![]() "Today a similar mix of workers with formal union representation and 'unorganized' groups without it are already engaging in an impressive amount of single workplace 'quickie strike' activity over demands related to better workplace protections, hazard pay, paid time off, if sick or quarantined, etc." "All kinds of foreign born workers - feeling threatened 15 years ago by the same proposed draconian GOP-backed anti-immigrant legislation - participated in the one-day strike activity, probably most of them not showing up for work in non-union workplaces… and responding to appeals from non-labor, community based groups," Early explained. He added that those protests offer a good case in point of the pros and cons of general strikes overall. On that occasion, Early told Salon by email, "talented organizers, with deep roots in immigrant communities managed to mobilize up to five million people in 160 cities across the country in an escalating series of one-day-a month work stairways over a three month period." Labor activist Steve Early, who pointed to the citywide work stoppages of San Francisco and Minneapolis in 1934 and Oakland in 1946 as other examples of early general strikes akin to the 1919 Seattle movement, said that the closest contemporary example of a modern American equivalent was the "day without immigrants" protests in 2005. We will understand our own importance from the places we must stay." We will feed each other, redistribute wealth, strike. Actress Fran Drescher, best known for starring in the sitcoms "The Nanny" and "Indebted," tweeted last week that "capitalism has become another word for Ruling Class Elite! When profit is at the expense of all things of true value, we gotta problem." Pop star Britney Spears expressed a similar sentiment on Instagram last week, posting that "we will learn to kiss and hold each other through the waves of the web. There have even been echoes of support for a general strike among the celebrity circuit. And rent strikes are becoming more common as job losses mount. One video of a worker walkout from an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island went viral. Sanitation workers in Pittsburgh are protesting the lack of safety protections as they go about their jobs, as did poultry workers at Perdue Farms in Georgia, Amazon workers in New York City, Chrysler automotive workers in Michigan and bus drivers in Birmingham. With inadequate relief coming even as millions of additional Americans face job insecurity, pay cuts and threats to their health as a result of the novel coronavirus, a number of Americans have called for a general strike as outrage piles upon outrage: President Donald Trump trying to rush through reviving the economy even though that puts workers at risk, corporations refusing to expand hazard pay and paid sick leave, workers from essential fields being forced to perform their duties without necessary safety precautions and a general sense that the powers that be are indifferent to those whose financial security has been upended by the pandemic.Ī number of workers have already gone on strike. Yet many Americans are publicly furious over the political priorities of the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package, which includes $500 billion exclusively to bail out large corporations. Nearly 10 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits within the last two weeks, the largest number ever to do so within such a short period. Now there are calls for a national general strike in light of the coronavirus pandemic. ![]() Police officers and vigilantes rounded up leaders of groups that had coordinated the strike, including the Socialist Party and the Industrial Workers of the World, and the press denounced the strike as a radical attempt to subvert American institutions. Though the strike did not end in violence, the shipyard workers (whose cause had prompted the strike) were not able to convince federal officials to acquiesce to their demands. The Seattle General Strike lasted for five days as workers in a multitude of industries protested the lack of wage increases after wage controls had kept workers' income down throughout World War I. Since the was an instrument of radical European labor, conservatives labeled it 'un-American' and eventually the mayor used force to crush it." ![]() ![]() "The last I can think of was called in Seattle in 1919 by workers who felt entitled to higher wages after World War I," Mark Lytle, a professor emeritus of historical studies at Bard College, told Salon over email. Such a labor action, which would imply a complete shutdown of all industries as all workers cease showing up to work, would be historically unprecedented, a prominent historian told Salon. The idea that pandemic-related economic insecurity might spur a general strike has been trending among pundits and the public in the past week. ![]()
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