Boycott

BOYCOTT

A boycott is an organized, deliberate effort by consumers, workers, or businesses to avoid trade that benefits another group, business, or an entire country whose policies they disagree with. For example, in the 1950s and 1960s civil rights groups boycotted businesses in the American South that discriminated against African Americans. The goal of such boycotts was not only to protest nonviolently but also to coerce the targeted businesses to change their policies by directly affecting their revenues. The term boycott is derived from a nineteenth century British estate manager named Charles Boycott (1832–1897). During the potato famine of 1880, Irish tenant farmers on Boycott's land told Boycott he had to reduce their rents so they could survive the famine. Boycott refused, and the farmers joined together to refrain from any interaction that might benefit Boycott and his sympathizers. Boycott never backed down, but he eventually moved out of Ireland.

A strike by workers against a business for higher wages or an embargo of one country by another are both boycotts intended to force change. Consumers who band together to avoid a store known for its high prices are practicing a boycott, as are companies that begin doing business with a new vendor to get their former partner to lower its prices. So-called primary boycotts are direct boycotts against the targeted business or group. For example, the civil-rights protestors of the 1950s and 1960s directly boycotted the very storeowners who refused to serve them. Secondary boycotts are directed against a third party who does business with the targeted business or group. For example, citizens protesting South Africa's formerly racist social policies boycotted U.S. companies that did business in South Africa. In the nineteenth century United States it was quite common for farmers to boycott railroads to get them to lower their freight haulage rates. U.S. labor unions also frequently told their members to avoid purchasing products from nonunionized businesses, and non-unionized businesses used the reverse tactic on unionized firms. During the Great Depression (1929–1939), for example, the National Metal Trades Association encouraged its member firms to boycott metal firms whose workforce had unionized or was considering doing so. In a landmark 1921 ruling, Duplex Printing Press v. Deering, the Supreme Court decided that unions could be sued for the damages caused by their secondary boycotts. In 1947 the Taft-Hartley Act outlawed secondary boycotts and strikes completely.

See also: Taft-Hartley Act