What is a legal step used by an employer to end a strike or other actions of employees?

Answer 1

Employers and unions may at times be unable to reach a collective bargaining agreement. This can result in a strike by union employees. Before a strike, however, employers have tools to force unions accept their terms during the bargaining process. In such situations, in the United States, there are legal steps an employer may take . These can be summarized as by the following which attempts to cover multiple situations, not all of them.

1. A lock out, this can happen when workers are on the job, but the employer believes that negotiations are not going well. In certain cases, employers simply stop production and "lock out" workers from their jobs;

2. Strike breaking, this can be accomplished by hiring new employees to take the place of union workers. An example of this was an action by NFL football teams. Due to laws governing unions & strikes, the NFL hired new players and the football games continued. At some point the employer and the union reaches an agreement;

3. An injunction, is a legal step employers can take in court to legally force workers back to work. An example of this is in many Boards of Education in various US States. In cases like this, the State may have a law in place forbidding teachers from striking. The idea behind this, even in "pro teacher" States is that children cannot be denied their educations.

Based on a successful case in court by employers, a court can order union teachers to return to the classrooms. If they do not, their union faces fines dictated by the courts and of course the teachers lose a day's salary for each day they remain on strike; and

4. Publicity, in these situations, employers will publicly demonstrate in news conferences or by other means that workers in any particular field are hurting the public by striking. This can be used as explained in No. 4. Parents may prefer that their children should not miss school days because of a teachers strike. This is a powerful anti strike tool in school districts where teachers can earn $100,000 salaries, have tenure and have a limited number of work days in a school year. In other cases such in professional sports, the team owners may point out to the public that professional players are already "over paid" with million dollar contracts. This may resonate with fans who don't as a whole, earn anything near the salaries paid to sports players.

This answer by no means covers every strike situation. Allot depends on State laws or as in the case of airport traffic controllers, by Federal Laws.

The attempt here is give examples that cannot be all inclusive. In any employer - labor dispute there are many complications.