A lockout is a temporary work stoppage or denial of employment initiated by the
management of a company during a labor dispute. This is different from a
strike, in which employees refuse to work. It is usually implemented by
simply refusing to admit employees onto company premises, and may include
actions such as changing locks and hiring security guards for the premises.
Other implementations include a fine for showing up, or a simple refusal of
clocking-in on the time clock. It is therefore referred to as the antithesis
of strike. Causes
A lockout is generally used to enforce terms of employment upon a group of
employees during a dispute. A lockout can act to force unionized workers to
accept changed conditions such as lower wages. If the union is asking for higher
wages, better benefits or to maintain their benefits, an employer may use the
threat of a lockout or an actual lockout to convince the union to back down.
Examples = Ireland =
The Dublin Lockout was a major industrial dispute between approximately
20,000 workers and 300 employers which took place in Ireland's capital city of
Dublin. The dispute lasted from 26 August 1913 to 18 January 1914, and is
often viewed as the most severe and significant industrial dispute in Irish
history. Central to the dispute was the workers' right to unionize.
= United States = In the United States, under federal
labor law, an employer may hire only temporary replacements during a lockout.
In a strike, unless it is an unfair labor practice strike, an employer may
legally hire permanent replacements. Also, in many U.S. states, employees who
are locked out are eligible to receive unemployment benefits, but are not
eligible for such benefits during a strike.
For the above reasons, many American employers have historically been
reluctant to impose lockouts, instead attempting to provoke a strike. However,
as American unions have increasingly begun to resort to slowdowns rather than
strikes, lockouts have become a more common tactic of many employers. Even as
incidents of strikes are on the decline, incidents of lockouts are on the rise in
the U.S. In the 1892 after several wage cuts and
disputes with the employers at the Homestead Steel Mill in Homestead, PA,
the labor union called for a strike after the company stopped discussing its
decisions with the union. Henry Clay Frick shut down the plant and locked out
all of the workers, preventing them from entering the mill.
Recent notable lockout incidents have been reported in professional sports,
notably involving Major League Baseball in the 1990 offseason, the National
Basketball Association in the 1995 offseason, the 1996 offseason, and the
1998–99 and 2011–12 seasons, the National Hockey League in the 1994–95,
2004–05 and 2012–13 seasons, and the National Football League in the 2011
offseason. The controversial 2012 NFL referee lockout only involved referees
and not players. In 2005, the NHL became the first major professional sports
league in North America to cancel an entire season due to a lockout.
= Australia = On 8 April 1998, stevedoring company
Patrick Corporation sought to restructure its operations for
productivity reasons. In an industrial watershed event, it sacked all its
workers and imposed a lockout on wharves around Australia.
On 29 October 2011, Qantas Airways declared a lockout of all domestic
employees in the face of ongoing union industrial action. This cancelled all
flights, grounding the entire fleet for several days.
= Denmark = On 2 April 2013, Danish Union of
Teachers, DFL and Local Government Association, KL declared a lockout for
more than 60,000 primary school teachers across the country. Over 600,000
students were affected by the lockout and could not return to school. DFL and
KL were arguing, if the teachers should have extra hours working time as KL
suggested. DFL were against it and could not find a solution. After 24 days of
being locked out, the teachers lost the battle on the 25th of April 2013 with a
government intervention which ended the lockout. The current government chose to
apply all of KL's main demands and the teachers got a small wage raise as
compensation. Lock-in
The term lock-in refers to the practice of physically preventing workers from
leaving a workplace. In most jurisdictions this is illegal but is
occasionally reported, especially in some developing countries.
Lock-ins should not be confused with a sit-down strike like the Flint Sit-Down
Strike between the United Automobile Workers and General Motors Corporation.
More recently, lock-ins have been carried out by employees against
management, which have been labelled 'bossnapping' by the mainstream media.
In France during March 2009, 3M's national manager was locked in his
office for 24 hours by employees in a dispute over redundancies. The following
month, union employees of a call centre managed by Synovate in Auckland locked
the front doors of the office, in response to management locking them out.
Such practices bear some resemblance to the gherao in India. It is also caused
by disagreement between employer and employees in a certain department.
See also Dublin Lockout
FaSinPat, an Argentine recovered factory following a lockout
Government shutdown National Hockey League
Strikebreaker Walkout
References External links
New and histories of lockouts, on libcom.org
Account of the great farm lockout of 1872 on EASF