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Title: No More Fake Strikes
Author: Joe Burns
Date: August 12, 2019
Language: en
Topics: strike, syndicalism, criticism
Source: Retrieved on 11th July 2021 from https://organizing.work/2019/08/no-more-fake-strikes/

Joe Burns

No More Fake Strikes

General strikes by proclamation

In recent years, middle-class activists with little relationship to

unions, workers or workplaces have routinely called for general strikes.

Over the last decade, there have been a dizzying number of general

strikes announced. The ones that I can remember are: in the wake of the

Wisconsin uprising, in San Francisco following the Occupy movement, on

May Day for most of the last decade, a whole spate of general strikes in

the wake of Trump’s election, earlier this year around the TSA shutdown,

and a recent call for a reproductive rights strike. There is also a call

for a global climate strike, which may or may not be a call for a strike

as opposed to a protest.

That I am sure I am missing some should be a bit of a tip-off. If you

have to struggle to remember a call for a general strike, then it

probably was not successful.

The bulk of this article will focus on the general strikes called on

social media back in the wake of Trump’s election, in the spring of

2017. The Spring 2017 calls included a call for an immigrant worker

strike on February 16, calls for a February 17 general strike in the

wake of the momentum around Trump’s inauguration, a widely publicized

Women’s Strike on International Women’s Day, and a strike on May 1.

There were so many calls for general strikes it was hard to keep them

straight. None of them resulted in general strikes, and other than the

immigrant worker strike, none resulted in any appreciable number of

workers actually going on strike.

Unlike real strikes, which take a ton of work, calling a general strike

is apparently a simple affair. A date is picked, a Facebook post is

created, the labor liberal press picks it up, and a general strike is

born. This raises the question of under whose authority they are being

called.

By and large, you see very few unions participating in these so-called

general strikes. There are a couple of instances of unionists syncing up

strikes around specific issues, such as the Chicago Teachers Union

threatened strike on May Day 2017. How is it possible to have a general

strike with virtually no union participation?

How strikes are called

Most union constitutions have detailed rules and procedures for

striking, including rules on when and how strike votes should be

conducted. While some may dismiss this as mere bureaucracy, strike votes

are taken seriously by most unions because the stakes are so high for

the affected workers. By voting to strike, a group of workers commits

themselves to a battle which has major repercussions for their

individual and collective futures. A failed strike can mean the loss of

a job, and even a winning strike may mean months of hardship—this is not

a decision to be made lightly.

As a democratic decision, once the decision to strike has been made, all

workers, whether they voted yes, no, or did not vote, are expected to

honor it. Everyone must honor the picket line and go on strike — or be

deemed a scab. Most union constitutions call for fining or expelling

strikebreakers, and back in the day scabs would be ostracized for years

after the conclusion of a strike.

Having been involved in many strike votes over the years, they usually

involve lots of collective discussion in the workplace, answering

questions and what-ifs. Legal strategy and possible repercussions are

talked about, and strategy is debated. Striking is a collective

decision, and typically the work group solidifies around the idea. When

the group does decide to go on strike, folks began to act collectively

and labor and management become polarized.

Certainly there are situations where workers have not voted to go on

strike, as with wildcat strikes, which are strikes without the support

of, or typically in opposition to, the union apparatus. Such initiatives

typically are rooted in the “shop floor” (workplace) and led by

rank-and-file organizers. Like all strikes, true wildcat strikes are

rare today, with the last big wildcat wave in the early 1970s, when shop

floor workers resisted a management offensive to gut longstanding work

rules in the name of productivity. But even though these strikes do not

involve a formal vote, to be successful, these wildcat strikes take

workplace organizing and popular support from the workers involved.

Workers, in effect, vote with their feet.

Leading up to the 2017 Women’s Strike, a liberal critique claimed that

striking was a privilege. The article provoked a quick response that

working-class women can and do strike, and that opposition to the strike

was coming from liberal democrats. A widely circulated rebuttal by Kate

Aronoff gave four historical examples of strikes by woman. These

examples were meant to show that women’s strikes are not a privilege—but

struggles of oppressed workers using the best tool they have available

to improve their lives.

Yet, there are a number of differences between the strikes discussed by

Aronoff and the “strike” on International Woman’s Day. The most obvious

is that these historical examples were real labor-withdrawing strikes

involving tens of thousands of women. And they flowed from decisions

from the women workers involved. Aronoff’s article quotes the dramatic

scene, well known in labor history, when garment worker Clara Lemlich

made an impassioned call for thousands of garment workers to strike. But

unlike these strikes, that was the garment workers themselves deciding

to strike. That is far different from these general strikes by

proclamation.

Is it a strike if no-one strikes?

With the exception of the immigrant worker strikes, it is clear that not

many of the proclaimed strikes were actually strikes, let alone general

strikes. The Women’s Strike on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2017

did not appear to happen. The most reported areas of actual work

stoppages that day were school districts in Arlington and Chapel Hill,

liberal, high-income areas which shut down their schools preemptively

based on an abnormal number of requests for the day off.

An employer cancelling classes because employees request the day off

does not constitute a strike—unless, like the 2006 immigrant worker

strike, when entire industries shuttered, the employers believing

workers would not show up. Regardless, closing a couple school districts

and some progressive restaurants out of a working class of tens of

millions does not make a general strike.

Honestly, it was hard to even remember the call for a general strike on

February 17, 2017. Hopefully, people will see this as a problem. If we

can’t even remember the “general strikes,” then perhaps too many are

being called. Almost 100 years later, we are still talking about the

Minneapolis Truckers Strike and the Seattle General Strike. So I guess

that is another way to assess these: if we remember them in ten years,

they were real, e.g. the 2006 immigrant worker strike. If they are too

hard to even remember a few months later or years later, then not so

much.

As the exception, the February 16, 2017 immigrant worker strike had real

participation although exact numbers of striking workers is hard to

calculate from media accounts. Labor Notes estimates tens of thousands

of immigrant workers and students participated in the strikeand over 100

workers were fired nationwide. While participation does not appear to be

at the level of the historic May 1, 2006 immigrant worker strike, the

effort was nonetheless impressive.

The flipside of the lack of accountability in calling these strikes is

that there is no accountability on the back end. When a union goes out

on strike in a defined workplace, the stakes are high and worker

participation is immediately known. Did any workers scab? How are picket

lines holding up? What is the impact? Whether to strike or not, when to

settle, and the propriety of the actions can be judged and debated for

years to come.

In contrast, with these amorphous general strikes, there is also no

accountability in summing up the action. In several instances, when the

strikes have not gained traction, they have been rebranded as just “take

off work if you can” or a more generalized day of action — do something,

anything. That’s great but it is not a general strike. To repeat, if you

have to ask your employer for the day off, it is not a strike — it’s a

leave day.

Who calls a general strike?

To return to the discussion above, typically union strike votes are

treated as serious affairs and come from some decision-making process by

the workers involved. Certainly, if unions were to endorse calls for a

general strike, we can be sure the decision would not be made

cavalierly. For union leaders to call a general strike would entail, at

a minimum, an expectation that a portion of their membership would

actually go on strike. And on the back end, if workers did not

participate in the strike, presumably there would be some responsibility

assigned for making a bad call.

These calls for a general strike, however, attempt to take the allure

the general strike without the organization or responsibility such a

true initiative would involve. Back in 2011, in the wake of the Occupy

movement, Occupy Oakland put out a call for a general strike to shut

down the West Coast ports.

Cal Winslow, a long time labor activist and supporter of union democracy

wrote an excellent critique of the initiative, which is still

instructive today. Winslow advanced a number of critiques of the

action: 1) that he was not aware of any workers actually striking, and

2) that this effort was opposed by the ILWU, which has a long history of

militant unionism, and 3) the effort did not appear to come from, or

have any significant participation by, dockworkers. Winslow took offense

to this effort on basis of the principle of worker control:

Strikes, even the bureaucratic, involve mobilizations from below –

implicitly they raise issues of power and control. And the fundamental

place of self-activity – and isn’t that the point? ‘The emancipation of

the working class must be the act of the workers themselves.’ No one can

do it for you; you have to do it yourself. Not the politicians. Not the

bureaucrats. Not the church. And not Occupy Oakland.

…So this is not just definitional — “What is a strike?” This project has

become an issue of appropriation — and substitution, the substitution of

Occupy Oakland for the workers themselves, no matter what the intentions

of the organizers. It has become a challenge to the basic principles of

workers’ democracy — to all notions of worker’s self-activity, workers’

empowerment, workers’ control; it suggests the opposite of democracy and

is, in my mind, contrary to the best and deepest traditions of socialism

— and anarchism. It needs to be abandoned.

In research for my next book, I am finding that one of the key

differences between the class struggle unionism promoted by previous

generations of labor leftists, and the social unionism/labor liberalism

popular for the last decade, is the belief in worker self-activity.

None of this is to say that all strikes will come from the formal union

process. There is a strong history of strike waves happening outside of,

or in opposition to, the union hierarchy. But in all of these instances,

these strikes stemmed from folks organizing in the working class and not

from the minds of leftists.

None of this is to say that general strikes should not be discussed. But

how we discuss it is important. An example is AFA-CWA President Sara

Nelson’s widely reported remarks during the government shutdown earlier

this year. It is important to note her choice of words, which was that

we need to have a discussion in our unions about a general strike.

Having a discussion in our unions is very different than taking it upon

yourself to call a general strike on Facebook. Likewise, activists in

Wisconsin agitating for a general strike in 2011 did so by leafleting

the crowd to get the discussion going and promoting a discussion in the

Madison Central Labor Council. Again that is raising the discussion

point within the movement rather than taking it upon themselves to just

call a general strike.

Contrast the arrogance of some liberal outsiders who decided to demand

that government workers go on strike. During the shutdown, the New York

Times of all places published an opinion piece by author Barbara

Ehrenreich and former union organizer Gary Stevenson, in which they

argued that TSA workers should go out on strike. Neither have any

particular base among TSA workers or government workers in general, nor

ties to any of the public employee unions.

While the authors criticized the TSA workers’ union the American

Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), there is no indication they

talked to those unions. Nor, in advocating for a TSA agent strike, did

they mention even one discussion with a TSA agent.

It’s pretty clear that after decades of austerity and right-wing

government policies, many middle-class liberals are looking for a way

out of the morass. One obvious place to look is the working class, which

is the one class which has the power to grind society to a halt. That’s

understandable. But at a certain point, you are asking for working

people to fight your battles on your issues. That rarely works.

That’s probably why the only example of calls for generalized strikes

which actually worked were the immigrant worker strikes, including the

2006 strike. These essentially political strikes came from within the

immigrant rights community and thus had a very different character than

these other general strike calls.

If you want a general strike, organize your co-workers

Much of the debate around the idea of a general strike is divorced from

reality. Much of the commentary appears to be focused on defending

strikes or general strikes, noting they have been important in history,

that if we could do one it would be very effective, etc. Missing from

the discussion is what about the workers’ movement today that makes this

the appropriate tactic, or what it would take to make these proclaimed

strikes a reality. The hallmark of idealism is that ideas are divorced

from reality.

The appeal of calling a general strike is that, should it happen, it

would be incredibly powerful. A one-day strike by all women in the

United States would have an estimated $21 billion impact on the economy.

A general strike would shut the country down and be a powerful blow

against Trump. A general strike, however, must be embraced by workers.

If we had a powerful workers’ movement capable of carrying out general

strikes, the pros and cons of the tactics would be a worthy subject of

debate.

It’s time to put some standards in place. These are incredibly weak

standards, but standards nonetheless. The test of whether to promote a

call for a general strike is whether you individually can get at least

ten of your co-workers to commit to striking. Certainly, in calling for

a general strike shutting down the whole of society, committed activists

should be able to do at least that. If the presumably most conscious

organizers cannot do this, then they either lack connection to workers

through a workplace or a union, or they have a lot more work to do.

Collectively, any initiative that is calling for a nationwide general

strike should be composed of hundreds if not thousands of such

individuals or organizations, with deep ties in the working class.

The motive force of society

One response to this whole argument may be, “What’s the harm in calling

for general strikes?” That was my initial inclination. It’s hard to

criticize people excited about general strikes and the very idea that

workers can stop society in its tracks. The source of wealth, power and

privilege in society stems from capital’s control of the workplace.

The allure behind the idea of a general strike is that without human

labor, society grinds to a halt. As labor’s anthem Solidarity Forever

goes, “without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.” In

true general strikes, power relations in society are laid bare and the

very foundations of capitalist rule are shaken. As Francis Fox Piven has

written, in such periods of upheaval, the ruled are no longer willing to

be ruled.

There are benefits to raising the discussion of general strikes. It

highlights the role of striking in general and points activists towards

the workplace. As I have long argued, strikes have been the heart and

soul of trade unionism, and until we in labor confront the issue of how

to develop an effective strike, the labor movement will continue our

death march. And without a powerful workers’ movement, the progressive

forces in this country will prolong our current weakness.

The notion of the general strike also helps us think outside the box in

regards to striking. To develop a truly effective strike means breaking

free from the legal and ideological quagmire of the modern labor

relations system, which forbids cross-workplace solidarity and other

forms of effective strike activity. The idea of a general strike

dispenses with legalisms, and in its true form, relies on solidarity and

worker self-activity. During the Wisconsin uprising of 2011, raising the

idea of a general strike offered an alternative to the trajectory of

electoralism and defeat.

Despite these potential positives, how to build a general strike is not

even remotely the key question facing the labor movement. The left wing

of the labor movement does not have a coherent set of ideas for union

revival. The labor movement is dying, captive to a system of labor

control calculated to prevent effective union activity. Unlike

generations past, we lack a coherent and widespread agenda to reverse

union decline. Repeated calls for general strikes will do little to

address the crisis.

As Kim Moody has pointed out, true general strikes are often not called

but grow out of extensions of solidarity based on individual groups of

workers striking. Other groups of workers put out a call for solidarity

and the dispute expands. Building a labor movement based on struggle,

solidarity, militancy and rank-and-file democracy should be key areas of

our attention.

The question we need to grapple with is not what date to call a general

strike but what sort of worker’s movement is capable of carrying out a

general strike or, probably more realistically, industry-wide or

sectoral strikes.

One reason I wrote my book Strike Back was to understand how millions of

public employees were able to violate labor law in the 1960s with little

repercussion and great gains. As we saw during the Red State Revolt by

teachers earlier in the year, when workers get in motion it is truly

incredible.