For the umpteenth time, the United States Supreme Court has once again sided with wealthy corporations over the rights of hard working Americans. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as the lone holdout fully championing workers’ right to strike. The Supreme Court upended decades of labor law precedent by allowing an employer to file a lawsuit for damages caused by spoilage of a day’s worth of product during a strike.

In general, it’s never a good thing for union members when Justice Amy Coney Barrett writes a majority opinion, which was unfortunately exactly what happened in Glacier Northwest, Inc. v. Teamsters Local Union No. 174. Here is what Terri Gerstein, Senior Fellow at the Economic Policy Institute and director of the State and Local Enforcement Project at the Harvard Law School Center for Labor and a Just Economy, had to say about the case:

“There’s been a lot of writing about the case, but here’s the upshot: Workers still clearly have the right to strike, but the Court’s decision opens the floodgates for employers to weaponize financially burdensome state court litigation as a pressure tactic against workers and unions. The decision could have been worse—it contains some guardrails that may help limit the damage and provide unions with defenses because it doesn’t allow lawsuits for economic harm under any and all circumstances. But it’s still a very harmful decision that hands employers another way to suppress worker organizing and reduce worker power…

“So, what happened in this case? Workers for Glacier, a corporation that sells and delivers quick-dry concrete, went on strike during an impasse in negotiations after their prior contract—with its no-strike clause—expired. Once the strike started, drivers returned to the company parking lot, where they left the trucks running with the drums that contain the concrete still turning, to avoid drying the concrete and damaging the trucks. Although the strike was predictable, Glacier had no contingency plan, and scrambled to remove the concrete from the trucks’ drums. The trucks were unharmed, but some concrete was unusable. Glacier filed a tort lawsuit against the union in Washington state court for financial damages caused by the strike.”

Now, typically state courts can’t get involved in matters covered by our federal labor law. Glacier claimed that the destruction of a day’s worth of concrete was serious enough to be an exception, usually reserved for situations in which matters are deeply rooted in “local feeling and responsibility,” such as if workers intentionally vandalize or destroy company property. The Supreme Court agreed with the company, despite it obviously not being the case.

Gerstein adds, “This decision has deeply harmful consequences for workers’ right to strike: If workers or their unions could be sued any time a product went bad during a strike, or when a strike’s timing was especially damaging, the right to strike would be illusory for many—perhaps most— workers. For example, every aspect of our food chain involves perishable products, from food manufacturers to supermarkets to restaurants. Hospitality industry employers may be unusually vulnerable to strategically timed strikes. Even without employers filing a lawsuit, the threat of litigation is likely to be considered in unions’ calculations about whether, when, and how to strike.”

Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said the following regarding the Supreme Court’s ruling in Glacier Northwest, Inc. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local Union No. 174, which opens the door for corporations to sue their own workers:

“The political hacks at the Supreme Court have again voted in favor of corporations over working people. These corruptible justices should be ashamed of themselves for throwing out long-standing precedent and legislating from the bench. The ability to strike has been on the books for nearly 100 years, and it’s no coincidence that this ruling is coming at a time when workers across the country are fed up and exercising their rights more and more. Make no mistake — this ruling has everything to do with giving companies more power to hobble workers if any attempt is made to fight back against a growing system of corruption.

“The Supreme Court is not upholding the law, nor is it advancing the American people. Supreme Court justices are ruling on behalf of billionaires alone — the very ones they socialize with at cocktail parties and who they owe their jobs to in the first place. American workers must remember that their right to strike has not been taken away. All workers, union and nonunion alike, will forever have the right to withhold their labor.

“The Teamsters will strike any employer, when necessary, no matter their size or the depth of their pockets. Unions will never be broken by this Court or any other. Today’s shameful ruling is simply one more reminder that the American people cannot rely on their government or their courts to protect them. They cannot rely on their employers. We must rely on each other. We must engage in organized, collective action. We can only rely on the protections inherent in the power of our unions.”

How many times are we going to let the Supreme Court, full of pampered unelected elites, issue decisions that hurt Americans before we demand change? The result of this one case will be an uptick in litigation against workers who go on strike. We desperately need labor law reform and court reform to stop this onslaught of anti-worker decisions. This issue should have been handled by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency with expertise in labor relations and charged with enforcing our labor laws.