I’ve been thinking about International Women’s Day and the
call this year for a general strike. I
saw a lot of posts from women who went to work that day instead, apologizing or
explaining, seemingly a little guilty for not heeding the call. I don’t know
which organization(s) came up with the idea of a general strike in the first place, but I
think it was a big mistake. Yes,
resistance is very very important, but this is a huge country with a massive
population and even if every concerned American woman left her workday and congregated
in the street, it would not be enough. Besides, we already did that at the
Woman’s March, thank you very much everyone. And, the diversity of the women
that day should have tipped off the strike organizers that most women just cannot
afford to jeopardize their jobs.
I am 100% in favor of labor strikes where they can be
effective, but they invariably need to include ALL of the labor force for whatever the
issue. Single day strikes even when everyone walks off don't get anyone's attention in this country (unlike in unionized Europe), so most strikes go on for an extended time. Here management hires
scabs to go over and around the picketers until it all actually hits their
pocketbooks and they concede that they NEED their workforce. Having been a UMW
family, I know what it looks like when a union has an upper hand, and even then
those hands were often holding guns to get their point across.
Getting treated fairly by the bosses is at
best a grim undertaking and strikes should not be invoked by people who do not
understand the losses required. Ask the nurses. Or does anyone remember P9 and
Hormel? I still won’t buy their stuff.
That said, targeted strike days for unionized labor could be
useful in our near future. Of course, hardly anyone is unionized any more, are
they? The strength of numbers argument just got a lot weaker. Perhaps some of
the women so eager to get us out from behind our desks and dustmops last week
could spend that energy finding forces that could actually count. Bus drivers?
Garbage workers? Airline pilots? Public school teachers might be pissed off
enough by now to stand as a unit, at least in a single city, but truthfully
most parents will just find alternatives and be done with it – surely emergency
vouchers from the local Repugnicans would soon be available.
The long road to
domination that began at least with Ronald Reagan is lined with the carcasses
of public protections that took centuries to put in place. I am afraid that all
we have left is too little, too late.
I will leave you with a little history to sharpen your
focus.
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