A Look Back at the Power of the Labor Strike
Twenty years ago, scholars asked, is the strike dead? Union membership and enthusiasm was dwindling, and strike activity had been steadily declining since the mid 1970s. In 2003, the academic Peter Rachleff, who studies labor and immigration, wrote, “scholars and activists are asking if the strike has any efficacy left to speak of, or if it should be consigned to the dustbin of history.”
In 2022, the outlook for labor unions and the power of the strike is decidedly more positive. This fall, the labor economist Julia Pollak wrote an op-ed for Barron’s, titled, in part, “How long will the union resurgence last?” We are indeed in a season of renewed fervor for workers’ rights.
Striking like its 1619
Never ones to take things lying down, workers in the United States have been striking for almost as long as they’ve been working.
The first known labor strike (in what is now the U.S.) took place in 1619, when Polish craftsmen in the European settlement Jamestown went on strike to protest their disenfranchisement. Earlier that year, the governor of Virginia had extended suffrage to English, landowning men sixteen and older. The strike was resolved when Polish workers were given the vote.
In the four hundred years since, workers have been unifying and organizing to shape the way we work and the safety we value. The labor strike is to thank for many of the protections we enjoy today, including child labor laws, the right to organize, the eight-hour workday, and public sector labor law.
A turning point for employee-employer relations
A turning point for the American labor force came in 1981. The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) went on strike when it couldn’t reach an agreement with the FAA on union demands (which included “a 32-hour work week, a $10,000 raise for all its members, and a better retirement package”). President Reagan ordered the strikers, who were government employees, to return to work within 48 hours or be fired. More than ten thousand workers lost their jobs.
Between the end of WWII (when union support re-enlivened in the post-war job market) and the 1970s, strikes had been accepted, institutionalized, and respected.2 Employers seldom hired strikebreakers, and the idea of firing striking workers was seen as “universally unacceptable, even though it was legal,” writes archivist Michael Barera.
Corporate hostility toward unions simmered in the 1970s, and the breaking of the PATCO strike boiled the pot. Companies used the precedent to target unionized workers. “Numerous corporations, including Hormel, Phelps Dodge, and International Paper, provoked strikes among their employees and then hired replacement workers during the strikes to force major concessions upon unions,” writes Barera.
This reversal set the tone for union activity and the relationship between workers and their employers (union or otherwise) for decades. It became too risky to unionize, so membership diminished and unions lost the public support they once had.
Striking while the iron is hot
In 2022, the temperature is different.
Despite the union-busting and retaliation on the part of employers like Amazon and Starbucks, most employers aren’t immediately resorting to clearing union members. Julia Pollak points out in her Barron’s essay that “nobody is speaking like that today.” Some companies are even voluntarily recognizing new unions.
This could be due, in part, to public support for unions, which is at its highest point since 1965. In 1981, when Reagan broke the PATCO strike, public approval of labor unions was at 55%. Today, it’s 71%.
Strikes happen when workers have more power, and that’s nearly always when unemployment is low,2 but the labor market is already changing, and with tech companies laying off workers in the tens of thousands, one must wonder how much time is left to make big changes.
Pollak predicts that the labor market will shift and unemployment will rise to a point at which workers no longer have the advantage. “The question is whether unions can lock in long-term gains now, while the going is good,” she writes.
But this time, workers aren’t waiting to unionize in order to stop work or prevent consumption: Gig workers at Instacart called for a boycott of the app in late 2021, and when Elon Musk told employees to commit to being “hardcore” or quit, many chose the latter.
Plus, with an abundance of choice, consumers are increasingly willing to pull their loyalty based on a company’s reputation as an employer and recruit others to do the same. Just check out #BoycottTwitter and #BoycottAmazon.
Unionization and striking have a mutually reinforcing relationship, and together they build speed to create small, incremental changes that, when added, significantly shape our experiences as workers. Even failed strikes say something about the resolve of the workforce and can inspired further organization.
As Rachleff writes: “As collective processes, strikes have been generative of new levels of workers’ organization, consciousness, and power, and not merely expressions of the existing levels.”
Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance reporter who writes about the workplace, recruitment, the future of work, and women’s experiences on the job. Her bylines include The Washington Post, Fast Company, Digiday’s Worklife, From Day One, and Food Technology.
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