A primary boycott occurs when a union or other political or community organization encourages both its members and the general public not to buy the products of a firm involved in a labor or political dispute.
Primary boycotts generally occur during labor negotiations and are a way for a union to either get management to the negotiating table or to help the union press for its demands. Success involving primary boycotts is mixed.
Beginning in California in the 1960s the United Farm Workers union, led by Cesar Chavez, conducted a series of boycotts of table grapes and iceberg lettuce and some California wine as a part of an effort to gain bargaining recognition from California's agribusiness industry.
Famous quotes containing the words primary and/or boycott:
“Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.”
—George Washington (1732–1799)
“Take away from the courts, if it could be taken away, the power to issue injunctions in labor disputes, and it would create a privileged class among the laborers and save the lawless among their number from a most needful remedy available to all men for the protection of their business interests against unlawful invasion.... The secondary boycott is an instrument of tyranny, and ought not to be made legitimate.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)