Business Ethics and Social Responsibility

Instructor: Dave James R. Galicinao

Topic/s Covered:
1. Ethical Issues in the Workplace: The Morality of Labor Strikes

Objectives:
1. Define Labor Strike
2. Identify several reasons why workers go on strike
3. Identify and Describe the types of strikes
4. Determine the rights of the employees regarding labor unions.

Strike Action
Describes collective actions undertaken by groups of workers in the form of refusal to performing work.
This is a tactic often employed by labor unions during collective bargaining with an employer. In ordinary
usage, the word strike is used to describe all work stoppages, regardless of the origin of the dispute.

Workers go on strike for different reasons…

1. For higher compensation
2. Improve the workplace
3. For shorter working days
4. To stop their wages from going down
5. More benefits
6. Unfair labor practices

Conditions of employment include wages, hours, sanitation, and safety, and several other circumstances
that affect the work of the workers.

Types of Strikes
1. Sit-Down Strike
- A strike in which workers show up to work, but refuse to work.
- It may include preventing transports from entering or leaving in the institution or a
company.
2. General Strike
- A strike affecting all areas of a labor force across many industries, typically throughout an
entire country or a large section thereof.
3. Sympathy Strike
- Is a strike initiated by workers in one industry and supported by workers in a separate but
related industry.
4. Unfair Labor Practice Strike
- Caused by an action taken by an employer that is believed to cause harm or danger to the
interest of an employee organization
5. Jurisdictional Strike
- Refers to a concerted refusal to work undertaken by a union to assert its’ members rights to
particular job assignments and to protest the assignment of disputed work to members of
another union or to unorganized workers.
6. Economic Strike
- Is based on demand for better wages or benefits than the employer wants to provide.
7. Wildcat Strike
- Against the will of the leadership of the union
8. Slow-Down Strike
- A form of work stoppage in which employees deliberately reduce their individual production
9. Recognition Strike
- A kind of strike forcing employers to recognize and deal with them.
Who Can Join Labor Organizations or Workers Association?
1. All employees employed in commercial, industrial, and agricultural enterprises, and in religious,
charitable, medical or educational institutions whether operating for profit or not.
2. Government employees in the civil service
3. Supervisory Personnel
4. Security Personnel
5. Aliens with valid working permits

Who Are Prohibited from Joining Legitimate Labor Organizations?

1. Managerial employees
2. Members of cooperatives
3. Members of the AFP, PNP, and Firemen

IS THERE A RIGHT TO STRIKE?

In the book of Ramon Agapay, Ethics and the Filipino, the following conditions must be present in order
for a strike to be moral:

1. There is a sufficient and just reason for it.

2. The intended good results must be proportionate to the evil effects.
As against the employer, the strikers have no right to destroy his property.
As against the man who takes the place of the strikers, no violence is lawful when the action of
the strikes is justified by their own needs.
3. The means employed are lawful.

What are the Basic Rights of Employees?

Sec. 1. Article 244 and 247

Presidential Decree no. 442
As amended, or otherwise known as the Labor Code of the Philippines

Art. 244
Coverage and employees’ right to self-organization. All persons employed in commercial, industrial, and
agricultural enterprises and in religious, charitable, medical or educational institutions whether
operating for profit or not, shall have the right to self organization and to form, join or assist labor
organizations of their own choosing for purposes of collective bargaining….

The right to strike is integral to the process of wage bargaining in an industrial economy. Everyone
believes that a quality work rendered by an individual in an industry deserves improvements in salaries
and benefits. A worker has no other means of defending his/her real wage other than increased money
wage.

Any employee has a right to withhold his labor services from an employer if he doesn’t like the pay and
the benefits the employer offers.

Source/s:
1. Fr. Floriano C. Roa, Business Ethics and Social Responsibility 2 nd Edition