STRIKES.

Strikes are temporary withdrawals of labor by more than one person. Those striking intend to return to work with better pay and/or improved conditions of work or to have made an emphatic political point. Sometimes employers refuse to permit the return of strikers and in these cases the strike terminates the employment.

In industrial disputes strikes can be a last resort by employees, whether unionized or not. They can also be a bargaining move in collective bargaining, intended to secure a better offer (whether of additional benefits or of less severe reductions). Strikes are but one symptom of dissatisfaction in work-places, others ranging from sabotage to exit. Strikes occur most often when there is an upturn in the economy and workers are in a relatively strong position in the labor market or when economic conditions are deteriorating and workforces are trying to hold on to existing pay and other conditions of employment.

WORLD WAR I AND THE INTERWAR PERIOD

Except in revolutionary situations, political strikes have usually been short and clearly focused on a major issue. During the First World War demand for key war materials and widespread shortages of food, fuel, and consumer goods led to industrial unrest in some countries and revolution in others. In Russia, in the Vyborg district of Petrograd before the February 1917 revolution metalworkers repeatedly went on strike, and most of the strikes were political. These workers played a crucial role in the overthrow of the tsarist regime. Thereafter, until the Bolshevik Revolution, the numbers of people on strike increased but most demands were economic. However, by September and October 1917 a sizable minority of strikes were intended to express dissatisfaction with private ownership of industry. However, as Diane Koenker and William G. Rosenberg have commented, at that time all strikes in Russia were essentially political: "Regardless of goals … the act of striking was itself part of the process of developing political consciousness in 1917" (p. 17). In Germany strikes became increasingly political as the war went on. Dick Geary has written of Berlin that "as early as 1916 food riots could turn into strikes and vice versa" (1993, p. 32). In Leipzig and elsewhere in April 1917 strikers demanded peace, a more democratic electoral system, the ending of censorship and martial law, and the release of political prisoners as well as more pay.

After the end of the First World War political strikes were part of the challenges of labor in a period of economic boom and political uncertainty. In Germany in 1919 a series of armed insurrections and strikes sought to secure a more revolutionary social order. These occurred in Berlin, Bremen, Brunswick, and Cuxhaven in January, in Mannheim in February, in Berlin again in March, and in Munich in April. A general strike in Berlin in 1920 broke the Kapp putsch, a counterrevolutionary attempt to seize power. In Italy "direct action" in September 1920 took the form of occupation strikes in engineering factories in Milan and Turin. These were in response to employers' lockouts. Many of the participants felt that they were preparing the way for major political change.

In the "Red Years" of 1917–1921 the division between political and industrial strikes was often blurred. The sheer volume of disputes and the accompanying revolutionary rhetoric made many strikes appear political, aimed at redistributing wealth and power, and brought a feeling of insecurity to many of the propertied classes.

Organized labor had less chance of success when economies were not in upturns. While German labor had defeated the Right in 1920, in the early 1930s deflation and mass unemployment undercut its ability to take strike action to prevent the Nazis securing power. In Britain the trade union movement was on the defensive during and after the 1921–1922 recession. The Trades Union Congress, the central organization for the unions, called a general strike in May 1926. This was intended to be a solidarity strike in support of coal miners, who were faced with substantial pay reductions and increases in work hours, and to secure a subsidy for the industry from the government. This was not achieved. The strike was called off after nine days, though the coal strike ran on until late in the year. Whereas the average number of days lost in industrial disputes in the United Kingdom in the previous three years had been 9 million, in 1926 the total exceeded 162 million, with the coal dispute accounting for more than 90 percent.

During the boom years of 1915–1920, in many European countries the most strike-prone sectors were those crucial to the war: notably engineering, from armaments to shipbuilding, steel production, and coal mining. In Britain substantial engineering disputes took place in 1915–1917. In 1915, when there was a major coal strike in South Wales, coal accounted for 56 percent of all working days lost in disputes. Bad industrial relations were one reason for state control of the industry, but even after it was controlled, coal disputes accounted for just over 20 percent of all working days lost in 1917 and 1918. In Italy more than 90 percent of working days lost through disputes were in the regions of Lombardy, Piedmont, Liguria, and Compania. During the war Italian strikes were short and sharp. Metalworkers were often militant, and they became prominent in strike statistics in 1918–1920 and 1921–1922. In France trade unionism was weak, but in the face of inflation and war weariness substantial strikes by Renault and other factory workers occurred in Paris as well as in Toulouse and elsewhere in 1917 and 1918. In June 1919 a very militant engineering strike in Paris failed, and after 1920 metalworkers were not prominent again in French disputes until 1936. French industrial militancy suffered a great setback in 1920 with the failure of a major rail strike, which was widened into an unsuccessful general strike.

In most countries the great majority of strikes were not directly politically motivated but related to wages and conditions of work. Some sectors of economies stood out as having notably bad industrial relations. With recovery from the 1931–1933 international recession came an increasing number of strikes in many democratic European countries. In France considerable support for May Day rallies in 1936 was followed by some 1.85 million French workers on strike in June alone. The strikes of 1936 were notable for predominantly being in poorly unionized sectors and led to rapid trade union growth, including among women. The strikers were usually enthusiastic supporters of the Popular Front (a leftist coalition against fascism). Hence the case has been made for seeing these strikes as political. In Spain a wave of strikes in April–June 1936 followed the Popular Front victory. These were aimed at reversing a recent decline in living standards.

WORLD WAR II AND THE POSTWAR PERIOD

For much of the Second World War strikes were a safe possibility only in Britain because much of the rest of Europe was under German occupation. In Britain they were formally illegal (as they had been in the First World War under the Munitions of War Act of 1915) under Order 1305. The loss of days through industrial disputes increased during the war, with wage issues being attributed as the cause for 60 percent of those going on strike during 1940–1944. Strikes were overwhelmingly in coal mining (where 56 percent of days were lost), with engineering (19 percent) and shipbuilding (9 percent) as the next most strike-prone sectors.

After the Second World War strikes were often seen as an obstacle to economic reconstruction and then to competitiveness. In Britain strike levels remained low under the postwar Labour government (1945–1951) and its efforts to boost economic recovery from the war. A one-day engineering strike in 1953 was the first national strike since a 1933 strike in cotton textiles. Thereafter strike waves characterized the periods 1957–1962, 1968–1974, and 1977–1979, much of the unrest being brought about by stagnating or even declining real wages. In the 1957–1962 wave an average of 4,442,000 working days per year were lost; in 1968–1974 the average reached 11,703,000 per year and 16,340,000 in 1977–1979. In the early 1960s wildcat strikes caused considerable political anxiety, leading to the establishment of a Royal Commission (1965–1968) to investigate British industrial relations, while subsequent unrest contributed to the destabilization of two Labour governments (in 1969–1970 and 1979) and a Conservative government (in 1974).

In Britain during this period there was much talk of wildcat strikes, and then strikes generally, being "the English disease" (or British disease) and providing an explanation for the relatively poor performance of Britain's economy compared to those of its major industrial rivals. However, when British strike statistics are compared with those for other industrialized countries the British level of strikes drops as other countries' levels drop and rises as others' levels rise. (Some clear deterioration took place in Britain in 1968–1974, but this was insufficient to change Britain's rank order at a time when there were strikes across Europe.) Hence it appears that changes in international economic circumstances affected strike levels in free-market economies, with particular governments and policies having an impact but not as great as is sometimes thought.

In Britain the rise in the days lost through strikes in 1968–1974 was partly due to the politicization of industrial relations, with trade unions holding strikes against the 1971 Industrial Relations Act. In the early 1980s the British level of days lost through strikes remained relatively high because of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's confrontations with steelworkers in 1980 and coal miners in 1984–1985. Yet, while the strike statistics dipped in the late 1980s after the government felt it had "tamed the trade unions," so did those for other countries. The 1984–1985 miners' dispute was one of the greatest in British history, with a total of 27,135,000 working days lost in 1984.

While strikes were not a peculiarly British phenomenon, with Australia, Canada, and the United States having higher levels for 1946–1976, Britain had a higher number of days lost through strike action than some of its European competitors. Apart from the early 1980s, Italy and Finland consistently had worse records, as did Ireland until the 1980s and France in the late 1940s and early 1960s. By contrast West Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden had low numbers of days lost through industrial disputes.

In France there were widespread strikes after the Communist Party (CPF) left the postwar government in May 1947. The Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) was dominated by the CPF after the liberation and was notably militant. In June 1947 alone, 6,416,000 working days were lost due to strikes over economic issues. In late 1947 a general strike involved up to 3 million workers, with 7,546,000 and 6,967,000 days lost in November and December. In 1948 troops were used during a major coal strike that lasted from 4 October to 29 November, with a lost output of 5.5 million tons of coal. A further wave of strikes came in 1950, aimed at substantial wage increases in the Paris metallurgical industry and others. Communist calls for political strikes in 1952 resulted in some riots but no substantial mass strike. In the 1950s the numbers of days lost through strikes fell markedly from 1947 to 1950, when the annual average was 13,393,000, but rose to a little above the British level in the early 1960s. The most dramatic strikes came in the summer of 1968, alongside mass demonstrations, and shook Charles de Gaulle's government. It seems likely that six to seven million people went on strike in France in May–June 1968.

In Italy in 1947 a communist-backed wave of strikes included a general strike in Rome in December. A national strike followed the attempted assassination of the Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti on 14 July 1948, with many factories in the north occupied. Although called off on 16 July, it led to a split in the Confederazione Generale del Lavoro (CGIL). The numerous strikes of the 1950s, such as a major rail strike in January 1953, generally sought higher wages. In September and December 1953 employers were forced to the bargaining table by two national general strikes, followed by strikes in individual industries in early 1954. National collective bargaining in this period helped avoid major national strikes, but dissatisfaction with wages led to a wave of major strikes in 1959 in metallurgical and other industries, followed by a general strike in June–July 1960.

Italy, France, and Britain were all part of Western European strike waves in 1960–1964 (which omitted Belgium) and 1968–1972 (which omitted Austria). The strikes of the early 1960s were associated with labor's demands in a period of full employment, perhaps in response to inflation, while the later strikes may have been responding to anti-inflation measures by governments. Among the most militant workers were the Italians in 1969, as radical factory councils mushroomed. West Germany experienced widespread unofficial strikes in 1969, in contrast to the country's hitherto stable postwar industrial relations (though official strikes had taken place, as in 1963 and 1966–1967).

In 1973 the oil crisis marked the end of a quarter-century's international economic boom and was followed by rising unemployment. Labor was increasingly on the defensive, with more and more strikes aimed at defending existing wages and conditions. In the 1990s and early 2000s strike levels in Britain and elsewhere were low.

In Eastern Europe strikes were often part of a broader movement seeking to limit or end communist rule. In East Germany a workers' uprising in 1953 began with a strike by a group of building workers, with a general strike on 11 June. It was put down by armed force. In Hungary in October 1956 a general strike was called in support of creating a more liberal regime and declaring Hungarian neutrality in the Cold War. In Czechoslovakia elected workers' councils were one element of the Prague Spring of 1968, with demonstrators leaving work to protest when Warsaw Pact troops invaded in August. In Poland, the trade union organization Solidarity was set up by Lech Wa??sa, an electrician in the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, after a strike in August 1980. Supported by the Catholic Church, Solidarity was recognized and soon had some three million supporters. Following strikes in 1988 in the Baltic cities and Silesian coalfields, Solidarity was allowed to campaign as a political party in 1989. It won all but one of the seats it could contest, and in December, Wa??sa was elected president of Poland.

See alsoGeneral Strike (Britain); Labor Movements; May 1968; Solidarity; Unemployment.

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Chris Wrigley