STRIKE STRATEGY
iastically in a body. In the early stages of great struggles (such as those of the railroad shopmen, Lawrence and Passaic textile workers, etc.), something of this same burning wave of solidarity sweeps through vast categories of workers not directly in the fight. The dramatic struggles going on in their industry inspires them with a sense of their own wrongs, fires them to fight to redress their own grievances and those of their class brothers already in the fight. It is a strike contagion, a spreading revolt of the workers.
Spreading the Revolt.
Our strike strategy must know how to mobilize these active reserves in such times and to throw them into the struggle. If such a situation occurs among organized workers, (as in the case of the railroad workers at the time of the national strike of the railroad shop mechanics in 1922) we must draw the various industrially related unions into the strike wave-fashion, one after the other or in groups, pooling their demands against the companies and breaking the resistance of the conservative leaders.
If the spreading revolt is among unorganized workers it must be extended rapidly from mill to mill and city to city along the lines of the industry or industries. This does not mean that formless masses of workers of all industries shall be drawn helter-skelter into the struggle. This may be necessary in certain deep-going struggles, but ordinarily our aim should be to bear closely in mind the economic relationship of the groups we strike, with the plan of bringing the real pressure towards our given objective.[1]
A great danger during such psychological upheavals
- ↑ Strikes of related groups of unions present many difficult problems which must be studied and borne in mind in our strike strategy. For example, the I. L. G. W. strike in New York weakened the Passaic strike in one respect by shutting off the market for dress goods, thus relieving somewhat the pressure on the Passaic manufacturers.
47
