When the Workers Walk: A U.S. History of General Strikes—and What the World Can Learn From It

Across the globe, labor movements have defined political eras, toppled governments, and transformed working conditions. But in the United States—a nation often allergic to the word “strike”—general walkouts have been rare, explosive, and brutally suppressed. What follows is a history of how U.S. workers pushed back, what it cost them, and why these lessons matter far beyond American borders.

Let’s get something straight: general strikes in the United States are as rare as billionaires paying taxes. But when they do happen, they shake the foundations. The U.S. doesn’t exactly have a great track record when it comes to tolerating mass worker uprisings. Think of it as a national allergy to solidarity.

Take the Seattle General Strike of 1919. Post-World War I, inflation soared and wages stagnated. Around 65,000 workers shut down the city for five days. The result? Hysteria. The mayor called it a Bolshevik revolution (Spoiler: It wasn’t), federal troops were deployed, and newspapers screamed about a Red Menace. The strikers were mostly peaceful. But America’s ruling class panicked like someone had just deleted their stock portfolios (Brecher, 1997).

Then there’s the San Francisco General Strike of 1934. Born out of a brutal longshoremen’s strike, the movement brought the city to a halt. Two strikers were killed. National Guard rolled in. The press blamed “outside agitators” (read: anyone not rich). And yet, the strike led to major gains in union strength on the West Coast. So of course, the response was to demonize the movement and pass laws to make organizing harder (Taylor, 1986).

We can’t skip the 1946 Oakland General Strike. After department store workers were busted for picketing, transit workers and others joined in solidarity. The city froze for two days. Again: no riots, no looting—just labor unity. Local officials responded by banning sympathy strikes (Lichtenstein, 2002).

In short, U.S. general strikes proved that when the people stop working, power panics. Every time labor flexed too hard, elites cracked down harder. It’s a cycle that international labor communities will recognize all too well—from Britain’s 1926 General Strike to India’s massive worker mobilizations in recent years.

Modern unionists dreaming of another general strike face a triple-threat boss fight: legal blockades (thanks to Taft-Hartley), media propaganda (because workers wanting bread are portrayed like anarchists torching bakeries), and union bureaucrats terrified of losing their tax-exempt status.

Still, the lesson is global: power doesn’t concede without a shove. The U.S. experience—while uniquely repressive—mirrors how elites respond to labor solidarity worldwide. Strike hard enough, and the suits will always scream socialism.

So, the next time someone says, “You can’t organize a general strike,” remind them: we’ve done it before, we’ve survived the backlash, and workers everywhere have drawn blood from the machine. The fear we face today isn’t that it’s impossible—it’s that if we do it right, it just might work.

References

• Brecher, J. (1997). Strike! South End Press.
• Lichtenstein, N. (2002). State of the Union: A Century of American Labor. Princeton University Press.
• Taylor, R. (1986). General Strike: San Francisco 1934. IWW Press.