Trade union organization developed in many countries during the 19th century in an attempt to achieve better terms and conditions for industrial and agricultural workers. They were successors to, rather than developments from, the corporatism of the medieval craft guilds, as the agrarian and industrial revolutions led to the creation of much larger bodies of subservient labourers. The ultimate weapon of these workers when bargaining with employers was to withdraw their labour—to go on strike. For two main reasons this weapon was not immediately an easy one to use. Firstly, the legal position of a group collectively refusing to work for an employer was very dubious in most countries, and even where it was not illegal employers could often use threats and coercion to break strikes with impunity. Secondly, the existing socialist doctrine on strikes was far too radical to suit the pragmatic needs of workers simply trying to improve their working conditions. This doctrine, usually called syndicalism, called for a general strike to destroy the capitalist economy and replace it with a form of worker control. Not only did ordinary trade unionists not want this, but when they did go on strike it was easy to portray them as having revolutionary intent. Although unions had been organized and carried out small strikes for some time, the first mass strike in the United Kingdom was the 1889 dock workers strike. Although the law oscillated in many countries, especially over the right of strikers to picket their place of work (indeed the details of the right to picket remain controversial in the UK to this day), gradually the right to strike was granted in most jurisdictions. The key date in the UK was 1906 when the Trades Disputes Act was passed by a Liberal government, taking away the legal liability that strike leaders had previously risked. By the inter-war years the basic idea that a union could call a strike, and could unite with other unions to extend the strike, was accepted in most of the Western world.
In practice the use of the strike as a weapon in industrial disputes has varied widely.
In the USA major unions tend to negotiate contracts lasting for several years, during which no strikes are called, though there is frequently a lengthy strike during the renegotiating phase of each contract. In much of Europe, especially France and Italy, strikes have most often been political actions called to highlight the unions’ opposition to general government policies rather than being pragmatic negotiating tools. In the UK, particularly during the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, labour-relations laws have tended to put constraints on trade-union activities. Complex issues such as the conducting of ballots of trade union members before the leadership may call a strike, the right of striking union members preventing other workers (union members or not) from working, and the legalityof strikes called by local or factory leadership, but without support from the central union leadership, have been difficult to resolve. There are many conflicting elements at play: should balloting and ‘cooling off’ periods be compulsory before a strike can legitimately commence?; the validity of ballot results has been questioned when they are largely supervised by the union itself, and continued membership of the union is sometimes necessary for employment in the industry because of the ‘closed shop’; far from opposing the closed shop for the power it gives to unions, some employers actually favour it as it simplifies the negotiating procedure. In general labour-relations law in the UK has weakened unions, and made strikes much less common, and less effective when held. The 1984–85 miners’ strike was a particularly heavy symbolic defeat for the trade union movement. As trade unions became increasingly unpopular it was inevitable that they would be less willing to risk major strike action. But the real cause of the general decline of strikes throughout the Western economies has been the decline in the size of the industrial working class, and the even faster decline in the proportion of that class which is unionized. Similarly, the huge increase in the importance of part-time work in the Western economies has made the strike weapon largely anachronistic. Where strikes continue to be frequent, for example Italy, it is because they have always had more of a political and symbolic role than their pragmatic effect on employers justified. Italy may be the only country, for example, where self-employed taxi drivers have gone on strike. Nevertheless, the right to strike, if limited in law, is by now one of the basic civil liberties any modern society would be expected to guarantee.
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