By Steve Early

Three years ago in Boston, downtown streets and office buildings were the scene of inspiring immigrant worker activism during an unprecedented strike by local janitors. Their walkout was backed by other union members, community activists, students and professors, public officials, religious leaders and even a few "socially-minded" businessmen.

The janitors had long been invisible, mistreated by management and, until recently, ignored by their own SEIU local union. Simply by making their strike such a popular social cause, they achieved what many regarded as a major victory.

On the same day in 2002 that the janitors' dispute was settled, a much larger strike - at Overnite Transportation - ended quite differently. Faced with mounting legal setbacks and dwindling picket line support, the Teamsters were forced to call off their nationwide walkout against America's leading non-union trucker.

The 4,000 Overnite workers involved were not able to win a first contract. And since their three-year strike was suspended, all have lost their bargaining rights in a series of "de-certification" elections.

The intersecting trajectory of these two struggles - one hopeful and high-profile, the other tragic and now-almost-forgotten - raises important questions about the state of the strike and the future of labor in America. Maintaining "strike capacity" is no less important than shifting greater resources into organizing new members and is just as essential to union revitalization and growth.

Unfortunately, developing new ways to walk out and win has not been a big part of recent debates about "changing to win."

Labor's strike effectiveness and organizational strength have long been connected. Throughout history, work stoppages have been used for economic and political purposes, to alter the balance of power between labor and capital within single workplaces, entire industries or nationwide.

Strikes have won shorter hours and safer conditions, through legislation or contract negotiation. They've fostered new forms of worker organization - like industrial unions - that were badly needed because of corporate restructuring and the reorganization of production. Strikes have acted as incubators for class consciousness, rank-and-file leadership development and political activism.

In other countries, strikers have challenged - and changed - governments that were dictatorial and oppressive.

In some nations (including Korea, South Africa, France and Spain) where strike action helped democratize society, general strikes are still being used for mass mobilization and protest.

In the U.S., on the other hand, "major" work stoppages have become a statistical blip on the radar screen of industrial relations. As the recent experience of transit workers in New York City and mechanics at Northwest Airlines has shown, striking continues to be a high-stakes venture as well.

Considerable legal and financial risks are involved, particularly in the public sector, where walk-outs are severely restricted and, as in New York, subject to draconian penalties. Since 1992, walk-outs by 1,000 workers or more have averaged fewer than 40 annually. In 2003, there were only 14, with just 129,000 union members participating. In contrast, at the peak of labor's post-World War II strike wave in 1952, there were 470 major strikes, affecting nearly three million workers nationwide.

As strike activity continues to decline in the U.S., the pool of union members and leaders with actual strike experience shrinks as well. That's why union activists need to analyze, collectively and individually, their strike victories and defeats, summing up and sharing the lessons of these battles so they can become the basis for future success, rather than a recurring pattern of failure.

Attorney Bob Schwartz's new book, "Strikes, Picketing, and Inside Campaigns: A Legal Guide For Unions," makes a valuable contribution to this educational process. It's the latest in a series of easy-to-read guides from Work Rights Press, which also publishes the author's best-seller, "The Legal Rights of Union Stewards."

As in his previous books, Schwartz provides useful sample letters, legal notices and answers to commonly-asked questions-in this case, about the many different types of union picketing and strike activity. There are also relevant case citations, tracking the development of labor law in this area over the past 25 years.

Beginning with the PATCO disaster in 1981, when thousands of striking air traffic controllers were fired and replaced, the U.S. labor movement entered a dark decade of lost strikes and lock-outs. Many anti-concession battles ended badly: at Phelps-Dodge, Greyhound, Hormel, Eastern, Continental Airlines, International Paper and other firms.

The lost-strike trend discouraged many unions from using labor's traditional weapon. Among those that did, setbacks continued into the mid-'90s, at firms like Caterpillar, Bridgestone/Firestone and A. E. Staley.

Yet even during this difficult period, there were contract campaigns that bucked the tide of concession bargaining, and Schwartz's book discusses some of the tactics and strategies they used. In 1989, for example, 60,000 members of the Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers waged an effective four-month strike in New York and New England over threatened medical benefit cuts at NYNEX. Telephone workers made extensive use of mobile picketing tactics and targeted top officials of the company and their allies in places where they least expected it. (See chapter 8, "Follow That Truck," and chapter 6, "Making It Personal.")

At the same time, the United Mine Workers succeeded in making their 12-month walk-out against Pittston - in geographically isolated Appalachian mountain communities - into a national labor cause. The union mobilized its members for sympathy strikes at other companies, linked arms with Jesse Jackson, used civil disobedience tactics, staged the first plant occupation since the 1930s and created an encampment in southwest Virginia (Camp Solidarity) that hosted strike supporters from around the country. Even an avalanche of injunctions, fines and damage suits did not deter the miners and their families.

In 1997, the contract strike made its biggest come-back in recent years with the now-famous walk-out by 190,000 United Parcel Service workers. The backing of Teamster drivers has long been appreciated by other strikers. As Schwartz notes (in chapter 9, "Honor Thy Line"), IBT contract language has been "a boon to other unions who count on Teamster drivers to respect their picket lines."

In 1997, it was time for the rest of labor to return the favor, which unions did in a tremendous outpouring of support for UPS drivers and package handlers.

As these and numerous other examples illustrate, creativity, careful planning and membership involvement are essential to success, whether a union chooses to stop work or pursue a non-strike strategy. Bob Schwartz's new book is a unique tool to hone such skills and should be used in membership education, leadership training and union strategy discussions about what to do when a contract expires. In situations where striking is a necessary and viable worker response, Schwartz's book outlines what it takes to make a walkout effective, while helping unions anticipate likely employer counter-measures at the bargaining table, in court and at the NLRB.

The author has pulled together an enormous amount of material that has not been readily accessible to non-lawyers in the past, even to activists relying on the official strike manuals of the few unions that have them. Union members who fail to consult Schwartz's book while preparing for a contract fight will not be as ready as they could be to deal with the many legal and organizational problems that may arise. Any union bargaining team that doesn't have a copy of "Strikes, Picketing and Inside Campaigns" is missing out on information and advice that will make the hard job of winning good contracts just a little bit easier.

"Strikes, Picketing, and Inside Campaigns: A Legal Guide For Unions" by Robert Schwartz (Work Rights Press, December, 2005, 165 pp.) Available in paperback for $24 from www.workrightspress.com or by calling 1 (800) 576-4552.

This article's author, Steve Early, is a Boston-based Communication Workers Association representative and the author of a NYNEX strike history, "Holding The Line in '89: How Telephone Workers Can Fight Even More Effectively Next Time." He also wrote the foreword to Schwartz's book.