In protest of the Kenosha, Wisconsin police shooting of Jacob Blake, the Milwaukee Bucks refused to play their playoff game against the Orlando Magicâwho also did not play and refused the Bucksâ forfeitâon Wednesday night and instead stayed in the locker room to speak with Wisconsinâs Attorney General and Lieutenant Governor. "Despite the overwhelming plea for change, there has been no action, so our focus today cannot be on basketball,â the Bucks said in a statement. âWe are calling for justice for Jacob Blake, and demand the officers be held accountable. For this to occur, it is imperative for the Wisconsin State Legislature to reconvene after months of inaction and take up meaningful measures to address issues of police accountability, brutality, and criminal justice reform.â Within hours of the Bucksâ work stoppage, other teams in the NBA playoffs launched their own and were joined by sport leagues across the country. Every other playoff team scheduled to play that night refused, and teams in the WNBA, MLB, and MLS walked off the field during their games.Many have called these work stoppages a boycott, but they're actually strikes. In fact, what these teams are doing right now is called a wildcat strikeâa work stoppage without union approval, in this case the National Basketball Players Association. Confusing the two diminishes the fact that the players are risking their incomes and careers, because they are bound by âno-strikeâ clauses in their collective bargaining agreement. Across the country, workers in numerous industries are similarly barred from expressing their discontent. A boycott is when an individual or group protests by withholding money and refusing to consume some companyâs product or service. The #StopHateForProfit campaign, organized by activists protesting how Facebook handles hate speech and misinformation, was a boycottâadvertisers refused to pay Facebook to place their advertisements. A strike is when an individual or group protests by withholding their labor and refusing to workâthese athletes are refusing to work and withholding their labor, not their money. What makes the NBA strike a âwildcatâ strike is the fact that the NBAâs Collective Bargaining Agreement (the contract between the NBA and the players' union that dictates the "terms and conditions of employment") explicitly prohibits strikes. Section 30.1 is titled "No Strike" and reads:"During the term of this Agreement, neither the Players Association nor its members shall engage in any strikes, cessations or stoppages of work, or any other similar interference with the operations of the NBA or any of its Teams." The CBA, originally signed in 2017 and scheduled to last in 2023, is currently being renegotiated in response to the coronavirus pandemic and the effects it will have on working conditions and league revenue projections. In the United States, no-strike clauses are common in collective bargaining agreements. They allow employers to take away workersâ key threat: withholding their labor. Under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, strikes are protected to an extent, but highly regulated. A strike may not be in support of an "unfair" labor practice, in violation of a no-strike clause, in the form of a sit-down strike, and so on. In 2019, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that wildcat strikes are not protected if striking employees become aware their union "disapproved of and disavowed the strike." To violate these rules is to open up oneself to being punished by your union, or the strike being found unlawful and its participants legally fired, or striking workers being indefinitely replaced.U.S. labor law is born out of a violent history. Charles Lindholm, an anthropology professor at Boston University, found that âthe United States had more deaths at the end of the nineteenth century through labor violenceâin absolute terms and in proportion to population sizeâthan any other country except Tsarist Russia.â Labor violence here refers to violence against workers carried out either by private security forces funded by Gilded Age robber barons or by public security forces funded by the government. Today, labor law is less violent and constructed to prevent general strikes and labor unrest with more finesse. This doesnât necessarily empower workers, but leads to more docile relations. Often, this means the process of reaching a collective bargaining process can end up âroutinizing and bureaucratizing conflictâ as UC Santa Barbara history professor Nelson Lichtenstein told Motherboard. Strikes are defused by a long series of negotiations, fake outs, and attempts at stalling by the employer and its lawyers that stretches out weeks, months, or years. This means that strikesâif they happen at allâalmost always happen during pre-set periods of negotiation. For example, there is widespread labor unrest in Major League Baseball, but there is little chance of a strike until the current collective bargaining agreement between the Major League Baseball Players Association and the league expires on December 1, 2021. Many analysts believe that there will be a strike after it expires, because the league and the players are at odds on many issues. The same isnât true of Europe, where the right to strike is generally much stronger across the continent than in any part of the United States. And so the fact that the NBA strike happened suddenly, and in violation of its current CBA, is notable, laudable, and particularly risky.Boycotts are for consumers. Strikes are for workers. And while no-strike clauses shouldnât exist, they do for many workers across this country. A piece of paper shouldnât stand in between people and a better contract, fair working conditions, or a better world. The choice to risk oneâs job and careerâespecially one that pays as well as an NBA playerâis a serious one that warrants a clear understanding so that we can better make that decision ourselves and support those who decide to strike, even if we donât. And even though anonymous and unconfirmed reports are emerging that players have âvotedâ to continue playing, no games have been played. Even if the NBA resumes in some fashion, the story isnât over: the toxic labor relations at play will still be there, and so will the inhuman police violence that sparked the playersâ labor action.
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