The conservative majority Supreme Court struck a big blow to unions on Thursday, with a decision that favored a corporation over its workers. This is good if you’re a corporation, but terrible if you’re a human being that wants things like fair wages, overtime pay and healthcare. This does not bode well for the future of workers either, and especially for those writers currently striking for better pay.
The highest court in America decided it was more important to protect a cement mixing company’s right to sue its workers than to protect the rights of the workers themselves. This thing didn’t just squeak by, either; it passed 8-1. Eight of those justices sided with Glacier Northwest Inc. over actual human workers. Does that feel good?
The case is called Glacier Northwest Inc. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Here’s what happened: In 2017, Teamsters Local 174 organized a strike against the Glacier.
Drivers with early routes were on deliveries when negotiations broke down, so the union told them to drive the trucks back to the company and leave them running, so the concrete wouldn’t harden right away. All of the cement couldn’t be saved, and a portion of it had to be destroyed.
After the strike, Glacier brought a lawsuit against the Teamsters for intentional destruction of company property. The State Court in Washington initially dismissed the claim, saying it needed to be heard by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Glacier appealed, saying it could skip the NLRB hearing because the damage was “intentional.”
The case then made its way up to the Supreme Court, who sided with Glacier. A corporation. People don’t strike for fun. They lose money and work. They’re striking because they want to be treated fairly, and because they are humans who need money to care for their families. What the Supreme Court just did was essentially say “f*** you” to the American worker.
This does not bode well for the future for workers, but it’s fantastic for corporations. This is not good. The one dissenting opinion came from Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who said the court was overstepping its bounds here.
“[Instead] of modestly standing down” she said, the court “eagerly” inserted itself into the conflict and opined based on facts from the employer, which should be handled by the NLRB. The key point here: The move will “impede the Board’s uniform development of labor law and erode the right to strike.” Notice the word “right.”
Here’s what section 13 of the NLRB’s “Right To Strike” says: “Nothing in this Act, except as specifically provided for herein, shall be construed so as either to interfere with or impede or diminish in any way the right to strike, or to affect the limitations or qualifications on that right.”
The Supreme Court is doing just that. This is appalling. Money makes the world go round, and workers are just considered numbers and points on a graph. How did we get here? The American worker should be protected by the Supreme Court, not bent over by it.
Per Judge Jackson: “Workers are not indentured servants, bound to continue laboring until any planned work stoppage would be as painless as possible for their master.”
This brings us to the writers. They want higher pay, a stable pay structure, and deals in place to deal with residuals for streaming and provisions for the use of artificial intelligence. They want to be treated fairly; writers are the core of entertainment, yet they get treated the worst.
However, with this new ruling, studios in Hollywood could potentially sue the writers, saying they intentionally harmed the company by not writing. This hands a lot of power to corporations, and takes a lot away from workers. Why do we hate workers so much in this country? It makes no sense — unless you look at it from a profits perspective. Then it does!
Isn’t this country about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps? What about the so-called American Dream? How can these things be accomplished if we continually shit on our citizens and workers? How can anything happen if even the Supreme Court is in the pocket of big business?
Glacier called it a decision that “vindicates the longstanding principle that federal law does not shield labor unions … when they intentionally destroy an employer’s property.” Shocking take right there. Perhaps Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said it best:
“The Supreme Court is not upholding the law, nor is it advancing the American people. Supreme Court justices are ruling on behalf of billionaires alone — the very ones they socialize with at cocktail parties and who they owe their jobs to in the first place.”
Workers should be able to strike!