Strike action, also called labor strike, labour strike in British English, or simply strike, is a form of direct action in which employees collectively refuse to work. It is usually a response to employee grievances. Generally, strikes are intended to bring an employer to accede to employees' demands for improved working conditions or unionisation, particularly when other avenues of change, such as negotiations or legal redress, have been exhausted. Strike actions can be called by trade unions or be instigated by rank-and-file activists.
Strikes became common during the Industrial Revolution, when mass labor became important in factories and mines. As striking became a more common practice, governments were often pushed to act (either by private business or by union workers). When government intervention occurred, it was rarely neutral or amicable. Early strikes were often deemed unlawful conspiracies or anti-competitive cartel action, and many were subject to massive legal repression by state police, federal military power, and federal courts. Many Western nations legalized striking under certain conditions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Strikes are sometimes used to pressure governments to change policies. Occasionally, strikes destabilize the rule of a particular political party or ruler; in such cases, strikes are often part of a broader social movement taking the form of a campaign of civil resistance. Notable examples are the 1980 Gdańsk Shipyard and the 1981 Warning Strike led by Lech Wałęsa. These strikes were significant in the long campaign of civil resistance for political change in Poland, and were an important mobilizing effort that contributed to the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of communist party rule in Eastern Europe.Aleksander Smolar, "Towards 'Self-limiting Revolution': Poland 1970–89", in Adam Roberts and Timothy Garton Ash (eds.), Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present, Oxford University Press, 2009 , pp. 127–43. This book contains accounts on certain other strike movements in other countries around the world aimed at overthrowing a regime or a foreign military presence. Another example is the general strike in Weimar Germany in response to the Kapp Putsch in March 1920. It was called by the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and received such broad support that it resulted in the collapse of the putsch.
There are a variety of different types of strikes, as well as responses to them or actions taken against them. They are the subject of various schools of thought, as well as creative works, such as films.
History
Etymology The use of the English word "strike" to describe a work protest was first seen in 1768, when sailors, in support of demonstrations in London, "struck" or removed the topgallant sails of merchant ships at port, thus crippling the ships."A body of sailors… proceeded… to Sunderland…, and at the cross there read a paper, setting forth their grievances… After this they went on board the several ships in that harbour, and struck (lowered down) their yards, in order to prevent them from proceeding to sea." (Ann. Reg. 92, 1768), quoted in Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., s.v. "strike, v.," sense 17; see also sense 24. The 1797 Spithead and Nore mutinies have been compared to labor strikes, and anticipated elements that would later become widespread, including use of the red flag in the context of labor disputes.
Pre-industrial strikes
The first historically certain account of strike action was in ancient Egypt on 14 November in 1152 BCE, when artisans of the Royal Necropolis at Deir el-Medina walked off their jobs in protest at the failure of the government of Ramesses III to pay their wages on time and in full.François Daumas, (1969). Ägyptische Kultur im Zeitalter der Pharaonen, pp. 309. Knaur Verlag, MunichJohn Romer, Ancient Lives; the story of the Pharaoh's Tombmakers. London: Phoenix Press, 1984, pp. 116–123 See also E.F. Wente, "A letter of complaint to the Vizier To", in Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 20, 1961 and W.F. Edgerton, "The strikes in Ramses III's Twenty-ninth year", Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 10, 1951. The royal government ended the strike by raising the artisans' wages.
The first Jewish source for the idea of a labor strike appears in the Talmud, which records that the bakers who prepared showbread for the altar went on strike.Talmud Yoma 38a
An early predecessor of the general strike may have been the secessio plebis in ancient Rome. In The Outline of History, H. G. Wells characterized this event as "the general strike of the plebeians; the plebeians seem to have invented the strike, which now makes its first appearance in history."H.G. Wells, Outline of History, Waverly Book Company, 1920, page 225 Their first strike occurred because they "saw with indignation their friends, who had often served the state bravely in the legions, thrown into chains and reduced to slavery at the demand of patrician creditors".
During and after the Industrial Revolution
For the first time in history during the Industrial Revolution, large numbers of people were members of the industrial working class; they lived in towns and cities, exchanging their labor for payment. By the 1830s, when the Chartist movement was at its peak in Britain, a true and widespread 'workers consciousness' was awakening. In 1838, a Statistical Society of London committee "used the first written questionnaire… The committee prepared and printed a list of questions 'designed to elicit the complete and impartial history of strikes.'"
In 1842 the demands for fairer wages and conditions across many different industries finally exploded into the first modern general strike. After the second Chartist Petition was presented to Parliament in April 1842 and rejected, a strike began in the coal mines of Staffordshire, England, and soon spread through Britain, affecting factories, cotton mills in Lancashire and coal mines from Dundee to South Wales and Cornwall. The strike was politically motivated, and was driven by an agenda to win concessions. As much as half of the then-industrial work force were on strike at its peak–over 500,000 men. The local leadership marshaled a growing working class tradition to politically organize their followers to mount an articulate challenge to the capitalist, political establishment. Friedrich Engels, an observer in London at the time, wrote:
by its numbers, this class has become the most powerful in England, and woe betide the wealthy Englishmen when it becomes conscious of this fact … The English proletarian is only just becoming aware of his power, and the fruits of this awareness were the disturbances of last summer.
As the 19th century progressed, strikes became a fixture of industrial relations across the industrialized world, as workers organized themselves to collectively bargain for better wages and standards with their employers. Karl Marx condemned the theory of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon criminalizing strike action in his work The Poverty of Philosophy.The Poverty of Philosophy, Part II, Section 5
In 1937, there were 4,740 strikes in the United States."Abbreviated Timeline of the Modern Labor Movement ", University of Wisconsin-La Crosse This was the greatest strike wave in American labor history. The number of major strikes and lockouts in the US fell by 97% from 381 in 1970, to 187 in 1980, to only 11 in 2010. Companies countered the threat of a strike by threatening to close or move a plant.
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, adopted in 1967 by the United Nations General Assembly, ensures the right to strike in Article 8. The European Social Charter, adopted in 1961, also ensures the right to strike in Article 6.
The Farah Strike, 1972–1974, labeled the "strike of the century," was organized and led by Mexican American women predominantly in El Paso, Texas.
Frequency and duration
Strikes are rare, in part because many workers are not covered by a collective bargaining agreement.John Kennan, Strikes , National Bureau of Economic Research. Strikes that do occur are generally fairly short in duration. Labor economist John Kennan notes:
Since the 1990s, strike actions have generally further declined, a phenomenon that might be attributable to lower information costs (and thus more readily available access to information on economic rents) made possible by computerization and rising personal indebtedness, which increases the cost of job loss for striking workers. In the United States, the number of workers involved in major work stoppages (including strikes and, less commonly, lockouts) that involved at least a thousand workers for at least one full shift generally declined from 1973 to 2017 (coinciding with a general decrease in overall union membership), before substantially increasing in 2018 and 2019.Heidi Shierholz & Margaret Poydock, Report: Continued surge in strike activity signals worker dissatisfaction with wage growth , Economic Policy Institute (11 February 2020). In the 2018 and 2019 period, 3.1% of union members were involved in a work stoppage each year on average, these strikes also contained more workers than ever recorded with an average of 20,000 workers participating in each major work stoppage in 2018 and 2019.
By country
For the period from 1996 to 2000, the ten countries with the most strike action (measured by average number of days not worked for every 1,000 employees) were as follows:
Country Days not worked Denmark 296 Iceland 244 Canada 217 Spain 189 Norway 135 South Korea 95 Ireland 90 Australia 86 Italy 76 France 67
Variations Black ban The black ban is strike action taken against a particular job or employer, in order to protect the economic interests of the strikers.
Byline strike A byline strike is when newspaper writers choose to withhold their names from their stories, as a way to protest actions of their employer.
Flying squads Activists may form "" groups for strikes or other actions, a form of picketing, to disrupt the workplace or another aspect of capitalist production. Examples include supporting other strikers or unemployed workers, participating in protests against globalization, or opposing abusive landlords.
General strikes
Strikes may be specific to a particular workplace, unit within a workplace, or employer; or, they may encompass an entire industry, or every worker within a given area. Strikes that involve all workers, or a number of large and important groups of workers, in a particular community or region are known as general strikes. Under some circumstances, strikes may take place in order to put pressure on the State or other authorities, or may be a response to unsafe conditions in the workplace.
Green ban
During the development boom of the 1970s in Australia, the Green ban was developed from the black ban. This is a form of strike action taken by a trade union or other organized labor group for environmentalist or conservationist purposes.
Hunger strike A hunger strike is a deliberate refusal to eat. Hunger strikes are often used in prisons as a form of political protest. Like student strikes, a hunger strike aims to worsen the public image of the target.
Jurisdictional strike A jurisdictional strike in United States labor law refers to a concerted refusal to work undertaken by a union to assert its members' right to particular job assignments, and to protest the assignment of disputed work to members of another union, or to unorganized workers.
Overtime ban
The overtime ban is when employees refuse to work overtime with the intent to frustrate business. Such strikes may in some cases be a form of "partial strike" or "slowdown".
Recognition strikes