Strike Law and Workers’ Power Resources in Global Supply Chains and Platform Giants

The right to strike is a key feature of freedom of association and effective collective bargaining. We consider how the legal regulation of strikes and boycotts affects the power resources available to workers and unions to improve working conditions and workers’ voice in firms, such as global supply chains and platform giants, that utilize network-of-contracts business models. We begin by bringing the literatures on power resources theory and supply chain and platform capitalism into conversation. Treating law as a form of institutional power influencing workers’ ability to exercise other power resources in network-of-contracts business models, we then examine how the laws regulating strikes influence workers’ ability to mobilize their other power resources to affect the terms and conditions of work. We investigate the Make Amazon Pay campaign and related strikes to gauge how the legal regulation of strikes affects workers’ power to disrupt supply and production under network-of-contracts business models. We conclude by highlighting the need to revise the law of strikes to fit the power relations under supply and platform capitalism.