wildcat strikes

Workers have today walked off the job at seven branches of Walmart across Dallas. The workers then joined protests outside, demanding that workers are paid a minimum of $25,000 a year. The action organised by the ‘OUR Walmart’ campaign has been played down by company lickspittles, who claim that very few employees have been involved, and that busloads of pickets had been transported between stores to boost numbers.

On Tuesday morning over 600 school bus drivers in Boston took wildcat action. They are angry at the complete ineffectiveness of their trade union (USW) and at the union-busting city administration, and the management style of Veolia, the private company now running the buses. Following an unsuccessful attempt at gaining an injunction, the mayor arranged a city wide scabbing operation by the police. The predictable purge and victimisation by bosses and union bureaucrats has now begun.

A short history of the militant nationwide wildcat strike of truck drivers in the Teamsters union against a union-management agreed pay rise of $1.10 an hour, which won a much bigger rise.

Jeremy Brecher's account of the struggles of rubber workers in Akron, Ohio, the centre of the American rubber industry. Growing disillusioned with the failure of the unions to improve their situation, the workers developed the sitdown strike.