BY an 8-1 vote, the right-wing-dominated US Supreme Court has curbed the right of US workers to strike by allowing companies to sue unions in state courts whenever they wish for alleged “damage” strikers cause, overruling the National Labour Relations Board (NLRB) even if it is already investigating and handling the dispute.

It is no surprise to the labour movement and its allies that a court that, for the first time in history, took away a constitutional right by killing Roe v Wade, would continue its right-wing crusade by beginning to chip away at the sacred right of all US citizens to withhold their labour to make gains or to protect themselves at work.

The only dissenting justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, warned that the ruling moved in the direction of ushering in indentured servitude across the nation.

She declared that her colleagues misread the primacy of US labour law and that the ruling indeed would allow turning workers into indentured servants.

Somehow, lawmakers and judges act as if labour law is not “real” law, allowing themselves to deny, for example, that the encouragement of collective bargaining is the legal, lawful policy of the US government under the terms of the National Labour Relations Act.

Justice Jackson is apparently the only judge on the Supreme Court who recognises that adhering to US labour law is as much a requirement as adhering to any other law.

Jackson made her opposition to the ruling known in blunt remarks after the court released its decision: “The ruling places a significant burden on the employees’ exercise of their statutory right to strike, unjustifiably undermining Congress’s intent.

“Workers are not indentured servants, bound to continue labouring until any planned work stoppage would be as painless as possible for their master.”

The decision in Glacier Northwest v Teamsters Local 174 outraged Teamsters president Sean O’Brien and Association of Flight Attendants-CWA president Sarah Nelson.

AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler predicted that when the case will be tried over again in Washington state, the union will win.

Under current law, strikes are legal under the National Labour Relations Act unless there is deliberate property damage, violence, or both.

In plain English, the justices in the majority took away the word “deliberate,” letting bosses sue unions for any alleged damage strikes cause. It would open the door to company agents themselves causing damage and then blaming it on workers or their unions.

“It’s like putting a tax on the right to strike,” Harvard labour law professor Sharon Block, a former NLRB member, told CBS’s business channel.

In the six-year-old case, Glacier, a cement company, sued Local 174 for striking and letting cement in trucks dry in Glacier’s yard, costing it $100,000 in damage to the trucks, plus lost business.

Local 174 denied the charges, saying the workers ensured the cement truck drums were still spinning, keeping cement wet, when they left.

The NLRB general counsel agreed and took over the case, but Glacier went to Washington State Supreme Court to argue it could sue the local for damages. That court threw that case out, saying federal law pre-empted Glacier’s damages case. The US Supreme Court majority didn’t.

“By reporting for duty and pretending as if they would deliver the concrete, the drivers prompted the creation of the perishable product,” Trump-named Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote, swallowing the company’s line.

“Then, they waited to walk off the job until the concrete was mixed and poured in the trucks. In so doing, they not only destroyed the concrete but also put Glacier’s trucks in harm’s way.”

Because they did so, in her lengthy retelling of the dispute, Glacier could sue the union for damages. The ruling reverses precedents and opens the floodgates to similar expensive lawsuits by firms against striking unions. AFA-CWA’s Nelson said the decision could lead to more militancy.

“If the Supreme Court interferes with the already limited right to strike, it’s going to create even more instability in the workplace,” Nelson predicted at the end of a press conference on another strike issue. “They have to respect this human right or workers will take it into their own hands.

“There will simply be a breakdown in the law. We will see a lot more strikes.”

O’Brien said the ruling showed the court’s tilt towards the corporate class and the billionaires “they socialise with at cocktail parties and who they owe their jobs to in the first place.” The justices “are not upholding the law,” he added.

“American workers must remember their right to strike has not been taken away. All workers, union and non-union alike, will forever have the right to withhold their labour. The Teamsters will strike any employer, when necessary, no matter their size or the depth of their pockets,” he promised.

“Unions will never be broken by this court or any other. Today’s shameful ruling is simply one more reminder the people cannot rely on their government or their courts to protect them. They cannot rely on their employers. We must rely on each other.”

Shuler predicted that in a rerun of the company’s case in Washington state courts, the union would win. Her statement did not touch the wider issues Block, Nelson and Justice Jackson raised.

“The Supreme Court unnecessarily gave the employer another bite at the apple” by relying on “unfounded allegations in the employer’s complaint that the union intended to damage the cement trucks when it called the strike,” Shuler said.

This article appeared on peoplesworld.org.