Barry Weisleder, former union organizer, teacher, and secretary of Socialist Action, explained to The Post Millennial that increasing demands by business associations for back-to-work legislation has encouraged employers to refrain from good faith negotiation as they “hunker down and wait for the cavalry.”
Weisleder noted that while union’s have never been “strike happy,” workers have stood to gain from striking. As he suggests, since 1903, wage increases have followed strike intensity.
Forcing an end to the strike and the intervention of an arbitrator, would decrease the bargaining power of the port workers, said Weisleder, and possibly force concessions upon them that they might have otherwise won through struggle.