[Slava]

Originally Posted by you&me

Union membership is so far outside of my wheelhouse, you'll have to excuse my ignorance. Let me explain my understanding of the strike process:

1) Union / members are dissatisfied with one or more conditions of their employment.
2) Negotiations with the employer are pushed as far as they can go and the union / members have no option but to strike as an absolute last resort.
3) Presumably, both sides want a resolution as quickly as possible; employers so they can get back to providing the good or service to their customers, and employees so they can get back to earning a (real) paycheck.
4) To exert maximum pressure on the employer, union workers demonstrate their commitment to improving their working conditions (pay, etc) by picketing everyday.
5) To help with the financial burden for their members being without a regular paycheck while on strike, the union banks some of the dues to pay their workers "strike pay", just to take the edge off (I honestly didn't even know this existed until yesterday).
6) Eventually the sides come to an agreement and the strike ends.

Honestly (really), from my position of ignorance of all-things union, I find it a little surprising that workers striking over being overworked and underpaid don't picket everyday... IMO, from this position of ignorance, it seems like a striking worker - who's now not receiving a regular paycheck - would want to demonstrate maximum commitment to the cause by doing everything they can to reach a resolution as quickly as possible; in the case of the average worker, to me that means picketing, but again, I don't know.

Edit - I think some of my feelings on this come from not knowing strike pay even exisited up until the other day. My thoughts were basically "if you're not working, what else are you going to do? Might as well do whatever you can (picket) for the cause and try to get back to work ASAP"... Knowing now that strike pay exists at least explains why the union would mandate picketing hours to their workers to preserve their funds.

Does the actual picket line help to press for a resolution in a case like this? I understand when it's a factory or something like that, and the union prevents trucks/people from going in and keeping things running. But the workers down near Southland and Macleod picketing aren't in that kind of role?