded mental health programmes mean long waiting lists to receive basic care for at-risk individuals; that drug and alcohol rehabilitation programmes lack the funding to match the demand for help; that welfare measures aimed at reducing inequality have been inadequate for decades; that health and safety measures at many workplaces remain insufficiently resourced; and that measures to tackle global warming and developing alternative energy remain hopelessly inadequate.¶ Of course, none of this is surprising. Politicians are a part of the system; they don’t want to change it. For them, all the insecurity, death and ill-health caused by capitalist inequality are a price worth paying to keep the basic social structures as they are. A more egalitarian society based on equality, solidarity, and other non-materialist values would not suit their interests, or the special interests of the lobby groups they are indebted to. It is also true that dealing with economic and social inequality, improving public health, changing international structures of inequality, restructuring the military-industrial complex, and making the necessary economic and political changes to deal with global warming will be extremely difficult and will require long-term commitment and determination. For politicians looking towards the next election, it is clearly much easier to paint immigrants as a threat to social order or pontificate about the ongoing danger of terrorists. It is also more exciting for the media than stories about how poor people and people of colour are discriminated against and suffer worse health as a consequence.¶ Viewed from this vantage point, national security’s is one massive confidence trick – misdirection on an epic scale. Its primary function is to distract you from the structures and inequalities in society which are the real threat to the health and wellbeing of you and your family, and to convince you to be permanently afraid so that you will acquiesce to all the security measures which keep you under state control and keep the military-industrial complex ticking along.¶ Keep this in mind next time you hear a politician talking about the threat of uncontrolled immigration, the risk posed by asylum seekers or the threat of Iran, or the need to expand counter-terrorism powers. The question is: when politicians are talking about national security, what is that they don’t want you to think and talk about? What exactly is the misdirection they are engaged in? The truth is, if you think that terrorists or immigrants or asylum seekers or Iran are a greater threat to your safety than the capitalist system, you have been well and truly conned, my friend. Don’t believe the hype: you’re much more likely to die from any one of several forms of structural violence in society than you are from immigrants or terrorism. Somehow, we need to challenge the politicians on this fact.