On the important French Fry Question

[Brad DeLong]

>At 11:04 AM 1/22/01 -0500, Doug Henwood wrote:
>>Dennis Perrin/Nancy Bauer wrote:
>>
>>>there are organzied boycotts
>>>of many of the companies I choose not to buy from. Nike is perhaps the most
>>>recognized
>>
>>Student anti-sweatshop activists, taking their cue from the 
>>workers, are opposed to boycotts against the likes of Nike. They 
>>want the workers to be well paid and decently treated and free to 
>>organize, not disemployed.
>>
>>Doug
>
>
>  this is the crucial point.  boycotts only hurt workers unless they 
>are done in concert with a labor struggle where, for example, they 
>are on strike already.  and it's unfortunate that 
>consumption-focused efforts that see themselves as "progressive" 
>don't appear to grasp that one.

Doesn't the labor-side boycott start as an anti-scab tool? As in "it 
won't do you any good to hire scabs because no one will buy the stuff 
they make"? Isn't a boycott's *only* role to make it very expensive 
to replace your workforce with scabs?

One problem is that this *tactical* role of a boycott in a labor 
dispute gets confused with the *strategic* role of a boycott in green 
disputes--there you don't want anyone to buy the stuff *ever* because 
you don't like the environmental consequences of how it is made, 
while here you want the stuff bought because you want to boost demand 
for the workers' labor as long as the stuff isn't being made by scabs.

But the idea that there are two kinds of boycotts with two different 
sets of goals to be implemented in two different ways is just a 
little bit too complicated...

Brad DeLong