General Strike on October 15th

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If the union doesn't fund the strikers, the strikers living paycheck-to-paycheck are out of luck. I don't believe workers support each other as thoroughly as they were forced to during the Depression.

I believe people were more communally-minded in the 1930s, in general.

It was probably "easier" to strike in the 1930s than it is now.

Wages suck nowadays, of course......but something like food prices is much more than it was in the 1930s. You could get a pound of sugar, say, for about 5 cents in the 1930s.

That's definitely a concern but it's probably a lot easier these days to organize mutual aid. You just need to hope the GoFundMe isn't buried under hundreds of dead antivaxxers hoping to cover their funerals.

There's lots of commentators who help promote fund raisers to pay for that mutual support you sound so sure won't be received. I don't think people have changed that much.

Sure....all that can happen....but suppose it doesn't?

I'm not "against" striking----unless the entity is something like a police force.

I don't think it is much different today than it was in the 1930s. Wages have not kept up with prices and certainly not kept up with top level compensation and the income of those with investments. I person who is about to lose their house anyways whether they work or not and has no benefits have nothing to lose whether they strike or not. Again, we will not see a general strike tomorrow but what we are seeing is a bunch of little strikes. Nurses and hospital staff all over the country. Kellogg employers and today, John Deere employees.

We are also seeing a strike of another sort. People are simply quitting jobs that do not offer just compensation to jobs that do. Even an unskilled worker eventually gains some skills if they work long enough. Technology will take over some of those jobs but there are others, even unskilled, that technology cannot even come close to take. Many companies like Walmart are getting rid of cashiers but many of the cashiers became pickers. In a store with both customers and pickers, robots and AI technology is not near enough to account for the issues that come up.

As for employers trying to avoid the investment in workers, they are going to find that employees are going to leave for employers that are willing to invest in their workers. The days of employee loyalty are long gone, thanks to the employers them. We say that in the August numbers where a record number of people quit their jobs. They are not simply sitting at home. They got a better offer.

Do not those who are already members of a collective bargaining unit hold more effective strikes?

Indeed, but you've got to unlock that achievement before you can benefit from it.

The worse things are the more likely people are to take bigger risks with longer odds because the more intolerable your current situation is the less it feels like you have to lose.

Yep....the eternal battle between workers and "management."

I do believe workers should definitely seek better health benefits from their employers. I would say this is even more important than salary increases.

The 'keys' to that achievement are a simple majority vote by the workers, and their full participation in the strike, in that order.  Otherwise, it is an illegal strike, and the employer is well within his rights to hire as many 'scab' replacements as needed.  Then the strikers are out of luck and out on the street.

They're entitled to try, it doesn't mean they'll succeed.
Personally, I support wildcat strikes. Direct action gets the goods while tone police waste their time bickering over how to properly grovel.

Not always, but the odds favor the house, not the  gamblers  strikers.My support extends only as far as not crossing a picket line.  However, there has never been a strike against my employer, and a strike does not seem likely in the foreseeable future.

I agree with you that in general it's an uphill battle but that's true of lots of struggles in life and it doesn't make them less worth fighting.

I'm not trying to cast any judgment in regards to whether or not any individual participates. I don't know enough about anyone's personal circumstances to judge or comment on that angle. It wouldn't be fair to act like individuals aren't entitled to consider their own circumstances.

Of course, smart strikers would also work on interfering with attempts to hire scabs; right now Kellogg's has been trying to hire scabs for their facilities and they're getting spammed with thousands of fake applications, some obvious, some not. Further, there's people who live locally who sympathize but are willing to take a scab position in order to be disruptive (quitting on day one, intentionally being useless/slow/stupid, trying to organize other scabs into joining the actions ect). All of this is being telegraphed because the goal is to get them to give up on hiring the scabs in the first place.

It seems easier now than when I was hourly.  Back then, an applicant had to show up in person, fill out the application in person, and talk to someone from HR in person.  Now most of that is handled on-line, either directly by the company's own HR department, or through a recruitment agency.  I, for one, never know who the candidates are until my secretary tells me their names and when they are scheduled to show up for their interviews.  By then, they have already been screened for identity, education, experience, citizenship, and legal issues.  I am just involved in the "can they fit in with or adapt to our culture" stage.

I think that's one of the issues driving a lot of resentment among X, Y and Z job seekers, especially the first two. Companies are able to be a lot pickier about hiring because the have a bigger pool and that means a lot more work just to get through the door and this breeds a lot of resentment among people who were brainwashed into thinking they just needed college to get a good paying job and who now find themselves unable to even be considered for entry level positions because even those positions demand several years of experience.

It goes beyond that though, if you look at how a lot of temp agencies partner with industrial employers they basically end up creating permanent temp positions to avoid hiring people and paying benefits, combine this with the high number of hours they demand it often becomes worse than a dead-end, it's trap because you end up with your expenses floating higher because of needing child care (for many), not having the energy or time to cook for yourself or stay on top of shopping, etc. The rate of substance abuse there was insane, both prescriptions and not. Everyone was injured in some way but only the direct employees had any sort of drug plan or benefits beyond OHIP. Lots of people were on psychiatric meds because of the stressful nature of the work.

This idea that "people who were brainwashed into thinking they just needed college to get a good paying job" may be them assuming that a college degree is a golden ticket to the corner office, when in actuality it only increases their chances of getting a cubicle near the corner office.  This is like assuming a vaccine confers complete immunity from a virus, when in actuality it only increases one's chances of surviving the disease.I fell into that "Temp/Term" trap, once.  Then I found another job (this one), gave a week's notice, and walked out on the following Friday.  I have been here the longest of anyone else in my position, and reached the top of my pay schedule about two years ago.  I am retiring in a year or two.

My point is that no one is really "trapped" in a job unless: (1) They have signed an iron-clad contract (usually as a military member); (2) They have no marketable skills other than the ones required for their current job; (3) There are no other jobs available for which their current skills qualify them; (4) they work on a prison chain-gang.

(Maybe there are more reasons, but these seem to be the most common.)

All else being equal, skills and a college degree will take a person farther and faster then the absence of skills and no college degree.

You can be trapped if there's no better options close enough to commute to, and thankfully I have a car but many people can't afford one. There's a bunch of factors that play into poverty traps but pointing out that in theory there's much more binding traps kinda misses the point. You keep framing it like it's entirely a lack of skills when sometimes it's more complicated (like for many people in the trades who get promised jobs that lead to apprenticeships that never emerge, they waste years of their life toiling in lesser positions because they're that desperate and were lied to, not because they lack the skills). Mercilessly oversimplifying it seems like you don't really get it, maybe because these people aren't your peers so you don't interact with enough of them. A similar thing happens in more intellectual fields only it's internships that are abused instead of offers of apprenticeship.

If people don't have the leverage to get a fair deal they need to pool together to increase that although that's effectively a war and involves a similar need to consider things on tactical, operations and strategic levels in order increase the likelihood of achieving the desired outcomes.

One of the best decisions I ever made was when my boss at that place refused to discuss reducing my hours to less than 40 per week because of how it was impacting my physical and mental health was to email her boss, describe the situation and end my assignment entirely. Lesser boss thought she had all the leverage only discover she actually had none. For years they struggled to maintain adequate staffing to deliver on what they promised in their contract to their client. For years I had demonstrated I was able to do the job well enough that even if they complained about me having lots of sick days they never could risk doing anything about it.

Last I heard they've been displaced from most of that contract.

Meanwhile I've had months to dedicate to getting help for various issues and to work on developing skills that might help ensure I don't need to return to that trap, especially since one of the things I was never able to give attention or time to was pursuing disability support which should ensure that I will have a baseline income.