So, a one-day strike typically has two functions.
The first is interrupting profits. That may seem trivial when it's only for a day, but that isn't necessarily the case by far. First of all because a lot of businesses ignore all the financial advice of just having savings for X number of months that they push on us ad nauseam, so they're actually often operating on much thinner margins than you might think.
Additionally some strikes, such as a general strike i'm willing to bet in Minnesota, can do a lot of damage To profits in revenue. Some years ago I was at a one day strike and protest at the port in my city. The longshoreman union was doing a one day strike and they shut down the ports. And even though it was just for a day, because it was a major US coastal city with a port, let alone a major port, companies lost millions of dollars were lost due to just that one day action.
For example, when dock workers went on strike in 2024, they were stopping a port that typically handled over $2 billion in goods every single day. That can have an extremely powerful impact. And while Minneapolis is not a major coastal city in that way, It is a major city, and it also does have a lot of shipping and transportation logistics I am willing to bet, As one of the relatively few major urban hubs in that area of the country and also I am willing to bet although I have not taken the time to look that it is a major city for trade with Canada including over water and in ports.
The second thing that one day strikes do is they make a threat. They're a demonstration that people are organized and determined enough to make a strike happen, and the economic losses will continue if the conditions that provoke the strike do. I have a family member in a union, he's a union captain, and when his union went on strike a few years ago, he talked about the strike authorization vote beforehand.
He said the strike authorization vote wasn't likely to do much in and of itself. The point of the strike authorization vote was to be a threat and a demonstration that the resolve and the anger was there.
The strike authorization, he explained, was the union putting a gun on the negotiation table.
It was the threat. It was the demonstration that companies should take them seriously - because the threat the threat of a strike was real. That matters - demonstrating you can do that is in fact necessary in order to for there to be A point in calling for a longer or prolonged strike. This is especially the case with ]the threat of a general strike in the US, which hasn't had a general strike in 80 years because general strikes are literally illegal in the US.
The one day strike is the people of Minneapolis putting the gun on the table. It's a demonstration that the people of the US can do a general strike, even when it is incredibly unprecedented. It's proof of concept.
It is the people of Minneapolis making a declaration: Fuck with us and there's more to come.
