#labor action

Why General Strikes Work and What Minnesota Is Showing the Country By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — April 2026 April is when things begin to move again. The weather shifts. The ground softens. People pay attention. That seasonal change is a useful metaphor for political reality in the United States right now, because what is beginning to…

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor‑in‑Chief of WPS News Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — January 27, 2026 A loose but rapidly spreading coalition of activists is calling for a nationwide day of economic disruption on January 30, 2026, under the banner “ICE‑OUT.” The action is being framed as a one‑day general strike or national shutdown, urging participants to withhold labor, schooling, and…

Millie DeYoung, a riveter, and Harry Pallatto, an assembler, dance in the Brewster Aeronautical Corporation Plant in Long Island City on May 30, 1944 during the employees' “stay-in” demonstration. They were protesting against layoff orders following the cancellation of a Navy contract. The demonstration was called off when the government agreed to hunt for new war work for the plant.

The pouring rain didn't stop members of the United Offices and Professional Workers, Congress of Industrial Organizations, from marching,, July 17, 1947. They were demonstrating at the Brooklyn Trust Company, on Montague Street in Brooklyn, on the first day of the country's first major bank strike. Employees were called out on strike by the CIO Financial Employees Guild to force the bank to reinstate three discharged union members and also to give a pay increase of 30%.

Employees of the Fleischer Studios picket the New Criterion Theater to protest the showing of Popeye and other cartoons drawn by striking Fleischer artists, 1937. The five-month strike led to the first union contracts in animation, a later strike at the Disney studios, and groundbreaking new works from frustrated employees who left these animation shops to set out on their own.