Sitdown strike

A sit-down strike (or simply sitdown) is a labour strike and a form of civil disobedience in which an organized group of workers, usually employed at factories or other centralized locations, take unauthorized or illegal possession of the workplace by "sitting down" at their stations.^[1] By taking control of their workplaces, workers engaged in a sit-down demonstrate their power, build solidarity among themselves, prevent the deployment of strikebreakers or removal of industrial equipment, and cause cascading effects on the chain of production within and between factories. However, sit-down strikes are illegal in the vast majority of countries, complicating their use.

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Sitdown strikes played a central role in the unionization of manufacturing in the United States and France. In major strikes in the rubber and automotive industries in the United States, labor organizers with the United Rubber Workers of America and United Automobile Workers adopted the sitdown strike as a means for demanding unionization of factories, achieving major successes at Goodyear Tire (1936), General Motors (1936-37), and Chrysler (1937).^[2] Sit-down strikes peaked in the United States in 1937, and rapidly declined as workers began to face criminal prosecution for occupations while the National Labor Relations Board supervised both unionization elections and collective bargaining by between recognized unions and employers. While some sit-down strikes still occur in the United States, they tend to be spontaneous and short-lived.

A wave of sit-down strikes in France in May to August 1936 demanded and won union recognition and industry-wide negotiations on wages and benefits, and coincided with state guarantees of limited hours, vacation pay, and other social reforms.