> Is there any legal precedent for what governments would do?
There is a long history of the government using the military to break strikes and fill the labor gap for things deemed necessary for national security. I'm not sure Amazon warehouses are in the same class as coal mines though...
The government would absolutely step in and stop a strike at Amazon right now, or just about any other business. Anyone trying to strike right now would be run out of town by citizens with torches as well. It might sound like a good idea in the abstract, but if you factor in the emotional state of the country, people would be up in arms and those on strike would get zero sympathy.
No, it’s covered. You might just be shocked to learn that children don’t really care about collective bargaining history anymore than the dates of important battles in WW2.
We covered the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, the muckrakers, and Roosevelt's war against trusts, but I don't ever recall hearing the name Eugene Debs, or say the Haymarket massacre.
There is a great deal of history where, yes, physical force & violence was used to break strikes. [0] <-- Just one example. [1] <-- another. [2][3] <-- more. The union labor movement is not at its most popular right now either. There'd be a lot more people rooting for the government right now.
not quite, but delivery services are extremely important to the vulnerable population right now. many of these people are old and, as we all know, these are the people that vote most consistently. no sitting politician wants to be the one who sat on their hands while a strike prevented the elderly from receiving their hand sanitizer order.
I mean that's sort of beside the point; it only matters whether they think they do. the older people I know are aggressively sanitizing stuff whenever they have anything delivered.
That's quite a stretch. Amazon is not the sole seller of any of it's goods, and calling hand sanitizer essential for national security would not go over well...
It's very easy to look back 100 years and say "the governments actions helped rich people! Capitalism!!!!" But it's really not so simple.
If you had a angry man blocking your driveway and refusing to leave, you would call the police. If there were hundreds, you would like to be able to call the military.
I'm no lover of government, and certainly it was fumbling and violent when performing it's duty (as always). That said, the purpose of breaking a strike is to allow people who want to work (strike breakers) to do business with people who want to employ them.
A core function of government is to facilitate mutual transactions. There's nothing inherently immoral about that.
There is a long history of the government using the military to break strikes and fill the labor gap for things deemed necessary for national security. I'm not sure Amazon warehouses are in the same class as coal mines though...