Strike

September 9, 2022 12:08 PM

People keep talking about how protests are no good. But I have experienced a nationwide general strike (I was 20 and didn't really have any context for it). I know they can work. I'd like to learn more about nationwide (or larger, if any) general strikes from everywhere in the world. The kind where the streets are full of people and bustling one day and completely empty the next.

Books, video, personal experience, articles, websites, and so forth. Pop and academic.

posted by aniola to Grab Bag (15 answers total)

A strike really isn't the same thing as a protest.
posted by orange swan at 1:07 PM on September 9, 2022 [5 favorites]

Strike! by Jeremy Brecher is a well known book about major strikes in the US.

Also who is telling you protests are no good? That's a rather ahistorical and un-strategic sort of statement. Tell them I said voting doesn't work, either!
posted by RajahKing at 1:39 PM on September 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

I found this reflection on the state of European general strikes thought provoking.
posted by latkes at 2:36 PM on September 9, 2022

Response by poster: I am explicitly interested in focusing on the kind of strikes mentioned at the end of the article latkes shared. I have edited the sentence from that article to say what I'm looking to learn about:

All-out, ongoing, large-scale strikes, where everyone puts their individual and collective well-being on the table until they get a better deal.
posted by aniola at 2:58 PM on September 9, 2022

I'm always in awe of the time when women went on strike in Iceland.
posted by hydra77 at 2:58 PM on September 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

I don't understand the question after your clarification. Are you specifically interested in "strikes where everyone puts their well-being on the table" (that's true of all strikes, pretty much be definition), or only general strikes "where the streets are full of people and bustling one day and completely empty the next" (which is not even true of all general strikes).

In any case, Matewan is a great movie.
posted by caek at 3:03 PM on September 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: general strikes "where the streets are full of people and bustling one day and completely empty the next" with a de-emphasis on the US and EU
posted by aniola at 3:23 PM on September 9, 2022

so specifically NOT a strike in which people march or picket or anything? A strike in which everyone stays home?
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 4:05 PM on September 9, 2022

(apologies if that's a silly question but I cannot tell how literally you mean for us to take the descriptions. the general strikes I've seen in my time have definitely NOT involved empty quiet streets.)
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 4:07 PM on September 9, 2022

Best answer: The search term "stay at home strike" brings up some fascinating results (1, 2a, 2b). I've just learned about a 1943 strike by Torres Strait Islander enlistees for more wages equality in the Australian Army. That's a localised and specific sit-in and not quite 'empty city streets' but it's part of the continuum I think the OP is referring too.
posted by Thella at 6:09 PM on September 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: so specifically NOT a strike in which people march or picket or anything? A strike in which everyone stays home?

One in which 99% of everyone stays home if they have one. Pretty much anyone who doesn't stay home is at a huge rally or something.
posted by aniola at 6:39 PM on September 9, 2022

Response by poster: ... but if there's other kinds of mass general strikes in which 99% of everyone in a country/nation/big region is involved, I'm interested in learning about those, too.
posted by aniola at 7:08 PM on September 9, 2022

Response by poster: A strike really isn't the same thing as a protest.

I experienced a country-wide Nepali bandh, which as I understand it, is a strike that is a form of protest.
posted by aniola at 10:01 PM on September 10, 2022

A strike really isn't the same thing as a protest.

A strike is a protest. Not all protests are strikes.
posted by Thella at 2:21 PM on September 11, 2022

Response by poster: see also hartal

I think it's worth introducing into global English a word that we Malayans (i use this specifically) picked up from Indian colonial subjects: hartal (as per wiki: 'A hartal is a mass protest, often involving a total shutdown of workplaces, offices, shops, and courts of law, and a form of civil disobedience similar to a labour strike. In addition to being a general strike, it involves the voluntary closure of schools and places of business. It is a mode of appealing to the sympathies of a government to reverse an unpopular or unacceptable decision.'). It's a useful distinction because the current conversations are beholden to the framing of industrial labour action (and thus limiting the thinking that results in users also only seen as labour actors) when it's as much an expression of a populace about governance.

hartal part 2

And fwiw my fedi mutual chipped in to remind me the emphasis was the fact that as colonial subjects, the first hartal actors couldn't even politically represent themselves in the first place in the decisions that affected their wellbeing such as new taxes and levies and administrative actions (sounds familiar?). Specifically, they said: ...given the term's roots in colonial india, it is more appropriate to define hartal as a type of strike where people with practically no political recognition and representation do claim their very rights under an oppressive regime which outlaws any kind of protest. Which is how business people and civil servants joined in. Someone else asked me something similar, and i pointed it's not like hartals aren't already being done - Greta Thunberg's entire civil disobedience action is premised on the fact children had no seat in the table when it comes to climate policies. The locus of the grievance isn't *just* fair compensation to one's labour, it's the fact you're not provided any say at all. And reddit and twitter etc, falling into this role as pseudo-public commons, doesn't make it irrelevant - much of India was administrated by the East India Company and similar actors after all. And redditors aren't workers.

posted by aniola at 12:17 PM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]