Strike

The number of labour strikes that took place in Portugal over the last couple of years is, without a doubt, astonishing. The phenomenon is certainly related to the recent economical crisis. Perhaps we should rather say the acknowledgement of the crisis, which might be far more ancient in itself. Either way strikes are a natural response to the decay in work conditions in a democratic regime. But will they actually lead us anywhere (good)?

Although some might believe that the drop in work conditions are due to their bosses' pure evilness, I for one am firmly convinced that it is rather linked to the companies' bad finantial situation. Or the state's for that matter. And obviously a strike will hardly help a struggling company's efforts; in fact it will most likely make it worse. Being a control engineering student I can't help but shiver at the thought of such positive feedback. And we all know know major economical consequences can derive from minor issues, when such loops are in place.

Still, that is no reason for not joining a strike. After all a strike aims to reveal the workers' discontent towards something they find unfair; the company's finantial situation is, from this perspective, irrelevant. Moreover, from a purely rational point of view it is advantageous for each single individual to join the strike, although that might not be the case for the collective (more on this on a coming soon post). So the problem is not the people who join the strikes; instead, it lies inside the mechanism itself. A self-feeding reaction with negative consequences should be avoided by construction.

There are other reasons to consider strikes a poorly-designed mechanisms. For starters, its working principles. Strikes intend to cause social unresst not by making people aware of the workers' conditions but simply by causing upset. In other words, the impact of a strike does not depend on how valid the workers' point of view is but rather on how many they people they can annoy. This clearly doesn't make any sense. Ironically, the highest impact strikes also make people angry at the workers themselves, finding their struggle (or at least their means) less legit. Nevertheless, social pressure and unrest will still make them the most successful in terms of forcing an executive decision which leads us to what seems like a silly antithesis: the most supported strikes are the ones people less agree with.

Another apparent debatable trait is the repeatability. If a strike for reason A does not succeed in reaching its goal then it is simply repeated the next week or month. And the one after. At some point it starts sounding dangerously close to blackmail.

Then where does the solution lie? Abolishing strikes does not seem to be the answer. It should be somewhere in the middle (as it always is), a clever reforming or modernization of this complaint mechanism. I speak of modernization because it seems to me that strikes were the perfect (perhaps the only) alternative when workers were isolated for their clients and the outside world, rendering them easy prey for exploiting bosses. Nowadays, with mobile phones and news channels and internet it is not all obvious (at least to me) that this is a perfect-so-do-not-touch mechanism.

In particular, I believe that a renovated strike must have an awareness raising component. This could be done quite easily, by having the workers show up at their posts (or somewhere else if the job does not require direct contact with the general public) and, instead of doing their jobs, spread information on their cause through fliers or their vocal cords. Please note that shouting catchy phrases with no practical meaning whatsoever is not constructive criticism. This would also be a killing blow for the somewhat public belief that many join a strike just to have a day off at the beach. Most certainly other improvements could be done; if we manage to re-invent strikes so that they do not imply loss of productivity (with all its negative consequences both for the company and its clients) then we'd be on the right path.


Filipe Baptista de Morais