08 March 2010

Strikes Without Unions

There is nothing fundamentally union specific about the tactic we know as a strike. Strike behavior can arise any time you have a buyer and seller who are locked into dealing with each other to the exclusion of anyone else.

Disney made the obvious when it shut down its ABC station in New York City for fourteen minutes at the start of last night's Academy Awards as a result of a breakdown in its negotiations with Cablevision, which is required to carry all broadcast stations and probably has a larger market share than the actual broadcast market for television in New York.

As unions capture a smaller and smaller share of the private sector work force, and big business continues to consolidate, expect to see more de facto "strikes" between big businesses than we see between management and labor.

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