Sitdown strike
A sit-down strike (or simply sitdown) is a labour strike and a form of civil disobedience in which an organized group of workers, usually employed at factories or other centralized locations, take unauthorized or illegal possession of the workplace by "sitting down" at their stations.[1] By taking control of their workplaces, workers engaged in a sit-down demonstrate their power, build solidarity among themselves, prevent the deployment of strikebreakers or removal of industrial equipment, and cause cascading effects on the chain of production within and between factories. However, sit-down strikes are illegal in the vast majority of countries, complicating their use.
Sitdown strikes played a central role in the unionization of manufacturing in the United States and France. In major strikes in the rubber and automotive industries in the United States, labor organizers with the United Rubber Workers of America and United Automobile Workers adopted the sitdown strike as a means for demanding unionization of factories, achieving major successes at Goodyear Tire (1936), General Motors (1936–37), and Chrysler (1937).[2] Sit-down strikes peaked in the United States in 1937, and rapidly declined as workers began to face criminal prosecution for occupations while the National Labor Relations Board supervised both unionization elections and collective bargaining by between recognized unions and employers. While some sit-down strikes still occur in the United States, they tend to be spontaneous and short-lived.
A wave of sit-down strikes in France in May to August 1936 demanded and won union recognition and industry-wide negotiations on wages and benefits, and coincided with state guarantees of limited hours, vacation pay, and other social reforms.
Writers in the 1930s,[3] 1960s,[4] and early 2000s[5] have all described the same basic forms of sitdown or sit-in strikes. Author Louis Adamic, in his account of the late 1930s wave of sit-down strikes in the United States wrote the following definition in the fall of 1936:
Ahmed White distinguishes three types of sit-in strikes: "short, 'quickie' strikes, characterized by brief, on-the-job work stoppages," like those described by Adamic; "the classic 'stay-in' strike", defined "a work stoppage in which the strikers occupied the workplace to prevent the employer from using it for a considerable period of time"; and "'skippy' strikes, characterized by intentionally sloppy performance on the production line."[5] Sit-down strikes also built upon the tactics, used by the Industrial Workers of the World, of the "folded arms strike" and "striking on the job" (which, according to Adamic, "required men to pretend they were working, and to accomplish as little as possible without being discharged").[7]
In factories built around assembly lines, sit-down strikes enabled small numbers of workers to interrupt production across an entire plant. In industries with complex chains of production, such as automobile manufacturing, it likewise projected power outward from a factory on strike: "just as a militant minority could stop production in an entire plant, so if the plant was a key link in an integrated corporate empire, its occupation could paralyze the corporation."[8] Adamic describes the sit-down strike as educating workers about their power as well as providing an opportunity to organize non-union workers:
White describes this process as "an extraordinary forum for cultivating loyalty and solidarity among workers, offering rank-and-file workers a salient symbol of the union's ability to confront the employer, as well as numerous occasions for the actual practice of mutual support."[10]
When feasible, sit-down strikes offered numerous strategic and tactical advantages. Adamic observed in the 1930s that "[Quickie] sitdowns are quick, short, and free of violence."[6] The tactic prevents employers from replacing them with strikebreakers or removing equipment to transfer production to other locations. Neal Ascherson has commented that an additional attraction is that it emphasizes the role of workers in providing for the people and allows workers to in effect hold valuable machinery hostage as a bargaining chip.[11] Other advantages listed by Adamic include:
Labor strategists who recognized the value of the sit-down strike include Dutch Council Communist Anton Pannekoek,[14] American labor historian Jeremy Brecher,[15] and sociologist Beverly Silver.[16]
Legacy[edit]
The sit-down strike was the inspiration for the sit-in, where an organized group of protesters would occupy an area in which they are not wanted by sitting and refuse to leave until their demands are met. Sidney Fine cites the protest form as being echoed and replicated in both the lunch counter sit-ins of the African American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and in the university occupations of the 1960s.[56]