Essential Services, Workers’ Freedom, and Distributive Justice

Abstract

This paper examines the normative implications of the essential service argument commonly used to justify restrictions on workers’ freedom to withhold their labor. The essential service argument says that essential services workers should not be allowed to strike since that form of collective bargaining can likely inflict imminent and substantial harm on the society. Both detractors and advocates of the freedom to strike have widely debated the essential service argument. Yet, surprisingly, the debate has rarely examined its implications in terms of occupational freedom and distributive justice. Here I argue that once we accept the essential service argument to restrict essential workers’ freedom to strike, we should also be prepared to accept limitations on occupational freedom. If we accept that the state should guarantee the provision of some services, then we should also accept that the state can permissibly restrict not only the freedom to strike, but also occupational freedom in the eventuality that not enough people voluntarily agree to work in the provision of essential services. That is, if necessary, the state should be prepared ∗A version of this paper was published as an article in: Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 40, No. 4 (October 2014): 649-672

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