Indeed, it's notable that the national AFL-CIO leaders refused to agree to the march until after instructing their underlings at the local level to call off the strike and make an unconditional offer to return to work . Using corporate boycotts to subvert militant action . The failure of the union leaders to put up a serious fight is a national disease rendering the workers weak in the face of the corporate offensive . Time and again the workers have been channeled away from powerful actions that could really shut down scab production, such as the mighty plant blockades at the Detroit newspaper plant in Sterling Heights in September 1995 . Instead the union officials tell the workers that all they need do is have a boycott campaign against the scab product .
Boycotts have their place .
But as a substitute for militant mass action, they are a recipe for failure . Look at the evidence . The AFL-CIO heads touted the corporate boycott as the answer for the major strikes of recent years . The bureaucrats wound up swallowing rotten settlements leaving many strikers jobless and working conditions gutted. But the fact remains that the lame AFL-CIO tactics have led to the strike being abandoned .