In
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
labor law
Labour laws (also known as labor laws or employment laws) are those that mediate the relationship between workers, employing entities, trade unions, and the government. Collective labour law relates to the tripartite relationship between employee ...
, a jurisdictional strike is a concerted refusal to work undertaken by a
union to assert its members' right to particular job assignments and to protest the assignment of disputed work to members of another union or to unorganized workers. (
Labor unions
A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits (su ...
use the term ''jurisdiction'' to refer to their claims to represent workers who perform a certain type of work and the right of their members to perform such work.) The
Taft-Hartley amendments to the
National Labor Relations Act
The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, also known as the Wagner Act, is a foundational statute of United States labor law that guarantees the right of private sector employees to organize into trade unions, engage in collective bargaining, and ...
empowered the
National Labor Relations Board to resolve such jurisdictional disputes and authorized the General Counsel of the NLRB to seek an
injunction
An injunction is a legal and equitable remedy in the form of a special court order that compels a party to do or refrain from specific acts. ("The court of appeals ... has exclusive jurisdiction to enjoin, set aside, suspend (in whole or in p ...
barring such strikes.
[Cox, Archibald; Bok, Derek Curtis; Gorman, Robert A.; et al. ''Labor Law: Cases and Materials.'' 13th ed. New York: Foundation Press, 2001. ; Raza, M. Ali and Anderson, A. Janell. ''Labor Relations and the Law.'' Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1996. ]
Jurisdictional strikes occur most frequently in the United States in the construction industry. Construction unions frequently resolve those disputes through a privately created adjustment system.
[Palladino, Grace. ''Skilled Hands, Strong Spirits: A Century Of Building Trades History.'' Ithaca, N.Y.: ILR Press, 2007. ]
In other countries, jurisdiction strikes are often called
demarcation disputes
A demarcation dispute is a dispute between (usually) two trades unions as to whose members should do a particular job, and is associated with multi-unionism in an enterprise, where two labour unions claim the right to represent the same class or g ...
.
See also
*
Jurisdiction
Jurisdiction (from Latin 'law' + 'declaration') is the legal term for the legal authority granted to a legal entity to enact justice. In federations like the United States, areas of jurisdiction apply to local, state, and federal levels.
J ...
Notes
United States labor law
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