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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Continuing to do business with a company whose employees are striking isn't "crossing the picket line". Crossing the picket line means undermining a strike directly by supply labor when organized labor is using a labor embargo as leverage. To avoid crossing the NYT picket line, don't write for the NYT.

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Yup in most cases striking employees don't want the end consumer to boycott the company, because ultimately it hurts them as well. Picketing is done to (1) raise awareness and (2) discourage non-union/temporary labor from replacing them during the strike.

I think at least these days, usage of the term can include customers. For example, this from the University of Maine's Bureau of Labor Education: "Customers may refuse to cross a picket line and picketers have the right to ask customers to honor their picket but should not intimidate, block customer access, disparage a company’s product, or say anything that is untrue or casts the product in a false or misleading light."

Or this, from the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee: "Lastly, customers also have the right to honor the picket line and arguably have the most important role in influencing employers’ decisions, outside of the workers themselves."

Or this, from NYT writer: "Having walked a picket line before, I try not to cross anyone else’s. The W and its parent company, Marriott, know there are lots of people like me. So why hadn’t they disclosed in advance what would greet me upon arrival?"

[1] https://umaine.edu/ble/wp-content/uploads/sites/181/2014/11/...

[2] https://workerorganizing.org/how-to-honor-the-picket-line-an...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/01/your-money/should-hotels-...

Not transacting with a business in solidarity with an ongoing strike is a boycott. People can boycott the NYT in support of the strike. But crossing a picket line is a much, much bigger deal than not participating in a boycott. If you skip the NYT Mini Crossword for a week to support the strikers, I respect that, but I'm going to keep pushing for that sweet 15s finish this week and I'm going to sleep fine doing it.

I agree that a boycott is different, and for the NYT the terms are pretty distinct. But when employees are picketing a retail business, the two are much more entangled, so I think the common use of the phrase has shifted away from the precision you're expecting it to have.

...To our detriment.

In many cases (though not all!), when workers are striking against a retail business, they want the customers to keep coming. Showing the strain that gets put on the system in such cases can be part of the leverage the union exerts.

This is why we, on the outside, need to listen to what the union is asking of us, and not just loudly announce that we are boycotting in solidarity, or "refusing to cross the picket line", if that's the opposite of what they want.

Or don't! It's fine to be pro-labor but for your interests not to intersect with every strike. One might have a different opinion about the moral weight of an NYT strike versus that of the Marriott hotel housekeeping staff, for instance. You might personally find yourself morally aligned with every strike, and in that case you should pay attention to what the strikers are asking. Or you might not. Things are complicated!

Either way: it is not in fact a given that customers are obliged by solidarity to boycott businesses dealing with strikes.

It’s not a shift in usage, it’s a term of art. Informally it could mean just crossing the line to enter the business, but unless you live in a turn-of-the-century company town, no one in the union is expecting anything related to that by default.

In labor, “respecting the picket line” is a moral action for union members (or scabs) which by definition couldn’t apply to a spontaneous self-directed consumer boycott.

Not to put to fine a point on it: if you show up to someone else’s labor action claiming solidarity, and then independently decide to pivot the action to a totally different set of economic incentives, you are — almost literally! — a scab.

A scab is someone who works in violation of a strike. It's not a generic term for anybody disfavored by labor activists.

Ouch! Fair cop since we’re nitpicking, but I was trying to be cute about that — the joke started out more like “you’re technically crossing the line to scab as a strikebreaker”. I’m aware that it still doesn’t make sense unless there’s a sympathy action by the strikebreakers’ union, unfunny and unhelpful in the first place, thanks for the correction :)

Edit: Ah shoot not again. What I meant to say was “scabbing as an agent provocateur”. Sorry, I’ll quit while I’m ahead!

It's not even a shift, it's the original meaning. There are/were physical picket lines that you would literally cross to enter a business.

And customers weren't crossing them because nobody buys a car by walking to the Ford factory.

There's no need to justify how you do business with the NYT, whether it's playing a crossword game or accepting a job. But either one is referred to as crossing the picket line.

Surely playing a crossword game is only "crossing the picket line" if the workers on strike have asked you not to play that crossword / called for a more general boycott?

I think there's a deeper and more important subtlety here: there's a sort of moral obligation not to break a strike, but except in some specific circumstances, there really isn't an obligation to support a boycott, any more than there's an obligation to put a pro-labor bumper sticker on your car. Breaking a streak and ignoring a boycott are not equally weighted.

(My kid brother is a labor person, so really I'm just venting some stuff here to keep it from coming up at Thanksgiving).

> "a labor person"

... Are we supposed to know what that means?

The way you're using it, it sounds like a pejorative... Which puts something of a spin on your particular pedantry here.

> there really isn't an obligation to support a boycott

I think the Irish - who invented the term - would disagree with you on that point.

Not every boycott is worth supporting, sure. But if a boycott is worth supporting (say, divesting from genocide supporters) then yes there's a bit of an obligation there.

Probably means someone who thinks there's a moral obligation to follow a union-requested boycott.

He's in a union and pays attention to this stuff. That's all it meant.

No, it isn't. You can see why people online would want it to be! But boycotts and strikes are different things.

My honest opinion, asking customers not to do business doesn't really make sense as customer demand can add to the pressure on management when their workers are not to be found and all they have are temps who are, actually, crossing the picket line. I never understood this stance. It sounds much more like a morality stance than one based on strategy to get management to the table.

tbh consumer boycotts can be very effective for organizing. not having workers to serve your customers is a lot less scary to a business than potentially losing your customers

crossing the picket line is not the same thing as scabbing and as a phrase often can apply to consumers.

I believe the NYT guild has asked ppl to pause reading NYT in the past, however in many many cases the unions do not want a consumer boycott. so it really depends

This is the tech guild, so it’s even more narrow. PMs, POs, and SWEs.

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