On the Morality of Not Crossing Picket Lines

In an e-mail sent to some American Philosophical Association members on 8 March 2005, the Executive Committee (EC) of the APA's Pacific Division explained why they had decided not to move the Division's annual meeting out of the Westin St. Francis hotel in San Francisco, despite the fact that the St. Francis was one of several hotels under union boycott after management had locked out workers for nearly eight weeks during a protracted and still ongoing labor dispute. According to the EC's message, "There are no picket lines at the San Francisco hotels."

It is a pity that the EC didn't bother to consult the union involved, UNITE HERE Local 2, before making this claim. In the previous two months, there had been numerous news stories about the union's pickets outside hotels involved in the dispute, and in a letter addressed to APA members from members of Local 2 calling on philosophers to "Stand for Justice," the hotel workers themselves noted that "our union pickets these hotels regularly."

Even after I had pointed this out to the recipients of the e-mail, however, some people were not convinced that the EC had been mistaken. For example, political philosopher Michael Otsuka wrote: "I believe that the APA committee understands a picket line to be the line that workers would form, would not cross, and would request others not to cross, if they went on strike. (They are not on strike at the moment.) I believe that Gasper, by contrast, also includes picketing by union members in the absence of a strike as an instance of a picket line."1

Cornell philosopher Brian Weatherson went further, claiming that the way the union used the expression "picket line" is deviant:

I think both the union and Professor Gasper are being less than perfectly clear with their terminology. In my idiolect, as I'm sure in many others, picket line is a term with a quite definite meaning, namely a line that the union declares all supporters should not cross. Unless the situation deteriorates, there won't be such a line at the Westin, because the workers will still be working there. (If there were a picket line in my sense, there couldn't possibly be union workers inside the line.) So while I support the boycott, and won't be staying at the Westin or buying anything from them, I don't believe that the don't cross picket lines rule prevents one attending the conference.

But it is the claim that there can't be a picket line without a strike that is deviant. There are picket lines organized by unions and picket lines organized by numerous other groups (ninety years ago the suffragists were famous for picketing the White House); there are picket lines with strikes and picket lines without them. In fact, on 23 March, the day the APA meeting began, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the Pacific Division Secretary-Treasurer, Anita Silvers, would herself join a union picket of the Westin St. Francis scheduled for that day, even though she had decided not to honor the union's boycott.

The issue, however, is not simply one of definition. The idea that a picket line without a strike is morally less significant than a picket line with one is apparently widely held. "I plan to present my own paper in the Westin (which I wouldn't do if there was a strike and a picket line which the union members themselves refused to cross)," wrote Otsuka, echoing Weatherson's comments above.

But what is the difference supposed to be? The union asks nonunion members not to cross the line and not to use the hotel in both the case of a picket line without a strike and a picket line with one. In both cases the underlying basis for the appeal is the same: there is a labor dispute, management is being unreasonable, and this is a way of bringing pressure on them to offer a decent contract.

Perhaps Otsuka's assumption is that if there isn't a...