Ian Allinson introduces a timely new pamphlet.

Most workers have never gone on strike. Even many staff employed by unions have limited experience because strike levels have been so low for over 35 years. Despite this, the halving of union membership since 1980 and the slew of legislation (still overwhelmingly not repealed) intended to prevent effective strikes, nearly all workers who go on strike win at least something.

Strikes remain an effective weapon against the rich and powerful. A strike can disrupt the production and distribution of products, the delivery of services, the flow of profits and the smooth running of society. It can give workers a taste of their potential power and undermines the power of unelected and unaccountable managers over workers. If run democratically and with high participation, it can educate and empower workers, drawing in new people to build strong union organisation for future battles.

The labour movement is poor at celebrating our successes, and worse still at drawing and sharing lessons from our successes and failures. Many strikers are left feeling more could have been achieved. To contribute to addressing these problems, Troublemakers At Work has published a new pamphlet: How To Win A Strike. Troublemakers At Work is a network of rank-and-file trade unionists in Britain, organised democratically and without affiliation to particular political groups or unions. To write the pamphlet, I ran workshops at Troublemakers’ own conference last July and at The World Transformed in October, gathering ideas and experiences from activists from many unions and industries to complement my own.

How To Win A Strike doesn’t guide you through the process of running a campaign or winning a ballot, it is focused on the strike itself. If you want a broader guide, Pluto Press published my Workers Can Win: A Guide To Organising At Work. The pamphlet doesn’t claim to provide a simple recipe for successful strikes, but we hope it does bust some myths, prompt you to ask the right questions, and provide some examples. 

The pamphlet starts by discussing some of the common reasons why strikes lose and the impact of different types of demands and objectives and how they are decided. It is all too common that a strike starts before the union has identified the decision-makers who can concede the workers’ demands. Chapters 5 and 6 explain how knowing whose mind you need to change can help you choose what action to take and how to escalate pressure – making a ‘plan to win’. The different types of strike action are explained along with the role of Action Short Of Strike and other forms of protest.

Chapter 7 covers the practicalities of strike days including pickets and other activities and explores the connections between industrial disputes and politics. Chapter 8 covers solidarity, fundraising and financial support for strikers. People often confuse solidarity with charity and miss the opportunities for workers to build their own strength in the process of giving solidarity to others.

If a strike is in a single small workplace, it is usually easy for members to discuss the progress of a dispute and directly take decisions about its conduct. The larger and more scattered the group of workers involved, the harder this can be. Chapter 9 talks about democratic control of strikes and talks. Employers often demand that negotiations are secret. Their representatives can still seek input from their stakeholders, but this disempowers workers’ representatives and sows divisions in union ranks. These problems are magnified if negotiations are carried out by officials employed by the union rather than workers elected by their colleagues. Keeping control in the hands of the workers can be a struggle in its own right.

Almost all strikes end in a settlement, which is like a peace treaty agreeing new borders between warring parties – they reflect the balance of power at a particular time, and if either party thinks the balance has changed in their favour, they may try to push the borders further back. Settlements usually include a degree of compromise and Chapter 10 discusses how to assess what is acceptable, how to talk honestly but constructively about less-than-perfect outcomes, and how to ‘build a side’ if a bad deal is accepted.

The final chapter talks about how we rebuild workers’ power. We need to challenge the transactional model that tells workers they are buying a service from ‘the union’ as a third party. This leaves members passive and hinders building collective action and power. The pamphlet is available for £4, for £1 as an ePub or free as a PDF download.

Despite defeats and retreat, the labour movement remains the largest mass democratic movement in society. It is the only movement organised at the point of production, in the workplaces where value is generated in capitalist society. Workers make society move, and by organising where we work, we can change it.