General Discussion

General Strike - A US Tradition

In the United States a proposal for a general strike was first made at the 1835 convention of the National Trades Union. This was the first national labor federation in the U.S., founded in August 1834. Workers in Boston in 1835 had tried to organize a city-wide general strike for the 10 hour work day but were crushed. Workers in Philadelphia, inspired by the Boston struggle, took up the banner. Three hundred armed Irish longshoremen marched through the streets calling on workers to join them on strike. Leather workers, printers, carpenters, bricklayers, masons, city employees, bakers, clerks and painters joined in carrying their tools.

John Ferral, the leading Philadelphia trade unionist, described it: “The blood sucking aristocracy stood aghast; terror stricken they thought the day of retribution had come.” [Foner v.1, p. 117]. The Philadelphia city government met and ordered that city workers would now only work 10 hours, from 6 A.M. to 6 P.M. with one hour for lunch and one hour for dinner. Three weeks after the longshoremen walked out the other employers gave in to the general strike. The 10 hour day was adopted throughout the city along with some wage increases. A wave of strikes then swept the country as workers heard of the Philadelphia victory. By the end of 1835 the standard working day for skilled workers was ten hours. Only in Boston, where the workers had first been defeated, were the hours not reduced. In 1840 President Martin Van Buren instituted the ten hour day for Federal employees.

https://fighting-words.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/The-General-Strike-David-Sole.pdf

The general strike in US history: What it is and why it’s still needed

Labor history 101. A general strike encompasses workers from a broad range of occupations and shuts down the delivery of all private and public goods and services in an area, such as a city or state. They usually occur at a time of heightened economic tension, when employers are demanding big concessions from labor, or even trying to destroy unions. Sometimes a defensive struggle of one union can spread as other unions — as well as non-union workers, students, and the broader community — join the fray to express solidarity and broaden the demands of the struggle to include their issues.

Many of these titanic battles have erupted on U.S. soil. The “Great Upheaval” of 1877 started as a railroad strike against wage cuts that spread from the east coast to the Midwest. Entire communities joined in, challenging the power of banks, manufacturing corporations, and even state and local governments. Federal troops pulled out of the South after Reconstruction quelled this uprising. But the nationwide wage-cutting craze was slowed considerably.

During the 1919 Seattle General Strike some 60,000 workers walked off the job in support of striking shipyard workers. Organized by the Central Labor Council, the strike brought city businesses to a standstill. For five days workers’ committees operated everything, from mass strike kitchens to essential services such as hospital deliveries. An historic lesson was taught — the working class can run society. And without the bosses!

In the depth of the Great Depression, in 1934, there were general strikes in San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Toledo. Industrial unionism was proving its mettle, and unions used audacious tactics, including sit-down strikes and roving pickets. When bosses compelled local governments to launch crackdowns or even summon the National Guard, many workers, both employed and unemployed, came to the defense of strikers. It was the ferocity and tenacity of those fighters that pressured Congress to pass the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, establishing the collective bargaining rights that so many are trying to preserve today.

https://socialism.com/fs-article/the-general-strike-in-us-history-what-it-is-and-why-its-still-needed/

Social Strikes in American History

What can we do if MAGA authoritarianism so undermines democratic governance that it cannot be successfully challenged by conventional means? In many other countries, tyrannies have been overthrown by nonviolent mass popular uprisings. This commentary scours US history for examples of “social strikes” – mass strikes, general strikes, and other large-scale nonviolent actions – that shed light on the possibilities and difficulties of using such forms of action to challenge Trump’s burgeoning autocracy.

Tyrannical regimes from Serbia to the Philippines to Brazil and many other places have been brought down by nonviolent revolts that made society ungovernable. More recent examples include the “popular impeachment” of the governor of Puerto Rico in 2019 after the leaking of scurrilous chat group discussions by top government leaders and the massive uprisings that removed the president of Korea as he instigated a coup last December.

Could such “social strikes” — large-scale nonviolent direct action variously called “general strikes,” “political strikes,” nonviolent uprisings, or “people power” — play a significant role in countering Trump’s developing autocracy?

From the outset of the Trump regime calls for mass disruptive action started coming from unlikely places, like Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, an organization normally associated with legal action through the courts. When Romero was asked in an interview what would happen if the Trump administration systematically defied court orders, he replied, “Then we’ve got to take to the streets in a different way. We’ve got to shut down this country.” Similarly, senior Democratic representative Jim McGovern said, “We can’t just sit back and let our democracy just fall apart. What we need to think about are things like maybe a national strike across this country.” Sara Nelson, head of the Association of Flight Attendants, said that American workers — no matter what they do or what sector they are in — now have very few options but to “join together to organize for a general strike.” (Nelson led the organizing for a national general strike that successfully deterred Trump’s attempt to shut down the government in his first term.) On the mass calls of anti-MAGA groups the question of general strikes and nonviolent popular uprisings is constantly raised.

https://www.labor4sustainability.org/strike/social-strikes-in-american-history/