What is the purpose of a picket line during an industrial strike action? I can think of a couple possible goals:

1. Discourage non-striking workers from “crossing the line” and working in defiance of the strike
2. Communicate to the customers/suppliers/etc of the striken industrial concern that some of its workers/employees are involved in a dispute with the concern
3. Communicate same to passers-by, perhaps under the implicit assumption that these might potentially become customers of the striken concern
4. Demonstrate to the striken industrial concern that the strikers are serious
5. Give the striking workers something to do other than just sit home all day watching pr0n on the internets

Now let us observe an actual in-progress-right-now strike and see which of the above seem to be the focus.

For perhaps a month now, maybe longer, a union has been striking against a contractor hired by a local sport club. I have observed this passively, as I drive by the club most mornings, and again in the opposite direction often around noon-1pm.

The strikers are always there (perhaps 10 or a dozen of them) in the mornings. I have seen then from about 8am through about 10am. By noonish, they’re gone. Some days they have one of the picketers dressed in a giant rat costume. On rainy days, they have a little tent/marquee thing, but I’ve seen many of them standing in jackets in the rain cos the marquee really doesn’t offer all that great a shelter. So — why only in the mornings? To me, it looks like this is basically timed to correspond with the morning prime commute hours. Certainly, the rat, when he’s there, is generally gesticulating at passing traffic. I have often observed what are presumably local patrons of the sports club walking in and out of the club wearing bathrobes, presumably over swim suits; the strikers seem to completely ignore these folks, despite the odd spectacle of people walking on public streets wearing bathrobes. I have seen delivery trucks presumably for the contractor’s job site go in and out without interaction with the pickets. So the 2nd option above, influencing the customers/suppliers of the concern does not seem to be a primary focus of the pickets.

The third option, that passers-by might become customers or in some way influence the concern seems unlikely; I am perhaps somewhat more likely to not hire Mission Electric to do a job for me, but I can’t imagine there’s a ton of impact on M.I. Similarly, the first option seems unlikely — I can’t believe that anyone probably walked off the job with M.I. because they didn’t want to cross the line, though I could be wrong I guess. This is not an action where these guys were employed on the job by M.I. and walked out due to disagreement; as I understand it, from the start of this job M.I. has been using non-union workers are non-union rates. Those guys seem unlikely to want to join the union and strike too, since they presumably would have done so by now.

#4 is a possibility, but does the union think Mission Electric is going to fold and pay 20% more to the electricians on the job, when they’ve likely got a fixed-price contract with the club? M.I. is just going to eat the 20% on the job after bidding it? Seems unlikely. Will they likely up their next bid to include 20% extra in electrician wages? Also seems unlikely, but perhaps they might compromise with the union somehow.

#5 doesn’t quite work either. These guys are only out of the house for a couple hours in the morning. They don’t seem to have walked off *this* job, which presumably means they’re otherwise unemployed on some other job, so might profitably spend their mornings looking for new work rather than standing around with a man in a mouse suit, though perhaps they are seeking job experience for their resumes so they can apply to work later at Disneyland. Or perhaps they are hired by the union specifically as pickets? The mouse costume guy is certainly good enough that he might be a professional picket rat and move from job to job for the union. He might even do basketball games sometimes as a sideline. Really, he’s pretty good.



So anyway, what’s the deal here? Who is the union trying to influence to do what with this action? Their stated objective of getting M.I. to pay the workers on the job 20% more just seems very implausible.