The morality of striking
Moral Maze
BBC
4.5 • 609 Ratings
🗓️ 23 June 2022
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is it morally acceptable to go on strike, disrupting the lives and livelihoods of millions of people who are uninvolved in a dispute? This week’s rail strike is expected to be the biggest in 30 years with only a fraction of services running and widespread disruption. But whatever the arguments behind the dispute, what’s the moral case for a strike? The right to withdraw labour is seen by many as fundamental, an essential last resort in a battle with employers where workers are trying to secure reasonable pay and conditions. Improved pay deals resulting from strikes are seen as clear evidence that striking itself is legitimate. But where should the limits be? The police and armed forces can’t go on strike but doctors and nurses can, as well as other essential workers. Is a strike still morally acceptable if it causes widespread misery or severely damages the economy, or if lives are lost as a result? Some feel that strikes are always unfair. The main victims are usually not employers but people uninvolved in the dispute. Also strikes by some groups of workers are far more disruptive than strikes by others. Has that unfairly driven up pay in some sectors? It is decades since widespread strikes were a common feature of life in the UK, but this year some are predicting a “summer of discontent”, a wave of disputes that could involve teachers, NHS staff, and others. Should tougher laws be introduced, to protect us all from the worst effects of strikes? Or is it essential that the basic rights of workers are upheld by the law? What’s the moral case for striking? With Paul Nowak, Caroline Farrow, Dr Sam Fowles and Benjamin Loughnane.
Presenter: Edward Stourton Producers: Jonathan Hallewell and Peter Everett
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | Hello, big strikes, and we've largely forgotten this because it's so long since we faced one, |
| 0:10.7 | provoke debate on multiple levels. |
| 0:12.9 | There are the details of the immediate industrial dispute, percentages of pay increases, changes in working practices, |
| 0:19.6 | job security, and much of the headline chat about |
| 0:21.9 | this week's rail strike has inevitably focused on those. Behind them, there is almost always |
| 0:27.4 | a bigger political conflict. Strikes often expose a fault line between very different views of the |
| 0:33.3 | way our economy should work. And there's yet another dimension beyond that, the moral dimension. |
| 0:40.0 | When is it right to withdraw your labour, even if it inflicts pain on others? We thought we should |
| 0:46.4 | address that and the questions associated with it because there seems a good chance all sorts |
| 0:50.6 | of workers, especially in the public sector, may strike this summer. Does the right to strike Trump everything when workers are up against a cost of living crisis? |
| 0:59.4 | What about the impact on innocent groups with lots to lose, students taking A-levels, for example? |
| 1:04.9 | Should we blame the strikers, their employers, or even in some cases the government? |
| 1:09.7 | And should we restrict more groups from striking? |
| 1:12.1 | After all, police officers can't and nor can't soldiers. Our panel, the Anglican priest and writer, |
| 1:17.5 | Giles Fraser, Professor Mona Siddiqui, academic and broadcaster, the writer Melanie Phillips, |
| 1:22.8 | and Matthew Taylor, former political strategist, and currently the chief executive of the NHS Confederation. |
| 1:29.7 | Matthew, if we were having this conversation in the 1970s or early 1980s, we'd probably all know |
| 1:36.0 | exactly what we thought about this question because we had to face it all the time. |
| 1:40.6 | But are you quite sure in your mind where you stand on the main question today? |
| 1:44.4 | No, I'm not actually. I find this a really difficult issue. And actually part of my thinking |
| 1:50.1 | is I look back to those days and the terrible loss of legitimacy that occurred to the trade unions |
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