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by hollywood_court 327 days ago
I imagine we could get a lot of issues resolved if public school teachers went on a nationwide strike for only a few days. Not even a complete week.

The same could be said about back of house restaurant staff or caregivers like CNAs or daycare staff.

The two most vulnerable groups of people in our society are young children and the elderly. And the people who take care of those two groups are treated terribly and paid non-living wages.

Having them go on strike for a few days would at the very least bring a great deal of attention to the matter.

3 comments

Not at all against the idea, thinking about it from the other perspective: people would just use leave, or WFH, or take LWOP for the teacher aspect to take care of their kids. Or form a commune where one parent takes care of ~10 kids and everyone else goes to work.

Elderly care, yes that would probably be more effective. However, I can see a scenario where people would pass away from a lack of care even if for a few days. This opens up a whole new can of worms.

Never tell them when the strike is going to end, it ends when your demands are met not a moment before and they should never hear otherwise.
There are multiple types of strikes.

Some are as you describe, but that's generally considered the last resort: those strikes are the pitched battles of labor wars.

It's much more common to have strikes with smaller scope and a defined endpoint, which are more or less warning shots. They show a) that the union is serious, b) that it has the support of its members to strike, and c) just how devastating it can be when they do so.

If teachers unions across the country were to coordinate a three-day strike, it would send an incredibly strong message to school boards and state departments of education—both directly, and indirectly through the collective screams of parents. (Unfortunately, at this point, any efforts to help teachers and improve public education are going to be seriously hamstrung by the Trump administration's destruction of the federal Department of Education.)

Yup, sounds very straightforward to me. At least ten days of mandatory strike should be mandated by law as it can resolve so many issues.