California’s Year in Strikes
Over the past several decades, since the onset of the neoliberal era, the major weapon at the disposal of the working class—the strike—has been in steep decline. But during the past five years, even through the pandemic, we have witnessed across the country, and right here in California, a shift in workers’ and unions’ thinking about withholding their labor in the workplace as a lever for increased collective power.
As the article, “‘Staggering solidarity’: How California’s summer strikes broke down wealth, class barriers” from Cal Matters (link below) noted, “So far this year there have been 53 strikes in California involving 276,340 participants, according to Cornell University’s Labor Action Tracker. That doesn’t include strikes that began last year.”
A new generation of workers, many college-educated and facing deteriorating economic prospects, has passed through two Sanders campaigns, the rise of DSA, and Black Lives Matter, and confront a creeping fascist menace and the serious worsening of the climate crisis. With a greater awareness of the stakes involved in everyday life, it should come as no surprise that a growing number of especially young workers are willing to risk their paychecks and their jobs to register protests at the conditions in which they find themselves, and to take action to address them.
California Red has been following these developments since our first issue, published on May 1 of this year. We publish a full newsletter every other month, with a mini-newsletter on the off months. This August mini-issue in front of you is a roundup of what’s been happening in a half dozen current strikes, as well as one that recently concluded (LA city workers) and another looming on the horizon (San Jose city workers). These articles come from a variety of publications and represent a variety of political viewpoints. By collecting this compendium of strikes and organizing for you we mean to provide an overview of the current status of these struggles.
