After a minute wait, a car crosses the picket line. (Laura Clawson)
The picket line at a Verizon facility in Silver Spring, MD, is what you might call organized, limited disruption. There are about 80 striking workers at the main entrance of the facility, walking in a slow circle at the head of a wide driveway. More workers are scattered around smaller entrances and posted at a nearby intersection. The main picket line's size is maintained, but people can slip off to the side for short breaks out of the sun. Every few minutes, a passing car honks and the picketers wave and cheer.
But not all cars are supporters. Management, replacement workers and delivery vehicles are still going in and out of the entrance being picketed. The striking workers are allowed to make anyone trying to enter or exit wait for one minute. When a car pulls up, the picket line continues but the clock has started. The picketers count down the last 10 seconds of the minute out loud, then clear the way for the car or cars to pull through accompanied by a chorus of "scab" and thumbs down. One black SUV exiting waits through its minute, then makes a show going through the line, stopping, backing up, going forward a few feet, backing up again.
Local police signed off on that minute wait, I was told, and local Verizon security accepted it. But today, a Verizon higher-up had arrived and called the police in to try to get the minute revoked and the picket line effectively shut down. But while I was at the picket line, a police car exited the parking lot without any sign that the attempt to shut things down had succeeded. Workers waved and called out "thank you" as the police car passed them.
The reception for a mail truck was a little more mixed; though the driver honked and waved while waiting to enter, several people on the picket line called out "they're coming for you next" and discussed with each other the attacks on government workers. But another woman took the bullhorn being used to lead chants and called for understanding that the postal worker has a job to do. That wasn't the only such reminder issued from the bullhorn—at one point, the man leading chants discussed Facebook etiquette (don't use violent or obscene language when talking to or about scabs, basically).
Striking workers are determined and passionate, but they're also operating within carefully delineated rules that allow them to make their presence felt but not to bring real disruption (beyond the absence of workers) to Verizon's door. This is today's strike, the product of decades of the courts and Congress chipping away at strike rights.