picket line

(noun)

The boundary created by striking workers, generally at the workplace entrance, which other workers are asked not to pass.

Related Terms

Examples of picket line in the following topics:

  • Strikes

    • A strike may consist of workers refusing to attend work or picketing outside the workplace to prevent or dissuade people from working in their place or conducting business with their employer.
    • The act of working during a strike – whether by strikebreakers, management personnel, non-unionized employees or members of other unions not on strike – is known as "crossing the picket line," regardless of whether it involves actually physically crossing a line of picketing strikers.
    • Crossing a picket line can result in passive and/or active retaliation against that working person.
    • Companies that hire strikebreakers typically play upon these fears when they attempt to convince union members to abandon the strike and cross the union's picket line.

  • Lockouts

    • Companies that hire strikebreakers typically play upon these fears when they attempt to convince union members to abandon the strike and cross the union's picket line.
    • Unions faced with a strikebreaking situation may try to inhibit the use of strikebreakers by a variety of methods, establishing picket lines where the strikebreakers enter the workplace; discouraging strike breakers from taking, or from keeping strikebreaking jobs; raising the cost of hiring strikebreakers for the company; or employing public relations tactics.

  • The Women's Rights Movement

    • They also became the first women to picket for women's rights in front of the White House.
    • The picketers were tolerated at first, but when they continued to picket after the United States declared war in 1917, they were arrested by police for obstructing traffic.

  • Anarchism

    • On May 3, in Chicago, a fight broke out when strikebreakers attempted to cross the picket line, and two workers died when police opened fire upon the crowd.

  • Industrial Conflict

    • Advocates of industrial unionism value its contributions to building unity and solidarity, suggesting the slogans, "an injury to one is an injury to all" and "the longer the picket line, the shorter the strike. "
    • In contrast, craft unionism organizes workers along lines of their specific trades (i.e., workers using the same kind of tools, or doing the same kind of work with approximately the same level of skill), even if this leads to multiple union locals with different contracts in the same workplace.
    • The Nambu University Teachers Union members picket on May Day 2011.

  • The Homestead Strike

    • Picket lines were thrown up around the plant and the town, and 24-hour shifts established.
    • Within 20 minutes they had displaced the picketers; by 10:00 a.m., company officials were back in their offices.

  • Gender Inequality in Politics

    • Even in democratic societies in which gender equality is legally mandated, gender discrimination occurs in politics, both in regards to presumptions about political allegiances that fall along gender lines, and disparate gender representation within representative democracies.
    • The National Women's Party became the first cause to picket outside of the White House, with banners comparing President Wilson to his German adversary, Kaiser Wilhelm.

  • Women's Rights after Suffrage

    • The party also opposed World War I, and its members staged a suffrage parade on March 3, 1913, the day before Wilson's inauguration, as well as becoming the first group to picket for women's rights in front of the White House.
    • Members of the National Woman's Party picket in front of the White House for women's suffrage in 1917.

  • The New Immigrants on Strike

    • The city responded to the strike with a company of local militia to patrol the streets and harass strikers picketing in front of the mills.
    • When mill owners turned fire hoses on the picketers gathered in front of the mills, they responded by throwing ice at the plants, breaking a number of windows.

  • National Labor Relations Act

    • In addition, employers campaigned over the years to outlaw a number of union practices such as closed shops; secondary boycotts; jurisdictional strikes; mass picketing; strikes in violation of contractual no-strike clauses; pension, health, and welfare plans sponsored by unions; and multi-employer bargaining.
    • The Taft–Hartley Act prohibited jurisdictional strikes, wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary and mass picketing, closed shops, and monetary donations by unions to federal political campaigns.