Indeed, one consultant's estimate puts the cost of hiring of a replacement at 93% of the first year's salary of an employee.
In sometimes terse and evasive testimony that drew admonitions from a federal judge, Gov. John G. Rowland today defended his administration's hiring of replacement nursing-home workers last year after 4,500 union members walked off the job.
A strike or the hiring of replacement workers can only take place after the National Mediation Board declares an impasse, triggering a 30-day "cooling off" period that is usually taken up with intense bargaining right up to a strike deadline.
Whereas once the strike was an economic tactic and protected legal right used by workers as part of an institutionalized collective bargaining process, it has been transformed into a "high-risk confrontation" (9) with increased likelihood of violence, state intervention, and the hiring of replacement workers – in short, a fight for the very existence of the collective bargaining relationship.
Legally, the MTA has a number of options if the union turns down the proposal, including the hiring of replacement workers.
While both sides remain optimistic that a settlement can be reached before the regular season starts on Sept. 9, the referees and the league are also preparing for an ugly battle that could begin when the N.F.L. hires hundreds of replacements.
During a strike at Wilson & Company in 1960, management hired thousands of replacement workers, and when the walkout ended, management refused to rehire the 3,000 strikers.
Mr. Rowland's detractors have likened his strategy to President Ronald Reagan's decision to hire thousands of replacement workers after he fired striking air traffic controllers in 1981.
It has hired dozens of replacement workers, 28 of them refugees from Myanmar, to keep the factory running during the strike.
The arrests came on the same day that the union, New England Health Care Employees Union, District 1199, said it had reached an accord with Roncalli Health Care, which operates seven nursing homes and which had hired hundreds of replacement workers last week.
As in the past, individual agencies will have to scramble to retain their experts and figure out their own methods of hiring any replacements.
