Get your copy of our weekly print products at any of these convenient locations.

Howard Schweber: Epic's power should not be used to silence others

Howard Schweber  —  7/09/2008 5:22 am

Last week Mike McCabe's column castigated me for calling Epic Systems' plan to boycott suppliers and contractors who are members of or support Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce ethically questionable. McCabe suggested that if I oppose Epic's action I should also have opposed the Montgomery bus boycott, Mahatma Gandhi's call for a boycott of British goods, and the Boston Tea Party.

Comments posted by readers suggested widespread support for McCabe's position. But those comments, like McCabe's column, also suggested a widespread failure to understand two important things: the difference between a primary and a secondary boycott, and the issue of free expression in a corporate capitalist economy.

The Montgomery bus boycott, for example, was a primary boycott: Participants refused to ride the city's buses in order to pressure the city to change its discriminatory policies. A secondary boycott would have occurred if there had also been a call to avoid buying gasoline from companies that supplied fuel to the city.

Other examples include both union organizing and union busting tactics: Unions would boycott companies that did business with companies where they were on strike or trying to organize; companies would refuse to do business with suppliers who allowed their workers to unionize. In each of these cases, the point of the secondary boycott is to force a third party to become a participant in a dispute. In some instances such boycotts are illegal as a matter of antitrust law or state laws against interference with business.

In general, where secondary boycotts are undertaken for political purposes by political organizations, they are protected by the First Amendment; where secondary boycotts are undertaken by labor unions or for business purposes, they may be illegal. I commented that Epic's actions might raise legal questions because I do not know of a case quite like it: a business engaging in a secondary boycott for political purposes.

What about Gandhi and the Boston Tea Party? To take other examples, what about boycotts of companies that did business with South Africa during apartheid, or the law that prohibits the U.S. government from doing business with firms that do business with Cuba? These all fit under the rubric of a secondary boycott, broadly defined. But there are some crucial differences between these examples and the Epic case. Most important, each of these boycotts -- and the Montgomery bus boycott -- were aimed at pressuring governments, not private persons or businesses. Second, none of these boycotts was aimed at suppressing expression.

This is the concern that I was trying to raise. In a modern capitalist economy, business corporations have tremendous coercive power. A sufficiently large corporation X can exercise leverage over its employees, the officials of a city that depends on that corporation for its tax base, and small businesses that depend on X's business. In some cases the power of X goes beyond mere leverage and becomes outright coercion: Do what I say or find another line of work. A company that is in a monopoly position, the only employer in a certain industry, or simply a business that dominates a local economy all have the power to coerce, not just influence, others in their community.

That power can be used for good or ill. Epic is using its economic clout to coerce suppliers and contractors who depend upon their business to withdraw from WMC and refrain from expressing support for WMC's actions. In other words, Epic's actions are aimed at silencing political expression and preventing political association.

Epic's target richly deserves such treatment; WMC's role in our recent judicial elections was deplorable. But it goes without saying that the same tactics can be used against other targets, as they have been in the past. Individuals and corporations have every right to use their economic power to make themselves heard on matters of public concern. They should not use that power to silence the voices of others.

Howard Schweber is assistant professor of political science and law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Howard Schweber  —  7/09/2008 5:22 am