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Question: what do the Zara salesperson, Starbucks barista, The New York Times journalist, Paris garbage collector, and British nurse have in common? Firstly, of course, they all work for a salary. And also, representatives of each of the listed groups participated in strikes last year, demanding an increase in their salaries.
Strikes have suddenly returned to fashion: during the short time that this text was being created, nationwide strikes took place in France, Germany, Israel, and South Africa. In early 2023, British workers went on strike, and in the US in 2022, the number of strikes increased by 50%.
If desired, this list can be continued for a long time – over the past 12 months, strikes have been massed in Greece, Turkey, Spain, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, South Korea, and elsewhere. Even in Russia, individual workers find the courage to boycott employers, as the strikes by Wildberries, Delivery Club, and “Yandex.Eda” employees have shown.
I am Georgy Vanunts, a political researcher and a graduate student at the Free University of Brussels. This letter is dedicated to the unexpected return of strikes as an effective form of protest. I will try to understand why strikes are happening now and how effective they are.
Part One. The Briefest History of Strikes
It would be strange to give a long, complex definition for such an intuitively understandable word as “strike”. A concise definition from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia would suffice: “a collective refusal to continue working under previous conditions”. Such refusals have occurred throughout history, to say the least; consider the secession of the plebs in Republican Rome. However, the concept of “strike” entered European dictionaries only towards the end of the 19th century, against the backdrop of the active development of the labor movement and its own ideology.
At that time, workers in developed industrial countries had already formed their first serious associations. In the 1880s, every fifth industrial worker in the United States belonged to an organization with the romantic name “The Noble and Holy Order of Knights of Labor.” Five years later, the main representative body of workers became the “American Federation of Labor.” Finally, in 1905, one of the most famous unions in history emerged in Chicago – the “Industrial Workers of the World.”
British workers held their first combined “trade union congress” in 1868 – several decades later, more than eighty unions were already involved in it. And the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which emerged from trade unions, became the largest Marxist party in Europe and even won a majority in the Reichstag in the 1912 election.
One of the main goals of workers, regardless of country, was to reduce the working day. The familiar eight hours were not achieved immediately – several stages had to be fought for them. In the 19th century, workers sought to limit the working day to at least 10 hours. In Great Britain, a 10-hour working day was established by the Factory Act of 1874, and in the United States, the administration of Franklin Roosevelt established a 44-hour workweek in 1938. It was also necessary to fight for restrictions on child labor, a minimum wage threshold, mandatory labor contracts, and even the right to strike.
These demands, to put it mildly, were not very pleasing to the authorities, not to mention the owners of enterprises. So strikes were suppressed by force, and often this turned into fierce battles between workers and private armies of manufacturers or gendarmes. In 1887, four participants of the demonstration for an eight-hour workday in Chicago were sentenced to hanging. In 1905, several hundred people were killed during the dispersal of a workers’ demonstration in St. Petersburg. And in 1914, almost seventy miners and their relatives became victims of the confrontation with the national guard at coal mines in Colorado.
Meanwhile, socialist theorists debated whether strikes were a viable form of struggle. Consistent Marxists, starting with Friedrich Engels, criticized union leaders for their limited demands. They believed that strike slogans were not ambitious enough and therefore capable only of leading to a tactical review of individual injustices, but not to a revolution in production relations. In turn, reformists – such as one of the founders of the German Social Democratic Party, Eduard Bernstein – saw strikes as a good basis for the gradual victory of socialism. And anarchist-syndicalists like Mikhail Bakunin and Georges Sorel dreamed that workers’ movements would lead to a general strike that would result in a redistribution of the world’s structure: horizontal societies without governments or parties.
The recent ones probably turned out to be farthest from the truth. Striking workers, trade unions, and labor parties did not ignite the fire of world revolution that would have burned capitalism. Instead, they were able to occupy a noticeable, sometimes even respectable place in the political and economic system of the 20th century. After two world wars and the political violence that accompanied them, labor and capital entered into an unspoken agreement: the first abandoned the dream of revolution, and the second agreed to negotiate with strikers.
As a result, starting from the 1950s, in many industrial countries, a more or less similar picture of political balance emerged. Social democrats, socialists, and sometimes communists were allowed to take the place of the main opposition force, and in some places, labor parties even managed to rule, for example in Great Britain or in France – although the latter didn’t last long. Capital was taxed heavily, and workers’ salaries regularly increased. At the same time, union bosses in some places more resembled bureaucrats than fiery tribunes of the working class. The conflict turned into a negotiating process in which the state was assigned the role of an arbitrator. Looking at this, theorists like Herbert Marcuse or André Gorz publicly buried hopes for the working class as the engine of the revolution.
However, the established peace turned out to be quite fragile. In the early 1970s, entrepreneurs and management theorists became seriously concerned about the decline in work discipline. Every day, about 5% of General Motors auto plant employees were absent from work without explanation, and on Mondays and Fridays, the figure doubled. More than half of the low-skilled industrial workers quit in the first year after hiring. When asked “Why do you only come to work four days a week?” one of the employees surveyed by Newsweek magazine answered: “Simply because my salary is not enough for three.”
Strikes didn’t disappear, nor did political slogans. In the USA, workers fought against racial discrimination; in South Africa, they fought against the apartheid regime; and in France, they demanded the resignation of President Charles de Gaulle and self-management in factories. The “long seventies” – a period from 1966 to 1981 – saw a peak in political activity of the labor movement in industrial countries. For example, a massive strike by postal workers led to the creation of the US Postal Service and the legalization of four major unions, while a large-scale strike by British miners resulted in the resignation of Prime Minister Edward Heath. In Australia, protests against the destruction of green zones and historic buildings laid the foundations of the country’s conservation policy.
In the 1980s, after a decade of stagflation, the share of industrial production in the GDP of developed countries began to decline. Entrepreneurs and shareholders discovered the joy of offshoring and started moving production to countries where labor costs were lower and workers’ rights were less. “It would be ideal to place all factories on barges so that they can move in accordance with the slightest changes in the economy,” Executive Director of General Electric Jack Welch formulated this principle. His words were not at odds with his actions: by the end of the 1990s, GE had cut half of all employees in the US and opened 130,000 new jobs in other countries.
The two final chords of the labor movement of that era can be considered the strike of British miners against the closure of mines in 1984 and the strike of Pan Am employees for a pay increase in 1985. In both cases, national leaders – Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan – refused to negotiate with protesters. Great Britain almost completely rid itself of its coal industry, and Pan Am soon filed for bankruptcy. The number of labor protests decreased, and trade unions lost popularity. The century of wars, revolutions, and strikes came to an end.
Part II. Strikes come back in fashion
On the first day of February 2023, British schoolchildren were in a great mood: they had an unscheduled day off. As for adults, many of them, on the contrary, were on the verge of a nervous breakdown: they had to miss a lot of important meetings. On this day, half a million teachers, nurses, drivers, and air traffic controllers went on a nationwide strike from their workplaces – the highest number of strikers in the last 10 years in Great Britain. Local trade unions had been preparing for such a large-scale action for six months.
The first protests started in the summer. London Underground staff went on a 24-hour strike in June; a few days later, a record number of 40,000 railway workers joined them. The strikers took a break for mourning after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, but the National Union of Railway, Maritime and Transport Workers continued their actions. Their main demand was for a pay raise: the association of local railway operators offered a 9% increase over two years, but it did not satisfy the strikers. However, in some places, the unions were more willing to negotiate: members of the Transport Salary Association in Liverpool agreed to a 7% increase.
Next, bus drivers in Merseyside and the London area went on strike, demanding an increase in the minimum wage. Their bosses had to meet their demands and in London, the base rate was increased by 18%. The resistance of British criminal lawyers also turned out to be a relative success: threatening the authorities with an indefinite strike, they achieved an increase of 15%, although they demanded 25%.
In the autumn and winter, a wave of strikes hit the British healthcare system. Therapists opposed overworking, junior doctors demanded higher salaries. Then it was nurses and emergency services workers – but in the end, they and others entered negotiations with the local Ministry of Health. At the time of writing, the strike was put on hold and representatives of perhaps the largest group of union workers – school and university teachers, whose number in two national unions reaches half a million people. Negotiating successes vary by region: Scottish education staff agreed to a 14% salary increase, while their Welsh colleagues are considering a more modest proposal – a 3% indexing this year and another 5% next year.
Let’s move to the USA. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of labor protests in the country increased by 50% in 2022; only large actions with thousands of participants were taken into account. Perhaps the number of strikers in the United States is not very impressive compared to Britain – about 120,000 people per year – but it is worth noting that the trade union system in the United States is less powerful, and anti-strike laws are much tougher. On a historical scale, the indicator looks even more impressive. If in the peak year of 1973, almost two million Americans participated in strikes, by 2008, only 12,000 had done so. That is, the number of strike participants in the USA over the last 15 years has increased tenfold.
Why are there no large-scale strikes in the USA like in Great Britain? The main problem is in the legislation, which is literally filled with provisions that block self-organization of workers. Their rights and obligations are spelled out in the National Labor Relations Act, which was progressive at the time of its adoption in 1935. However, many years have passed since then, and not all professional communities fall under the document’s jurisdiction. The right to strike of railway workers and airline employees, for example, is limited by separate legislation. It requires transport companies in case of any grievances to first engage in lengthy negotiations with employers and also allows courts and federal authorities to impose bans on strikes.
If the workers decide to sabotage the negotiation stage, the authorities will declare their strike illegal. This will free the hands of the employer, who can, through the court, recover compensation from the strikers – for example, the amount the company lost due to the downtime. It was the Railway Labor Act of 2022 that allowed the US Congress, at the request of Joe Biden, to ban strikes by four railway unions that were seeking paid sick leave. However, transport workers are not the only ones restricted in their right to strike. Similar conditions apply, for example, to civil servants and farm workers: the former are allowed to protest in only 12 out of 50 states, while the latter are allowed in 14.
However, even in such conditions, individual groups of strikers manage to achieve serious concessions from employers. Employees of the American hospital Cedars-Sinai self-organized for protest for the first time in 40 years and managed to secure a pay raise in just five days. Their colleagues working for the hospital operator Kaiser Permanente required 65 days of protest for the same thing. The largest was a three-day strike by healthcare workers in Minnesota and their salary demands were also met.
Not all employers were successfully pressured, for example, Starbucks employees have not yet succeeded. The international coffee chain aggressively reacted from the very beginning to attempts to create labor unions in its branches, simply closing them down and intimidating employees. In response, employees from one hundred coffee shops went on strike, but management did not give in and began to get rid of the most active members of the union by firing at least 200 people. The National Labor Relations Board ordered Starbucks to reinstate them, but the chain’s lawyers are already preparing an appeal. It is likely that the company wants to drag out this case for years.
Let’s talk about France. According to the General Confederation of Labour, one of the largest trade union associations in the country, two and a half million people across the country participated in the national demonstration-strike on February 11th (half a million of them in Paris). However, the French Ministry of Interior chose to count only 963,000. Not surprisingly, French strikers, unlike their British and American counterparts, address their demands not to employers, but to the government. Moreover, particularly successful footage from Paris shows a situation that looks almost pre-revolutionary.
The current President of the country, Emmanuel Macron, is likely to go down in history as one of the most unpopular (but energetic!) leaders of the Fifth Republic. Even before the start of his first term, he promised to fight against the “wasteful”, in his opinion, social system of the country. The retirement age is an important component of this system, and in France it remained the lowest in Europe until the very last moment (62 years for men and women).
The first pension reform project was presented by the Macron administration in 2019. However, it was not about increasing the retirement age, but about unifying France’s complicated pension system. There are many different pension calculation schemes in the country, and the project proposed to organize them through the introduction of a point-based calculation system: the more points, the higher the pension, and the number of points depends on length of service, profession, and other parameters.
But behind the “unification” was the intention, firstly, to reduce budget spending on pensions and, secondly, to gradually increase the retirement age (for example, by deducting points from those who retire early). In this form, the project caused massive strikes, leading to the resignation of Commissioner Jean-Paul Delevoye, responsible for the reform, and Macron’s decision to postpone it. However, it is unclear what influenced more – protests or the coronavirus pandemic.
At the end of January 2023, French Prime Minister Elisabeth Born presented a new reform project to the cabinet of ministers. According to it, the retirement age by 2030 should be gradually increased from 62 to 64 years, but with some exceptions – for example, those who have continuously worked since the age of 16 are entitled to a pension at the age of 60. The reform also provides for a reduction in the number of pension schemes.
The project proved to be so unpopular that it had to be passed bypassing the lower house of the French parliament, using the “extraordinary” Article 49 of the Constitution. The National Assembly decided to express a vote of no confidence in the government. It almost succeeded – 278 deputies voted to dissolve the cabinet of ministers, with the necessary 287 votes.
Strikes in France have been going on for more than a month. In most cases, strikers still go to work, protesting on designated dates, but not always. For example, Parisian garbage collectors only agreed to return to work a few days ago after three weeks of inaction. And the management of low-cost airline Ryanair complains: if French air traffic controllers missed only three days of work by April 2022, this year they have already missed 23. Students are occupying universities, and Louvre employees are blocking the entrance to the museum.
The next nationwide protest day is scheduled for April 6th, and before that Born plans to meet with union representatives. There is a chance for a partial review of the reform by the Constitutional Council, which is expected to deliver its verdict on April 14th. However, Emmanuel Macron himself still refuses to make any concessions, insisting that the reform, while unpleasant, is necessary.
Part three. The future of strikes
This text does not mention the feminist strikes in Chile in 2018; the global climate strike in 2019 in 150 countries, led by Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg; the Indian national strike in 2020 that united up to a quarter billion people; the campaign by American fast food chain employees for a minimum wage increase in 2022. And many other labor protests in recent years.
Will strikes become the new norm? What future awaits them – will they help raise wages and reduce global inequality? Or maybe even more – will the hopes of those waiting for radical restructuring of society and the economy finally come true?
Unfortunately, for every reason for optimism, there are many reservations. As one can see, only strikes that put forward tactical demands have been relatively successful. They took place in segments of the labor market where trade unions are still strong, and legislative barriers are not that high. Picturesque street protests and piles of garbage in France have not yet overturned the pension reform. Corporations like Starbucks still manage to brush off their employees’ demands (especially those who are not protected by labor contracts). And thousands of strikers in Russia are an impressive exception against the backdrop of massive repressions and close ties between business and government.
In the USA, labor union membership remains at a historical minimum. In Europe, labor parties and grassroots movements that emerged in the wake of the financial crisis of the 2000s generally show modest results in elections. The global market itself has changed in a way that is not particularly conducive to workers’ self-organization. The powerful argument of striking workers has always been their ability to paralyze key sectors of the economy (such as mechanical engineering or coal mining), but if the lion’s share of such industries are located in other countries, workers lose this argument, notes sociologist Beverly Silver.
Modern forms of work generally do not lend themselves to collective self-organization. It is easier to negotiate joint actions with those you see at work every day. In this sense, the trend towards “working from home” is very beneficial for employers, whose employees are approaching freelancers, drivers, and couriers in terms of the degree of isolation of their work. Hybrid and unregulated work regimes not only blur the line between work and personal life – as philosopher Franco Berardi suggests, they also weaken the ability to critically reflect on the conditions of one’s work.
The good news for employees is that things were worse before. In his 1997 essay, political historian Thomas Frank nostalgically recalled classic texts about the labor movement filled with “the idea of the possibility of changing something, a feeling that we are able to determine the conditions of our lives.” In the 90s, strikes were definitely out of fashion: the public was charmed by the prospects of market globalization and infinite expansion of goods, entrepreneurship as a lifestyle, and new technologies. The conflict inherent in wage labor seemed exhausted to many. In the popular Pizza Hut commercial of the time, the scene of a strike ended with managers in white shirts simply ordering hot pizzas for dirty strikers.
But the post-pandemic world differs greatly from this “end of history” scenario. War in Europe and a new nuclear threat, polarization of society and record inflation, tariff barriers and bank failures – among all of this, a strike again looks like an effective way to influence the conditions of one’s life right now, without waiting for the invisible hand of progress and the free market.
And this is starting to be understood by representatives of professions that were not associated with strikes in the recent past: sellers and waiters, couriers and drivers, packers and logisticians. And soon, perhaps, even the layer of highly paid professionals in the IT industry, who have now felt what it is like to be fired with just one midnight email. Yes, less than 1% of Alphabet – Google’s parent company – employees are members of the union. But it was only in 2021 that it was formed, like the first union of the Amazon corporation.
When discussing the future of the labor movement, modern researchers generally agree on several key points. Firstly, globalization of labor will be necessary for its success – essentially a return to the idea of internationalism. In a world of transnational corporations, international institutions, and free movement of capital, any local protest is inherently vulnerable: employers can relocate their business to another country, and governments can refuse to support protesters by citing harsh competition rules. Additionally, Beverly Silver believes that in such situations, workers become easy prey for right-wing populists who are always ready to promise protection based on national rather than class identity.
Secondly, as the director of the International Institute of Social History, Marcel van der Linden, for example, is confident, trade unions and other labor organizations should supplement their economic demands with political demands, such as equality and environmental protection. Finally, thirdly, they should reconsider their management structure, which in some places is still quite vertical, reminiscent of the past century. And move away from the habit of working too closely with officials and entrepreneurs, becoming a full-fledged opposition – a political force ready to confront the system.
In his book from last year, sociologist Wolfgang Streek provides another important component of the success of the labor movement. In his opinion, states should revise labor laws in favor of workers and thus take on the mission of protecting citizens from the tyranny of the free market. From his point of view, even progressive European legislation in this regard is far from perfect: it is more focused on efficiency and conflict resolution than on fairness and civil rights.
Shrek openly attacks the holy of holies of global capitalism: “Employers should not have access to an endless influx of labor – from poorer countries or even prisons – which allows them to evade negotiations with trade unions and investments in working conditions and employee training.”
However, such fundamental legislative changes are not needed by either governments or corporations. And, as history shows, we should not wait for top-down initiatives – a good strike is needed.