2d ago

What conditions would you require to start general striking?

I know for many people the main condition is that their work wouldn't be cool with it so would lose income or threaten job. in union strikes, a huge part of our dues goes towards a strike fund to make sure people get income when striking so i think i would like to see some crowd funding general strike fund or some sort of union type thing but anyone in working class can join & point of it is to organize and fund assistance, legal help, anti-retaliation.

I'd be down to general strike though, some massive positive changes in history have been via general striking since wealthy class freaks out.

what do y'all think?

46 comments

Having a union to begin with.
Folks that stop by this post and don’t have a union, think about this. The reason you have the default concern about your job security, the reason you have inequality in the workplace and the reason “wage-slave” is a term, is because you, your peers, and your predecessors were propagandized away from unions or any form of worker solidarity.
Some of you might say, “but if I even talk about a union with co-workers, I’m fired”, or, “I read about how Walmart would rather stop having a butcher shop than let them unionize”. I say that’s exactly why you need one.
- To bring this more in-line with OP's question:
  What if we had a general union that represented all workers generally and could provide support for things like general strikes?
  Maybe make it a parent body made up of unionized/federated unions specific to each trade/discipline.
  Something like the IWW or the AFL-CIO, but that represents all people by default. I'd argue that such a body could/should replace most of what the government does, and then membership is just citizenship. This could guarantee several worker's rights within the union and enshrine democratic principles/practices.
  
  In a well functioning society, that would be called the government.
- Unions have earned their bad reputation in the US. Union management is more evil that corporate management, and corporate management is not very good.
  Yes corporate management isn't always good, but they are not nearly as bad as union management makes them out to be. Meanwhile I've seen the sillyness that unions enforce (I can't plug in a network cable - that is a union job) and I want nothing to do with them. Unions need to clean up their own act before trying to get me to join. I'm not against unions, but the way they work in the US I'm very against. Start looking in the mirror and seeing what the real world is like and not your strawman vision of what you think my issues are!
  Unions in other countries work very different. If you live in Europe, you have no idea what unions in the US are like, so stop.
  
  Back all this bullshit up with cited sources or fuck off with this concept that doesn't even pass the smell test.
  
  Be the change that you want to see. You point out all these things they are doing wrong, have you tried running for a union leadership position and changing the things you see they are doing wrong?
  
  How do you think unions in other countries gained the reputation and power that they have? Being in a union is the first step to have a better union.

General popular buy in.
If 5% of the country tries to strike it's just going to get 5% of people fired with a poisoned reference on their CV, and get a story on page 3 of a billionaire owned newspaper. In the US right now 45% of the country would actively oppose a general strike, 30% would be oblivious to it happening until they got to work that day and wondered why Chris and Pat aren't in, and 20% would decline for fear of reprisal (sans union protection).
- If 5% of all US workers striked, it would be the largest strike in US history by magnitudes. This says there are 170m workers in the US, which would put 5% at 8.5m. The largest single strike seems to be the 1946 steel strike which consisted of 800,000. 5% of everyone striking would not be third page news, and it would do damage to the oligarchs. I would absolutely consider 5% to be generalpopulace buy-in. Youre right half the country would actively oppose it, though.

The lack of fear that I'm going to become homeless, arrested, prosecuted, or my position in life devalued significantly. It's gambling at this point on whether it's successful or not, as well as regarding any legal ramifications, which further hurts future employment prospects. No one wants to do business with a felon (except for the Big One), and job interviews aren't nuanced enough for me to explain to political climate of the time, nor is there enough incentive for employers to take the chance on me over a candidate that is within 1-2% with none of the baggage.
Believe me, I'd love to change labor in the US, but there is 0 reason for me to have confidence in my fellow citizens at this point. Half the country voted for this.
- I mean, more like a third, but yes absolutely. I think the biggest obstacle is, will my countrymen be with me if I stick my neck out? Or will I just be offering myself up to the fascism?
  
  I should say half of voters, it's just a distinction I'm too mad to make. But yeah, same issue. I don't have any trust that sacrifice will be worth it in the current climate or near future unless drastic things happen.
- Living in the US is like living within the prisoners dilemma. If we all work together, we could make the world an infinitely better place, but we're all worried that a bunch of us won't, and they'll instead drive all of us off a cliff if they have even the idea that it might make them richer than their neighbor. Our worries are founded in the political landscape of today, where everywhere you look the world is getting worse, and there's some rich republican smarmy asshole doing everything in their power to make it worse (while profiting from the chaos).
  
  Absolutely. It's also what kills me when people say "stop bringing politics into everything". Everything in the US is inherently political. Reading a kids book at a library is political. The JROTC marching the flag at a football game. Getting medical care. Everything is tied into politics in one way or another.

Suspension of mortgage payments. As long as I have bills to pay, I'm working.

American wokers will never back a general strike. We are far too fractured and too far removed from the actual problems we face that nobody thinks they are part of the problem.

I don't have a safety net and I'm employed well above where my qualifications on paper would get me hired in a new position so if I lose this job I'll most likely be set back by years. Sorry but I'm not joining a strike. Good luck to anyone who does but I will almost certainly be fucked if I do. I'd contribute in other ways if there are any suggestions.
- Where you put your money matters. We can't completely avoid big box stores for food but we can at least not buy certain brands like Frito lay or nestle products. Buying from charity thrift stores (not goodwill or salvation army). Not buying anything on strike days. Lots of ways to do your part!

A decent plan with actionable goals and a strategy that will actually work.
Not working or buying something on one day doesn't do shit

It's really weird to strike at my job, because I work at a non-profit who genuinely does great work to help students go to college and university. Probably the worst part about our program is that some of the companies we take money from are shitty, but it's hard to be mad spending evil money on educating students. They also give me an incredibly generous PTO program, meaning even if I don't come into work for a day to strike, I'll still get paid for the day, which seems antithetical to the purpose.
I'm still not gonna come into work on March 14th, and maybe if I can get all my coworkers to do the same it'll still feel like a strike, but it's just a weird situation.

For it to be legal.
Yes, despite having fairly good workers rights, general and solidarity strikes are illegal in Germany. It's so stupid.

Realistically, it's complicated. I work remotely for a small company based out of California. The owners are awesome, reasonable, and fair. Their goal in running the company is to create good jobs for their employees and a good service for their customers. I've worked for them for 3.5yrs now and genuinely cannot imagine a better situation for myself short of being independently wealthy. I'm also the only person at my job that does what I do, so if I don't work, I'm bringing real stress to the company, not to mention not being paid myself. Neither of those prospects are palatable. I've worked crappy corpo jobs in the past and wouldn't have batted an eye at causing them some grief, but when you have an employer as great as mine, it's a lot harder to realistically consider harming them.
I'm sure there is a point at which I would make the choice, and it's something I think about regularly, but it's more complicated for me than missing paychecks or even being fired from a mediocre job. If you'd told me 20 years ago to describe my dream work situation, it would basically be what I have now. Throwing that away is a tough prospect.

Not working a BS job at a company of like 5 people would probably make a strike seem more meaningful. If I had income to spare, it would probably make more sense to fund someone else to strike at a major company or who does more meaningful work than for myself to strike.

A unprovoked war, I guess, would be an obvious one for me. A debt default would probably lead to one since everyone’s retirement account would be fucked.
I mean, I’d join one now if unions and major non-profits organized one. But I’m self-employed so it’s not a risk for me. I get why a lot of people can’t take the risk of being fired.

Honestly? With how much money the rich has, a major prerequisite for me would be a massive wealth tax on their current fund.
With how much money most of the companies that are problem children today have, a general strike isn't effective.
Take amazon for example, it has a yearly operating expense of 569B, and has a current operating debt of 52B (or a total of 338B in liabilities)
It keeps around 101B cash on hand in immediate withdrawable assets, and has a total of 624B in total assets.
Assuming the total yearly expenses can be easily dividable by 12(it likely couldn't) and without knowing how much money they end up saving in salary due to the strike, In order for a strike to really hurt Amazon, you would need to strike for almost 3 months before you even start eating into it's non-immediate withdrawal assets.
How many people do you know that has 3 months worth of salary stored up for a thing like this? I don't know many.
A union /might/ have solved that situation but, that money doesn't just appear out of thin air, its collected via dues, the same dues that the everyday person fights against, and if you don't /currently/ have a union, you won't have the funds built up.
Our local teachers union has that issue currently. They ruled that the union MUST accept people into it without paying the union fees, which more or less made it so the teachers union is all bark no bite as it couldn't afford a general strike as a result of it, because they would need to pay everyone, including the people who aren't actively contributing back.

Student and worker unions striking together would build momentum for non union workers to strike, which is exactly why wealthy politicians outlawed it in 1947. They literally outlawed worker solidarity under Taft Hartley because it's obviously effective. You don't need more than 5-10% of the workforce striking before things grind to a halt, especially if you are coordinating along logistics and supply chains.
Look at effective recent strikes like UAW, start with several strikes across critical supply chains, and when management engages in bad faith negotiations keep adding more strikes.