LOCKOUT. - The suspension of work in factories, workshops, and industries, decided by employers to counter strikes or resist modifications to labor agreements. Like the strike, of which it is in a sense the counterpart, the lockout is essentially tied to the socio-economic system known as capitalism and finds its widest application in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. Regarding it, public authority has taken quite different stances: ranging from prohibition and condemnation (as, for example, in articles 414–16 of the Napoleonic Penal Code) to more or less explicit permission.
Article 40 of the new Italian Constitution does not mention this right; it simply states that “the right to strike is exercised within the framework of the laws that regulate it.”
All attempts to place strike and lockout on the same level (e.g., the Giannini and Quinteri amendments) were rejected. Juridically, therefore, the right to a lockout cannot be construed in the same way as the right to strike; while the latter is constitutionally guaranteed and a future law prohibiting it would be unconstitutional, the former is not, so that it could be excluded by ordinary legislation without violating the Constitution.
More complex is the further question of whether a lockout is compatible with the constitutional text. Two currents of thought exist on this: some, starting from the premise that both strike and lockout constitute an exception to the principle that defense must be reserved to public authority—and exceptions cannot be presumed—hold that a lockout is incompatible with our Constitution; consequently, a law authorizing it would be unconstitutional; and even if labor legislation did not explicitly forbid it, the lockout would still be considered, under common law, a breach of the employer’s contractual obligation (F. Santoro-Passarelli, *Verso la legge sindacale*, in *Iustitia*, 2 [1949], p. 51). Others, however, point out that the Constitution’s silence is merely silence; everything is left to ordinary legislation.
On the moral judgment of the lockout, Catholics are not entirely in agreement either. Essentially, we may group the differing opinions into three main categories. Some hold that the lockout can and should be placed on the same level as the strike, and thus, under the conditions indicated for the strike, may be deemed legitimate; the employer, too, may find himself in a position analogous to that of the worker—namely, having no other means to defend a just cause, with a well-founded hope of success and a reasonable proportion between the goods he hopes to secure for himself and his dependents and the evils he fears he may inflict on others. This is the view generally held by moralists, especially those of an earlier period, such as Merkelbach (e.g., *Summa theol. mor.*, II, Paris 1947, n. 553, p. 585). Others, however, maintain that there is a substantial difference between employers and workers in this regard. While the latter may find themselves in such grave situations as to justify or even necessitate recourse to a strike as a means of struggle, the former can never say the same; the worker strikes for motives far more closely tied to the fundamental exigencies of life than those for which the employer imposes a lockout. Consequently, strike and lockout cannot be placed on the same level. While the former may be licit, the latter is not. This is the position held by some moralists and Christian thinkers more directly engaged in the social field (e.g., certain contributors to *Revue de l'action populaire* and Christian labor unions). A third group, numerically quite small, holds that if the conditions indicated for the morality of the strike are met, the lockout may also be licit and even obligatory; however, it maintains that such conditions are far less likely to be met in the case of a lockout than in that of a strike. Thus, for example, L. Ruland, *Aussparung*, in *Staatslexikon*, I, pp. 494–96.
This last position seems the most prudent. In any case, all agree that, other conditions being equal, the lockout is as licit as the strike; not all agree, however, on whether those equal conditions are met or not: classical moralists seem to assume almost without question that parity can occur with great ease and frequency; syndicalists assume almost without question that such parity never occurs; others, perhaps more prudently, grant the syndicalists against the classical moralists that there is a profound difference between the position of the worker and that of the employer; they deny, however, that this difference is such as to preclude the possibility that, at least in some cases, the employer may find himself in the same position as the worker.