Boycott is a refusal to deal with an individual, organization, or country. Most boycotts involve the refusal to buy a firm’s or nation’s products. Such measures are commonly used by labor unions, consumer groups, and countries to force a company or government to change its policies. The word boycott comes from the name of Charles C. Boycott, a British land agent of the 1800’s. Boycott collected such high rents that his tenants refused to have anything to do with him.
Unions have used boycotts to gain better working conditions for members. There are two main kinds of labor boycotts, primary and secondary. In a primary boycott, employees refuse to buy their company’s products. Such boycotts are legal but are ineffective in most cases because little of a firm’s output is bought by its own workers. In a secondary boycott, striking employees bring pressure on workers in other companies to stop doing business with their employer. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 makes secondary boycotts illegal.
Consumer groups use boycotts as an effective form of protest. In 1955 and 1956, blacks in Montgomery, Alabama, boycotted the city bus system and forced an end to its segregated seating policy. During the 1960’s and 1970’s, many U.S. consumers boycotted grapes and lettuce produced by California growers without union contracts. The boycott, led by the United Farm Workers of America, caused the unionization of many farm operators. In 1973, antiwhaling groups agreed to boycott products from Japan and the Soviet Union until those countries stopped commercial whaling. Some antiwhaling groups also boycotted Norwegian products in the 1990’s.
Countries have used boycotts for various purposes. For example, the United States and several other countries refused to attend the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow to protest the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
See also Embargo ; Olympic Games (Boycotts) ; Whale (Conservation) .
