> "Since when can a contract "pre[v]ent someone
> from going on strike"? Is this the current state of
> workers rights in the US of A?
>
> [ S N I P : reference to and quotations from a
> news story about some U.S. Postal Service
> employees protesting USPS job/work cutbacks
> that said in part, "Their contracts prevent them
> from going on strike, but that didn't stop postal
> workers from picketing . . ." ]
An "executive summary" that omits the legal/historical details of strikes in the U.S., of judicial grants of and occasions when/how courts decline to grant injunctions against strikes by unions and union members, and the evolution more generally of private- and public-sector labor laws in the U.S. is this:
It is very common for union-management collective bargaining contracts to contain a "no strike" commitment by the union for itself and on behalf of those it represents with the enforceability of such an agreement rationalized basically as the bargained for exchange of not otherwise required grievance/arbitration procedures (which, re. the U.S. Postal Service and the Postal Workers Union, can be complex and substantially politicized).
Your first question arguably is anyway moot since the provisions of U.S. law (5 U.S.C. § 7311) that make it unlawful for a federal employee to strike or even to assert a right to strike against the U.S. government have been applicable to the U.S. Postal Service employees by the statute (39 U.S.C. § 410(b)) since the early-1970s after a dramatic strike of postal workers. These prohibitions are further bolstered by U.S. federal criminal law (in 18 U.S.C. § 1918 - a provision titled, "Disloyalty and asserting the right to strike against the Government") which makes a crime punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 and imprisonment of up to a year and a day for affected workers to violate these (even when not contractual) no-strike prohibitions.
The also "executive summary" answer to your second question is: Yes, and worse - a reality for federal governmental and quasi-governmental employees emphasized with special vengeance since Pres. Reagan's 1981 mass discharges of striking federally employed air traffic controllers and the breaking of their union (PATCO).