A sit-down strike is a

labour strike Strike action, also called labor strike, labour strike, or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became common during the In ...

and a form of

civil disobedience Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders or commands of a government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a stat ...

in which an organized group of workers, usually employed at

factories A factory, manufacturing plant or a production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery A machine is a physical system using power to apply forces and control movement to p ...

or other centralized locations, take unauthorized or illegal possession of the workplace by "sitting down" at their stations. The attraction of the tactic is that it prevents employers from replacing them with

strikebreaker A strikebreaker (sometimes called a scab, blackleg, or knobstick) is a person who works despite a strike. Strikebreakers are usually individuals who were not employed by the company before the trade union dispute but hired after or during the st ...

s or removing equipment to transfer production to other locations.

Neal Ascherson Charles Neal Ascherson (born 5 October 1932) is a Scottish journalist and writer. He has been described by Radio Prague as "one of Britain's leading experts on central and eastern Europe". Ascherson is the author of several books on the history ...

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.

History

Workers have used the technique since the beginning of the 20th century in countries such as

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, , is a country in Central Europe. Poland is divided into Voivodeships of Poland, sixteen voivodeships and is the fifth most populous member state of the European Union (EU), with over 38 mill ...

Croatia , image_flag = Flag of Croatia.svg , image_coat = Coat of arms of Croatia.svg , anthem = "Lijepa naša domovino"("Our Beautiful Homeland") , image_map = , map_caption = , capit ...

, and

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan ar ...

. The

United Auto Workers The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers (UAW), is an American labor union that represents workers in the United States (including Puerto Rico ...

staged successful sit-down strikes in the 1930s, most famously in the Flint Sit-Down Strike of 1936–1937. In Flint, Michigan, strikers occupied several General Motors plants for more than forty days, and repelled the efforts of the police and National Guard to retake them. A wave of sit-down strikes followed but diminished by the end of the decade as the courts and the

National Labor Relations Board The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is an independent agency of the federal government of the United States with responsibilities for enforcing U.S. labor law in relation to collective bargaining and unfair labor practices. Under the Nati ...

held that sit-down strikes were illegal and sit-down strikers could be fired (see the 1939 Supreme Court ruling in '' NLRB v. Fansteel Metallurgical Corp.''). While some sit-down strikes still occur in the United States, they tend to be spontaneous and short-lived. French workers engaged in a number of factory occupations in the wake of the French student revolt in May 1968. At one point more than twenty-five percent of French workers were on strike, many of them occupying their factories. In 1973, the workers at the Triumph Motorcycles factory at

Meriden, West Midlands Meriden is a village and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull, West Midlands, England. Historically, it is part of Warwickshire and lies between the cities of Birmingham and Coventry. It is located close to the Warwickshire borde ...

, locked the new owners, NVT, out following the announcement of their plan to close Meriden. The sit-in lasted over a year until the British government intervened, the result of which was the formation of the Meriden Motorcycle Co-operative which produced Triumphs until their closure in 1983. The sit-down strike was the inspiration for the

sit-in A sit-in or sit-down is a form of direct action that involves one or more people occupying an area for a protest, often to promote political, social, or economic change. The protestors gather conspicuously in a space or building, refusing to m ...

, 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.

References

Bibliography

* * * * * {{Use dmy dates, date=July 2018 Labor disputes Civil disobedience Protest tactics Strikes (protest) Nonviolent occupation

History

See also

References

Bibliography