Gale Encyclopedia of American Law Volume 6 P22 fully illuminates today's leading cases, major statutes, legal terms and concepts, notable persons involved with the law, important documents and more. Legal issues are fully discussed in easy-to-understand language, including such high-profile topics as the Americans with Disabilities Act, capital punishment, domestic violence, gay and lesbian rights, physician-assisted suicide and thousands more. | 1 98 LABOR LAW their differences and negotiate an employment contract the parties may use different types of pressure to produce an agreement including boycotts strikes the carrying of signs and banners picketing and lockouts. A labor boycott is any type of union action that seeks to reduce or stop public patronage of a business. It is a refusal to purchase from or to handle the products of a particular employer. Employees may legally exert economic pressure on their employer through a boycott so long as they act peacefully. But a union is forbidden to engage in a secondary boycott. For example if a union s primary dispute is with a hardware manufacturer it may not picket or use other methods to get the employees of a hardware store who are neutral or secondary parties to stage a strike at the store in order to force it to cease handling the manufacturer s products. A strike is a concerted refusal of employees to perform work that they have been assigned in order to force the employer to grant concessions that the employees have demanded. The right of employees to strike is protected by the courts. A lawful strike must be conducted in an orderly manner and may not be used as a shield for violence or crime. Intimidation and coercion in the course of a strike are unlawful. The peaceful carrying of signs and banners advertising a labor dispute is ordinarily a lawful means to publicize employees grievances against an employer. Picketing consists of posting one or more union members at the site of a strike or boycott in order to interfere with a particular employer s business or to influence the public against patronizing that employer. It can be reasonably regulated. Lawful picketing is peaceful and honest. The use of force intimidation or coercion on a picket line is not constitutionally protected activity. In addition employees are not acting within their rights when they seize any part of the employer s property. A lockout is an employer s refusal to admit employees
