The Leadership Conference Is United with Working People and Their Right to Strike after Today’s Supreme Court Decision

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Mattie Goldman, [email protected]

WASHINGTON Maya Wiley, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, issued the following statement after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Glacier Northwest, Inc. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters:

“The right to strike is fundamental to advancing racial and economic justice, and an attack on unions is an attack on the soul of the civil and human rights movement. By making it easier for employers to sue working people who are exercising their right to strike, this Supreme Court decision favors the corporations and the wealthy few who seek to hinder the ability of working people to come together and fight for better workplace conditions.

“Workplace protections that are now commonplace — like the minimum wage, the eight-hour workday, and the 40-hour workweek — were hard-fought achievements of unions, backed up by the right to strike. And we know unions support so many workers of all races and their families and communities. Without a meaningful right to strike, workers across the country would be denied their most powerful tool to fight for just workplaces.

“We commend Justice Jackson’s powerful dissent in which she acknowledged that ‘[w]orkers are not indentured servants, bound to continue laboring until any planned work stoppage would be as painless as possible for their master. They are employees whose collective and peaceful decision to withhold their labor is protected…’

“Our coalition was born from the recognition that the struggles for racial and economic justice are one and the same. We remain dedicated to the right to organize and the right to strike for every worker, without impediments, and we will continue to build power with working people.”

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is a coalition charged by its diverse membership of more than 250 national organizations to promote and protect the rights of all persons in the United States. The Leadership Conference works toward an America as good as its ideals. For more information on The Leadership Conference and its member organizations, visit www.civilrights.org.

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