I would like to join the single-day general strike that is being called for the US this Friday, January 30th, but I’m wondering exactly how to do this. I’ve never had the occasion to strike before and have now been researching online for a little while and not finding conclusive answers to my question:
How do I call or report this to my employer? PTO? Vacation? Sick Day? Dock Pay? Obviously they don’t have a “strike” category for reporting employee’s time.
One of my search results led to a discussion about this on Reddit and a big debate seems to be whether to take PTO or not. Many people said that taking PTO defeated the purpose of the strike, but I think that this situation is different than a normal strike because the point of this one is not to impact my employer but to send a message that we can impact the economy to hurt the Federal administration.
Edit: marked a phrase as bold.
Your intent may be aimed at the administration, but the way it actually is supposed to work is that you’re withholding labor from your workplace, which then makes less money, which affects the economy. A one-day strike is really more of a threat that you could do such a thing for longer term and hold the economy hostage.
In reality, if your fellow workers are not organized and on the same page as you, this is kind of an empty threat, since the company can probably fire and replace you without much issue. That would make your one-day, one-person action primarily symbolic, like marching down a street holding a sign. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with calling out sick for this, since you can’t actually threaten an effective strike right now.
The real work, then, is to organize your coworkers. If you have a union, you can strike for real.
Thanks, this is insightful and useful, and I’ll keep it in mind for if there is another opportunity.
Call out sick. Use stomach bug as the excuse. No need to let them know the truth.
The whole point of a strike is the employer knows you are striking and that you want x to change in order for the strike to stop. What change is being achieved with your employer if they think you are sick?
This is a different situation because we’re not making demands of our respective employers but of the federal government. I’m not sure what the right answer is.
If not even your direct employer is aware of a strike that presumably affects them, how the hell would a government five, ten layers removed be able to tell?
Not going to tell you not to take your sick day. I take sick days too…
You can have a phenomenon that looks like noise at small sample sizes, but becomes obvious when the size increases.
For one small business, a 5% change in productivity for one day might be business as usual, while for a nation it would be alarming.
Additionally, now that these people aren’t working, they can go and protest, the other part of a typical strike. That’s what actually gets eyeballs on the issue. It was national news that Minnesota just did one.
Honestly, this question is on my mind as well.
I would like to join the single-day general strike that is being called for the US this Friday, January 30th
What backing is there for this strike? For example, are there any labor unions, community organizations, and cultural leaders involved like in the recent Jan 23rd Minnesota strike? [Edit: the answer is a pleasant yes! https://nationalshutdown.org/home#endorsers ]
Take a sick day regardless, unless you’re going to use them all in the future, but if it’s just a few social media posts saying “general strike now!”, of which there have been hundreds of attempts over the past few years, without any institutional backing, then temper your expectations. Worker unions exist for us to organize us! So if it’s a real strike you want, unionize, and push the union to act.
DO NOT give your name, phone number, email address to that website
What backing is there for this strike? For example, are there any labor unions, community organizations, and cultural leaders involved like in the recent Jan 23rd Minnesota strike? [Edit: the answer is a pleasant yes! https://nationalshutdown.org/home#endorsers ]
Thanks for linking it. I had seen it. It’s a legitimate question. There seem to be lots of small organizations, but I haven’t noticed any of the major national unions yet. However, we have to start somewhere. If we could only build momentum on this, perhaps it could grow into something much larger.
Nothing about that website gives me confidence. It’s unclear who’s behind it and the “list of endorsers” is literally just a list without logos or statements from organizations. No URLs to their websites, even. It could just be scraped text.
While they have no contact information, they insist that we give them our names emails, and phone numbers. This identifying information. Nope!
Yes, good points.
Your paid time off is your pay, its something you’ve earned and your employer owes you. Use it.
Right, I’m thinking this way too, but it seems that there are many dimensions to this question. Aside from potential impacts on me and on my employer, I’m wondering by which mechanism does a general strike create an impact? Upward pressure? News coverage? Public sentiment and consciousness? All of them combined?
As an individual, you’re mostly just stuck with “symbolic solidarity”.
Ideally you would have prepared beforehand and talked with your fellow employees. Hopefully, as a group, you all would decide to take part in the general strike with some prepared talking points and statements to be made to your employer/customers/local media.
Ideally, on such a large scale, the impact could be in the “All of them combined” category.
Thank you, that is insightful and useful. I’ll definitely keep that in mind for if another opportunity like this comes up.
