Sales · Justice for Janitors: the SEIU goes through the property owners, Unable to negotiate better wages with a myriad of scattered cleaning subcontractors, the American union SEIU turned the problem around in its "Justice for Janitors" campaign. Rather than confronting elusive employers, it targeted the building owners, often listed property companies and pension funds, asking them to adopt "responsible contractor" policies imposing decent wages and health cover. The relay through the ultimate principal, who held real contractual sway over the subcontractors, unblocked situations that direct confrontation had left frozen. A case documented and studied as a benchmark of union action through indirect pressure.
Politics · The shareholder vote against Jamie Dimon's dual role (2013), To weigh on the governance of JPMorgan Chase, opponents did not plead directly with the leader: they mobilised union-linked pension funds to bring, at the 2013 annual general meeting, a resolution seeking to separate the roles of board chairman and chief executive held by Jamie Dimon. The relay consisted in having the challenge carried by legitimate shareholders, the only ones entitled to vote at the AGM, and in timing the offensive to the locked-in date of the meeting. The resolution did not win a majority, but the episode illustrates the mechanism: shifting the pressure towards the actors holding the real governance lever, at the deadline that counts.
Diplomatic · Kissinger's shuttle after the October 1973 war, After the October 1973 war, Israelis, Egyptians and Syrians could not negotiate directly. American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger practised "shuttle diplomacy": shuttling between the capitals, he carried offers and counter-offers, becoming the sole channel between adversaries who were not speaking to each other. In January 1974, in eight days he secured a first Egyptian-Israeli disengagement agreement; in May, after more than a dozen trips to Damascus in one month, an Israeli-Syrian disengagement on the Golan. The human relay, by sequencing the offers to the pace of shifting military deadlines, made possible an agreement that direct confrontation ruled out.
Judicial · The Nestlé boycott and recourse to the authority of the WHO (1977-1984), Faced with Nestlé's refusal to change its aggressive marketing of infant formula, activists did not try to negotiate with the manufacturer alone. They organised an international boycott (1977) and, above all, anchored their demand to the WHO Code of Marketing adopted in 1981, turning an activist claim into a quasi-regulatory norm. In 1984, after seven years of convergent pressure, Nestlé undertook to comply with the Code and to cease certain practices. The relay through a recognised normative authority gave the demand a weight that activists alone could not produce, the first boycott to make a multinational of that size back down.
Corporate · CalPERS and the pressure on Safeway's management (2000s), During a labour dispute pitting Californian supermarket chains against their unionised employees, the workers did not merely strike. The public pension fund CalPERS, whose chair was close to the food-industry union, relayed the dispute onto the terrain of governance by publicly calling for the departure of the CEO of Safeway, who was driving the reduction in wage costs. By mobilising a major institutional shareholder, able to weigh on the board, the employees opened a second front where the strike alone was running out of steam. The episode, widely documented, illustrates shareholder activism as a relay for a labour dispute.
Everyday life · Going through the right contact to unblock a service dispute, A customer stuck with a first-line customer-service agent who keeps repeating "it's the procedure" applies the relay in everyday life: they stop insisting with the agent, who has no power to make exceptions, and ask to speak to a manager, or refer the matter to the sector ombudsman, whose opinion binds the company. As a deadline approaches (end of warranty, cooling-off period), the pressure of the right contact, endowed with the power to decide, unblocks in a few minutes what hours of head-on insistence had left frozen. A representative scenario, with no words attributed to a real person.
