After the National Labor Relations Act became law in 1935, working people lost control over one very powerful and effective tool to protect their rights—striking. The act was put in place to encourage collective bargaining, avoid “industrial strife” and “promote the flow of commerce.” Striking became illegal as long as an employer contract was in place. In exchange, workers were granted the right to join a union and to use it to adjudicate any grievances, labor disputes, wages, rates of pay, hours of employment, or conditions of work.
Workers could still go on strike, but only after an official strike vote from the respective union involved—and even then, only at contract termination. Union members could no longer walk off the job in protest without risking being fired. The 1947 Taft-Hartley Act and the Labor Management Disclosure and Reporting Act of 1959 went even further; the former required a sixty-day official notice of an impending strike, and the latter determined that if the union supported the strike of another union (“secondary strike”), it could be held liable for damages. And strikes by public employees are generally illegal because their services are deemed critical to the functioning of the government.
These restrictions on when and how workers can strike may bar them from influencing any real change—that’s where “wildcat strikes” come in. Union members throw the rules right out the window during a wildcat strike, walking off the job and and protesting without the permission of their respective union. They are highly illegal, yet can be highly effective.
Union members throw the rules right out the window during a wildcat strike, walking off the job and and protesting without the permission of their respective union.
Teachers and school support staff in West Virginia who struck in February and March were supposed to return to work after union leaders negotiated a solution five days into the protest. But the union members were not happy with the contract their leaders negotiated, which gave school staff a pay increase but only gave a nod to their health insurance frustrations by sticking a task force on the issue. Strikers stayed out of the schools for another four days until the state yielded and offered a 5 percent pay increase and some solid language that meant a hold on increasing healthcare costs.
During a 1989 wildcat strike in Virginia, hundreds of coal miners formed roadblocks intended to slow their companies’ shipment rates. The unions involved were fined millions of dollars, and more than 2,000 members were thrown in jail as a consequence. (Three union leaders were sent to jail as well, the court deciding that the leadership had actually supported the wildcat strikers behind the scenes.)
Right-to-work laws in many states, and the shrinking of union power, means we may see a lot more of these wildcat strikes in the future. Looking back at past wildcat strikes provides a sense of the context out of which wildcat strikes happen, their role in the fight for workers rights, as well as the serious consequences for businesses, unions, and individuals who lost their lives. Here are stories of some of the more famous and effective wildcat strikes in the last fifty years in the United States.
The Memphis Sanitation Workers
The Memphis Sanitation Workers’ strike in April 1968 ignited after two sanitation workers, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were crushed to death by a malfunctioning truck. The tragedy occurred after workers had complained about many challenges they faced on the job, including similar safety issues, no overtime pay, working for such low wages that many had to get food stamps, no paid sick leave, and blatant racism by the city and mayor.
“You are reminding not only Memphis, but you are reminding the nation that it is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages.”
The strikers had the support of many in the civil rights and religious communities, as well as white high school and college students. Martin Luther King Jr. traveled to Memphis to support the strikers, and on March 18, a few weeks before he was assassinated, stated, “You are reminding not only Memphis, but you are reminding the nation that it is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages.”
The mayor of Memphis, Henry Loeb III, refused to recognize the union or the strike from the start, saying, “Public employees cannot strike against your employer.”
Memphis sanitation workers demanded improved working conditions in 1968.
With Loeb’s authority given, militarized police attacked the crowds; one sixteen-year-old African American man, Larry Payne, was killed, after a police officer accused him of looting during the protests. Payne was actually waiting for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to arrive in Memphis to speak when the looting occured. Loeb called for 4,000 National Guard troops and declared martial law soon after. Yet more than 200 sanitation workers refused to back down, and walked the pickets, beginning the “I Am a Man” marches, demanding the same dignity and courtesy as any other Memphis resident.
It was at this point that President Lyndon B. Johnson decided to get involved, and ordered his Undersecretary of Labor, James Reynolds, to try to negotiate a settlement.
Meanwhile, just four days after King’s death in Memphis, his wife Coretta Scott King returned to the city for a remembrance of her husband by continuing his efforts in support of the members of AFSCME Local 1733. Some 42,000 people rallied at that event. Nearly a week after Mrs. King’s march, it was over; the union was recognized and the city promised to raise the wages of black sanitation workers.
The Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM)
African American members of the United Auto Workers formed the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) at the Chrysler Corporation Dodge Main plant in Hamtramck, Michigan near Detroit in May of 1968. This action took place with the backdrop of the previous summer’s unrest in the city, in which black residents rebelled against poor housing conditions and police brutality.
[TheBlackestPanther]. (2016, July 14). Detroit 1967 Riot. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YqWavBqxAI
Black auto workers formed the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement to fight racism in Detroit automobile factories.
The Dodge Main plant was made up of more than 60 percent African American workers, yet the leadership of United Auto Workers Local 3, plant management, and lower-level supervision was all white — specifically, Polish Americans, largely descendants of immigrants.
While the union had supported the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, it was not quick to allow African Americans into leadership roles.
Indeed, the focus of DRUM, was to seek concessions from Chrysler management, but also the union itself. While the union had supported the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, it was not quick to allow African Americans into leadership roles.
In direct response to a 40 percent increase in assembly line speed and tensions exacerbated by management and union intransigence, on July 8, 1968, DRUM led a wildcat strike; it involved nearly 4,000 members lasted nearly three days, preventing production of about 3,000 cars.
It caught fire in other plants around Detroit: there was soon a Ford Revolutionary Union Movement at the massive Ford River Rouge Plant, and a similar movement at the Chrysler Eldon Ridge plant, Eldon Ridge Revolutionary Union Movement, which was partially motivated by a worker being accidentally crushed by a box.
Wayne State University, Kenneth V. and Sheila M. Cockrel Collection, Box 6, folder 24.
On July 8, 1968, DRUM led a wildcat strike.
While they didn’t achieve many of their initial goals of racial equality right away, the strikes did eventually create change. All of the nascent movements coalesced into the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in the early 1970s aimed at making changes in the world of the Detroit-area African American working class. Its constitution read:
“We must act swiftly to help organize DRUM type organizations wherever there are Black workers, be it in Lynn Townsend's kitchen, the White House, White Castle, Ford Rouge, the Mississippi Delta, the plains of Wyoming, the mines of Bolivia, the rubber plantations of Indonesia, the oil fields of Biafra, or the Chrysler plant in South Africa.”
Some philosophical differences in focus and organizing models led to the League’s eventual dissolution, but it remains a hallmark for addressing the needs of a critical population of underrepresented workers.
The Postal Workers’ Strike of 1970
In 1970, U.S. postal workers suddenly walked off the job—catching the country, the union, and President Nixon by surprise. Congress had voted to give postal workers a 4 percent wage increase, while it gave itself a 41 percent raise. Working conditions at postal centers were abysmal, with workers prohibited from negotiating for pay raises, unable to work overtime, and often needing to find a second job.
The wildcat strike at the U.S. Postal Service began on March 17, 1970, when workers at National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 36 in Manhattan, New York voted to strike against the recommendations of their union leadership.
Over 210,000 workers eventually walked of the job in all parts of the postal service, from the letter carriers to office clerks, demonstrating how the frustrations of regular work life could result in a form of solidarity rarely seen between low wage and other workers.
On March 17, 1970, Manhattan postal workers began a wildcat strike that would eventually gain the participation of over 210,000 nationally.
As the mail system ground to a halt—at a time when everyday needs like the news, bills, and communication depended on the mail—President Nixon immediately went on national television to try to get them back to work. His words, and especially his implied threat to use military forces to deliver mail, only enraged more postal workers, and 671 more locations walked out across the country in response.
Working conditions at postal centers were abysmal, with workers prohibited from negotiating for pay raises, unable to work overtime, and often needing to find a second job.
The strike not only paralyzed the mail system, but also affected the stock market, which suffered losses as the strike wore on—some even predicted the closure of the stock market entirely if it lasted very long.
On March 23, as post offices went idle in Los Angeles, Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and other places across the country, Nixon spoke on television once again, this time stating that military troops would fill in for postal workers.
This was accompanied by a proclamation from Nixon known as Proclamation 3972 declaring a national emergency.
Nixon did, indeed, send in National Guard service members to perform basic mail services in seventeen New York post offices, while at the same time negotiating with the wildcat strikers.
After eight days, the strike was over. Not one postal worker lost a job. And very soon, the National Postal Reorganization Act became law, which renamed the entity the U. S. Postal Service and provided collective bargaining rights to the four major postal unions (National Association of Letter Carriers, American Postal Workers Union, National Postal Mail Handlers Union, and the National Rural Letter Carriers Union), including the right to negotiate on wages, benefits, and working conditions.
They had no such rights before the strike began.
The West Virginia Teachers and Support Workers’ Strike of 2018
The teachers’ strikes of 2018 represented a change in the traditional methods of striking, and it was led by West Virginia.
After about five days on strike calling for workplace improvements, a wage increase, lower out-of-pocket costs for health insurance, and maintaining their seniority, the West Virginia teachers and school support workers were presented with a “final offer” by the leadership of the unions involved, negotiated secretly with the state legislature and other government officials. It was an inadequate 4 percent wage increase that didn’t address skyrocketing health insurance costs in the state-run Public Employees Insurance Agency.
Image by author, from PEIA rally, Charleston, WV, July, 2018.
In February, 2018, West Virginia teachers and support staff began a strike that later spread to Arizona and Kentucky.
Teachers and other school support staff stayed on strike because the requests they made for higher wages and lower healthcare costs weren’t adequately met. The rank-and-file that had formed the basis of the strike unified, county-by-county, in declaring that schools would be closed until they were part of the process and until their demands were met.
It was a risky but necessary move. Teachers and school support workers in Arizona and Kentucky followed suit; both were wildcat strikes and resulted in specific gains in working conditions for teachers and support staff.
It’s looking increasingly likely that teachers and school support workers in states like North Carolina and Florida will strike this fall, some facing the same pushback from government and union leaders that West Virginia teachers and school support workers faced.
When workers have had enough, one of our last remaining tools is to withhold labor via strike, whether “officially” sanctioned or not, and sometimes in spite of established law.
Other states may follow. Beyond strikes, in every state that has seen teachers and support workers walk out in 2018, folks are now realizing that their political power has ramifications far beyond schools; some educators are running for office, and others are campaigning for candidates who support public education, knocking out those who oppose it.
When workers have had enough, one of our last remaining tools is to withhold labor via strike, whether “officially” sanctioned or not, and sometimes in spite of established law. Without our labor, after all, the ruling class cannot reap their massive profits.
And without those profits, the machine grinds to a halt.