![]() The strike lasted four days before the unions themselves suggested the longshoremen accept arbitration, which Bridges rejected. In this case, though, the general strike was more conservative than the original stoppage, as many of the unions involved were distinctly uncomfortable with the communist leanings of the longshoremen’s leader, Harry Bridges. In 1934, San Francisco workers walked off the job in support of striking longshoremen, after the governor of California used the National Guard to open up the docks. Read: Republicans bend, but don’t break, on the shutdown That didn’t happen, but the strike’s premature conclusion left the labor movement in Seattle decimated for the next decade. He followed the end of the strike with a national tour to bring awareness to the threat of radical worker action and, he hoped, a chance at the presidency in 1920. Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson agreed completely. But Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, saw the strike as a threat to his own power and to the conservative unionism he preferred, and he ordered it ended. Unions fed thousands of people, kept hospitals running, and ensured order in the streets. The two-day strike itself, supporting an action by longshoremen, was entirely peaceful. It took place against the backdrop of the Red Scare, when many radicals were imprisoned, like Eugene Debs, or deported, like Emma Goldman. The 1919 Seattle General Strike stirred fear of revolution among the nation’s reactionary political and business elite. The working-class racial harmony proved short-lived, but it was still a major union victory. It continued until the New Orleans Board of Trade agreed to submit to binding arbitration and to negotiate with unions that had both black and white members. When the city’s leaders attempted to race-bait the strike out of existence, the rest of the city’s unions called the general strike. Led by three racially integrated unions, the strike showed the potential for organized labor to overcome racism, even as Jim Crow descended on the South. In 1892, workers in New Orleans, both black and white, conducted a general strike to demand recognition of their labor unions. Though unplanned and disorganized, it was perhaps the most important labor action in American history. Du Bois rightfully termed this a “general strike” in his 1935 book Black Reconstruction. The first took place during the Civil War, when slaves walked off plantations throughout the South, heading toward Union lines and undermining the ability of the Confederacy to fight. Read: ‘This kind of strike is really something new’ Despite the legal and logistical challenges they pose, there have been five notable general strikes in American history. The Industrial Workers of the World, the radical syndicalist union that reached the peak of its influence in the 1910s by organizing the nation’s most exploited workers, often talked of a general strike as the precursor to the workers’ revolution, but could never pull one off. But as the shutdown drags on and the suffering spreads, it may be just what is needed to reopen the government.Īmerican radicals have long dreamed of general strikes, but have rarely actually employed them. ![]() Nelson’s call for a general strike to solve the shutdown is particularly surprising, given the brief and limited history of general strikes in the United States and the mainstream labor movement’s hostility to such approaches. “Go back with the fierce urgency of now to talk with your locals and international unions about all workers joining together,” she told her fellow labor leaders, “to end this shutdown with a general strike!” ![]() On Sunday, Sara Nelson, the head of the flight attendants’ union, gave a rousing speech at an AFL-CIO dinner, denouncing the government shutdown for endangering airline security and forcing workers to labor without pay. ![]()
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