Strike Back

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Joe Burns. Strike Back

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1. The Strike and the Making of Public Employee Unionism

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That’s not to say that public workers did not strike at all during this period. Notable exceptions included teacher strikes over non-payment of wages during the Great Depression. However, these were short strikes over specific grievances, and did not result in union recognition. Most public employee strikes during the 1930s were concentrated among workers at the Work Projects Administration (WPA). From the start of the WPA in August 1935 through the end of 1937, “it did not have a single strike less month. In that period of two years and one-half it had at least 571 strikes.”20 WPA workers struck over a wide range of issues, including a living wage, establishing the union rate for skilled craft workers, and working conditions such as free transport to distant job locations. Strikers used a variety of tactics from picketing to takeovers of legislative meetings to sit-down strikes.21 Inspirational as these examples were, they paled in comparison to the dramatic upsurge of private sector workers. Public employees for the most part sat out the strike wave of the 1930s. As a result, an entire generation of public workers missed out on the benefits of unionization.

The Beginnings of the Public Employee Upsurge

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