Strikes: United States

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Connexions Library

The American Socialist Movement: 1897-1912
Kipnis, Ira
Book
1952
A history of the American Socialist Party, which at its height had over 150,000 dues-paying members, published hundreds of newspapers, and won almost a million votes for its presidential candidate.
Arizona Copper Mine Strike of 1983: Connexipedia Article
Article
1983
Dispute between the Phelps Dodge Corporation and a unionized copper miners.
Auto-Lite strike: Connexipedia Article
Article
A strike against the Electric Auto-Lite company of Toledo, Ohio, from April 12 to June 3, 1934.
Battle of Blair Mountain: Connexipedia Article
Article
In 1921 between 10,000 and 15,000 coal miners confronted company-paid private detectives in an effort to unionize the southwestern West Virginia mine counties.
Battle of Matewan: Connexipedia Article
Article
A shootout in the coal company town of Matewan, West Virginia on May 19, 1920.
Bay View Massacre: Connexipedia Article
Article
A massacre of demonstrators by the Wisconsin National Guard.
Bituminous Coal Strike of 1974: Connexipedia Article
Article
1974
A 28-day national coal strike in the United States led by the United Mine Workers of America,
Black Workers, Fordism and the UAW: Book Review of Bates's "The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford"
Feeley, Dianne
Article
2014
A book review of Beth Tompkins Bates's analysis of how the automotive industry provided an opportunity for African Americans to fight for equal working rights, unionize, and forge an alliance with whi...
Bread and Roses: Connexipedia Article
Article
The slogan "Bread and Roses" originated in a poem of that name by James Oppenheim, published in The American Magazine in December 1911, which attributed it to "the women in the West." It is commonly a...
Buffalo switchmen's strike: Connexipedia Article
Article
A strike in August 1892 by railroad workers employed by three railroads in Buffalo, New York.
La Causa: The California Grape Strike
Fusco, Paul (photos); Horwitz, George D. (text)
Book
1970
A documentary of the California grape workers' strike.
Centralia Massacre: Connexipedia Article
Article
A violent and bloody incident that occurred in the town of Centralia, Washington on November 11, 1919 during a parade celebrating the first anniversary of Armistice Day.
Coal Strike of 1902: Connexipedia Article
Article
A strike by the United Mine Workers of America in the anthracite coal fields of eastern Pennsylvania.
Columbine Mine massacre: Connexipedia Article
Article
A conflict in which police and mine guards attacked striking coal miners with machine guns.
The Communist Party and socialists during the 1934 Toledo Auto-Lite strike
Keeran, Roger
Article
1934
About radicals involvement in the 1934 Toledo Auto-Lite strike.
Cripple Creek miners' strike of 1894: Connexipedia Article
Article
A five-month strike by the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) in Cripple Creek, Colorado, USA.
Cry for "Bread & Roses" Still Resonates: 100 Years After the Lawrence Strike
Early, Steve
Article
2012
When worker solidarity prevailed over corporate power in the icy streets of Lawrence a century ago, it made the promise of a better life real for many. The Bread and Roses strike became a consciousnes...
Danbury: Anatomy of a Prison Strike
Bach, John; Snyder, Mitchell
Article
1972
Delusions of the Tech Bro Intelligentsia
Frase, Peter
Article
2013
With employees of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system on strike, the Silicon Valley tech elite has reminded us all that despite their enlightened Bay Area lifestyles, they are still, at root, a bunch of...
Detroit Politics Embroiled: Against The Current vol. 134
Finkel, David
Article
2008
Detroit is a city entangled in a chain of interlocking crises, all the way from the world economic crisis, to deindustrialization in America, down to the regional and local levels of the housing marke...
Detroit Symphony Musicians on Strike: Against The Current vol. 150
Feeley, Dianne
Article
2011
The musicians of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra have been on strike since October 4, 2010. Thirty-five concerts have been cancelled, while the musicians have organized nine magnificent performances wi...
Eat Pray Love Strike: The Law of the Bargaining Table
Macaray, David
Article
2010
We admire underdogs, yet we do not rejoice when underdogs go on strike against corporate fat cats. We admire hard-workers, yet we do not embrace those who are, arguably, the hardest-workers among us ...
Everything's on the Line at AAM: Against The Current vol. 134
Feeley, Dianne
Article
2008
The strike of 3,600 UAW-represented workers at American Axle and Manufacturing plants in Michigan and New York has forced the idling of more than 40,000 workers in 30 GM plants and shut down a number ...
50 Years Later, Protesters in Texas Reenact a Farmworker Strike That Is Scarcely Mentioned in History Books
Leanos Jr., Reynaldo
Article
2016
In the summer of 1966, hundreds of farm workers in Texas marched from Rio Grande City to Austin -- almost 500 miles over 90 days -- to demand change. They weren’t asking for anything fancy. They wante...
Flint and the Rewriting of History
Dollinger, Sol
Article
1996
The 1937 sitdown strikes were a thunderbolt shattering minimal labor-management relations. The victory of the Flint auto workers heralded the most profound social changes in the United States since th...
Flint Sit-Down Strike: Connexipedia Article
Article
Changed the United Automobile Workers from a collection of isolated locals on the fringes of the industry into a major union and led to the unionization of the United States automobile industry.
The Flint sit-down strike, 1936-1937: Jeremy Brecher
Steven
Article
2013
210,000 auto workers joined the American Federation of Labor (A.F.L.) to take part in the strike but the A.F.L leadership however wanted no part in a strike, and managed to postpone it again and again...
45 Days of Solidarity: How Verizon workers outmatched the country's largest telecommunications company.
Katch, Danny
Article
2016
The strike by 39,000 Verizon workers -- members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) -- ended after forty-five days with a tentativ...
From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Miners inspired Marxist-Humanism
Dunayevskaya, Raya
Article
2015
The dialectic of the 1949-50 Miners' General Strike, as it transformed from a Lewis-authorized strike that already had lasted some six months into a challenge to John L. Lewis himself, laid the ground...
Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite
Levine, Bruce E.
Book
2011
Levine offers insights into the epidemic of political passivity in America and analyzes how major U.S. institutions have created helplessness and fatalism. He proposes ways of recovering dignity, ener...
Martin and Jessie Glaberman Collection: Papers, 1939-2001
Glaberman, Martin & Jessie
Unclassified
The papers of the Marxist radicals Martin Glaberman and Jessie Glaberman, now housed at Wayne State University.
Great Railroad Strike of 1877: Connexipedia Article
Article
Began on July 14 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, United States and ended some 45 days later after it was put down by local and state militias.
Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886: Connexipedia Article
Article
A strike against the Union Pacific and Missouri Pacific railroads involving more than 200,000 workers.
Haymarket affair: Connexipedia Article
Article
Disturbance that took place on Tuesday May 4, 1886, at the Haymarket Square in Chicago.
Homestead Strike: Connexipedia Article
Article
A labour lockout and strike which began on June 30, 1892, culminating in a battle between strikers and private security agents on July 6, 1892.
How Our Lives Have Been Changed: An interview with Kate DeSmet
Article
1997
You understand that there's a "common union" and "community," which of course is where "communion" comes from. That's better than what I had before. The best writers write with their own voice; and i...
Indianapolis Street Car Strike of 1913: Connexipedia Article
Article
The Indianapolis Street Car Strike of 1913, the Indianapolis Police Mutiny of 1913, and the 1913 Indianapolis Riots began as a workers strike by the union employees of the Indianapolis Traction and Te...
Labor Scores at Verizon: Against The Current vol. 89
Douglas, Rachel
Article
2000
On August 6 87,000 members of the Communication Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) struck Verizon Communications in twelve states from Maine to Vir...
The Labor Wars
Lens, Sidney
Book
1973
A survey of landmark events in the U.S. labour movement.
Labor's Disaster at American Axle: Against The Current vol. 137
Feeley, Dianne
Article
2008
The 87-day strike earlier this year at American Axle & Manufacturing (AAM) ended in a rout that has devastating implications for the organized U.S. labor movement. Begun on a snowy morning early Febru...
Lattimer massacre: Connexipedia Article
Article
The killing of 19 unarmed striking immigrant anthracite coal miners at the Lattimer mine near Hazleton, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 1897, by a sheriff's posse.
Lawrence textile strike: Connexipedia Article
Article
A strike of immigrant workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912 led by the Industrial Workers of the World. The strike is often known as the "Bread and Roses" strike, or, "The Strike for Three Loaves...
Leadville Colorado, Miners' Strike: Connexipedia Article
Article
Occurred as a result of rapid industrialization and consolidation of the mining industry.
Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global
Mason, Paul
Book
2010
Mason realtes a series of struggles for worker and human rights over the past two hundred years and compares them to current struggles.
Loosing Another Round: Against The Current vol. 135
The Editors
Article
2008
The strike at American Axle, which we reported on in ATC 134, ended when workers voted to go back under a concessionary agreement. The 25% who voted no didn’t feel they were close to winning but they ...
Lowell Mill Girls: Connexipedia Article
Article
Female textile workers in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the 19th century.
Ludlow massacre: Connexipedia Article
Article
The violent deaths of 20 people, 11 of them children, during an attack by the Colorado National Guard on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado on April 20,...
The Making of Jericho Road: Against The Current vol. 132
Williams, Charles
Article
2008
An interview with Michael Honey. The paperback edition of Michael Honey’s Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign is released this January 2008.
Matewan
Sayles, John (director)
Film/Video
1987
A film based on events in Matewan, West Virginia in 1920.
Mine Wars Museum Opens, Revives Lost Labour History
Todd, Roxy
Article
2015
Mine Wars museum opens in Matewan to revive West Virginia’s labour history.
Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934: Connexipedia Article
Article
A strike by Teamsters against most of the trucking companies operating in Minneapolis.
New Orleans general strike of 1892: Connexipedia Article
Article
A general strike in the U.S. city of New Orleans, Louisiana, that began on November 8, 1892.
Newsboys Strike of 1899: Connexipedia Article
Article
A youth-led campaign to force change in the way that Joseph Pulitzer's and William Randolph Hearst's newspapers compensated their child labor force.
1934: American workers in revolt
Ledwith, Sean
Article
2014
In 1934 three mighty strikes brought the bosses and bankers to their knees and ushered in a new era of labour-capital relations in the United States writes Sean Ledwith
The Oakland General Strike of 1946
Weir, Stan
Article
An account of the General Strike in Oakland, California.
Port Chicago mutiny: Connexipedia Article
Article
A refusal by servicemen to load munitions in 1944 in the face of unsafe working conditions which had led to an explosion the previous month in which 320 sailors had been killed.
Potrait of a Strikebreaker
Horowitz, Roger
Article
1995
It was hard to reconcile this affable young man with the picture he was presenting of himself as a narrow-minded careerist who had found strikebreaking was a fast track to advancement at Gannett. But...
The Press and the Class Struggle: Against The Current vol. 131
Eidlin, Barry
Article
2007
Early on the morning of August 19, 1997, the U.S. labor movement experienced something it had rarely known in recent years: a victory on a national scale. After two weeks out on strike, over 185,000 m...
Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization: Connexipedia Article
Article
A United States trade union which operated from 1968 until its decertification in 1981 following a strike which was broken by the Reagan Administration.
Puerto Rico's La Huelga del Pueblo
Bernabe, Rafael
Article
1998
AFTER FORTY DAYS on strike, several paros (one-day stoppages) in various government agencies and a two-day general strike, Puerto Rico's telephone workers have returned to work without attaining their...
Rank and File: Personal Histories of Working Class Organizers
Lynd, Alice; Lynd, Staughton (eds.)
Book
1973
A collection of stories and recollections from labour movement organizers.
Recyclers Battle Waste Management... and the Teamsters Union: With Friends Like These
Bond-Graham, Darwin
Article
2014
It’s 4 AM. The air is cold and damp on 98th Avenue in deep East Oakland, down along the San Francisco Bay’s industrial waterfront. This is a hard geography of concrete and dust and pot-hole riddled ro...
Remington Rand strike of 1936-1937: Connexipedia Article
Article
A strike against the Remington Rand company.
Review: Chris Rhomberg, The Broken Table: The Detroit Newspaper Strike and the State of American Labor (2012)
Baronowski, Bubba
Article
2014
Review on Chris Rhomberg's book 'The Broken Table: The Detroit Newspaper Strike and the State of American Labor.'
Revolutionary Teamsters: The Minneapolis Truckers' Strikes of 1934
Palmer. Bryan D.
Book
2013
A book on the Teamster's strike of 1934.
The Russian Revolution Ninety Years After: Against The Current vol. 131
Mandel, David
Article
2007
The October Revolution of 1917 in Russia was the most influential political event of the 20th century. But since history is written by the victors, it is not well known that October was the opening sh...
Saint Louis general strike 1877: Connexipedia Article
Article
Generally accepted as the first general strike in America, the 1877 Saint Louis general strike grew out of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. The general strike was largely organized by the Knights of...
Seattle General Strike: Connexipedia Article
Article
A general work stoppage by over 65,000 workers in the U.S. city of Seattle, Washington in 1919.
Seeds of Fire: A People's Chronology
Diemer, Ulli
Article
2012
Recalling events that happened on this day in history. Memories of struggle, resistance and persistence.
Shots All Around: How Four Roses Bourbon Workers Won Their Strike
Becker, Richard
Article
2019
Four Roses Bourbon Worked successfully striked over a two-tier contract proposal that would have given worse benefits to new hires.
Slaughterhouse Fight: A Look at the Hormel Strike
Boyce, Steve; Edwards, Jake; Wetzel, Tom
Article
1986
Some Lessons of the Toledo Strike
Muste, A.J.
Article
1935
There will be no unions worth the name unless the militants build and maintain them. Without fighting unions the workers will presently be made the object of an attack which will make 1929-35 seem lik...
Staley's Legacy of Struggle, Lessons of Defeat
Hawking, C.J.
Article
1996
Local 7837 should be proud to have chipped away at racism and sexism, setting an example for other locals to do the same. It takes an openness to risk criticism and allow the fight to be for everyone....
Steel strike of 1952: Connexipedia Article
Article
A strike by the United Steelworkers of America against U.S. Steel and nine other steelmakers.
Strike Lessons from the Last Twenty-Five Years: Walking Out and Winning: Against The Current vol. 124
Early, Steve
Article
2006
Labor's strike effectiveness and organizational strength have long been connected. Throughout history, work stoppages have been used for economic and political purposes, to alter the balance of power ...
The Strike That Didn't Change New York
Erickson, Megan
Article
2013
The Chicago teachers' strike was a victory for workers around the country. But how do we move from homegrown resistance to a national movement? New York City's 1.1 million public school children were...
Strikes, List of: Connexipedia Article
Article
The following is a list of deliberate absence from work related to specific working conditions (strikes) or due to general unhappiness with the political order (general strikes).
Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty
Carey, Alex
Book
1995
The twentieth-century history of corporate propaganda practiced by U.S. businesses and the ways in which such corporate propaganda was exported to, and adopted by, other western democracies especially...
Teamsters and Cops
Palmer, Bryan D.
Article
2016
Minneapolis teamsters in 1934 knew something we should remember -- police enforce the ruling class's unjust order.
Textile workers strike (1934): Connexipedia Article
Article
A strike involving 400,000 textile workers from New England, the Mid-Atlantic states and the U.S. Southern states.
A Troublemaker's Handbook 2
Slaughter, Jane (ed.)
Book
A manual for workers who want to take control over their lives at work. In hundreds of first-person accounts, workers tell in their own words how they organized and struggled to do that.
Violence and the Newspaper Strike
Bernick, Thomas
Article
1997
To those who still allow their anti-union biases and their exposure to employer misinformation to cloud their perception of reality, I would pose the following question: If the employer and its suppor...
Vulnerable Akron: the first great sit-down
Conatz, Juan
Article
2013
Akron, rubber manufacturing capital of the world. A drab Mid-Western industrial city of 255,000. A city with a hum, a throb, anodor all its own. It made the front pages in February, 1936. A strike had...
Want to Stop Trump? Take a Page From These Dockworkers, and Stop Work
Cole, Peter
Article
2017
On the day of Donald Trump's inauguration, many Americans wrung their hands. Some took to social media to express their discontent while others protested. But, perhaps, the most dramatic and important...
West Coast waterfront strike 1934: Connexipedia Article
Article
The 1934 West Coast Longshoremen's Strike lasted eighty-three days, triggered by sailors and a four-day general strike in San Francisco, and led to the unionization of all of the West Coast ports of t...
West Virginia Mine War of 1912-1913: Connexipedia Article
Article
A confrontation between striking coal miners and coal operators in Southern West Virginia
Westmoreland County Coal Strike of 1910 - 1911: Connexipedia Article
Article
A strike by coal miners represented by the United Mine Workers of America, is also known as the "Slovak strike" because about 70 percent of the miners were Slovakian immigrants.
What Happened - and Didn't: Behind New York's Transit Strike: Against The Current vol. 124
Downs, Steve
Article
2006
Early on December 20, 2005, Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100, representing some 33,000 of New York City's subway and bus workers, called a strike. When dawn broke, there was no public transport...
When the UAW Was Young: Against The Current vol. 131
Feeley, Dianne
Article
2007
An interview with Erwin and Estar Baur.
The Willmar 8
Grant, Lee (Director)
Film/Video
1981
Eight female employees of the Citizens National Bank in Willmar Minnesota, USA went on strike on December 16, 1977 over charges of sex discrimination. The tellers and bookkeepers were protesting unequ...
The Working-Class Mini-Revolts of the Twenty-First Century: Low-Level Insurgencies
Brecher, Jeremy
Article
2014
The start of the twenty-first century has seen a continuing decline in union membership and strikes. But it has also seen the emergence of unpredicted mini-revolts.

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Tom Wetzel's home page
Wetzel's writing spans a range of topics... from libertarian socialism, anarcho-syndicalism and workers' self-management to unionism, social housing, environmental justice, philosophy, and Los Angeles...

From the Connexions Archives

The Great Flint Sit-Down Strike Against G.M. 1936-37
How Trade Unionism was Won
Linder, Walter
Article
A history of the Flint strike (1936-1937).