general strike

general strike, the stoppage of work by a substantial proportion of workers in a range of industries in an organized effort to achieve economic or political objectives. A strike covering only one industry cannot properly be called a general strike.

The idea of a general strike, as a deliberate part of the tactics of collective bargaining, likely originated in the United Kingdom, where the term had entered the English language by the 1830s. Later in the century, syndicalist thinkers in France believed that workers could achieve a social revolution by using a general strike to directly overthrow the owners of industry.

General strikes in Europe

General strikes in Europe first became possible with the growth of large trade unions late in the 19th century. Two large general strikes occurred in Belgium in 1893 and 1902 in support of universal male suffrage. Large-scale strikes took place in Sweden in 1902 over similar issues and in Italy in 1904 over the use of soldiers as strikebreakers. The general strike that gripped Russia during the Revolution of 1905 forced Tsar Nicholas II, the last emperor of Russia, to issue the October Manifesto, in which he promised to create a constitution and a national legislature. In 1909 another general strike was staged in Sweden, this time in response to the wage-freeze and lockout policies adopted by employers who faced falling profits. Nearly half of the country’s total workforce struck, and the stoppage lasted a month before the strike was settled. The 1909 strike thereby showed that major economic reforms could be achieved without resorting to violence.

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A general strike in Berlin thwarted an attempted right-wing takeover of the national German government in 1920. In 1926 Britain faced one of the largest general strikes, which was undertaken by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in support of the nation’s coal miners, who were in a bitter dispute with mine owners. About 3 million of Britain’s 5 million trade union members joined the strike, which was intended to force the government to intervene in the coal dispute. However, the strike lasted only nine days, ending after the TUC realized that it was unable to disrupt the government’s essential public services.

General strikes have been less frequent in Europe since World War II. Among them were a general strike in France in May 1968, touched off by student demands for educational reform, and a set of nationwide strikes for social security and educational reform in Italy in November 1968, involving more than 12 million workers. France was again the scene of a general strike (November–December 1995) that shut down public transportation, hospitals, mail delivery, and many other public utilities and services in protest against the government’s plans to cut social welfare and other benefits for citizens. And a general strike took place in Denmark three years later, as some 500,000 workers, representing one fifth of the Danish workforce, left their jobs while demanding the end of austerity measures.

General strikes continued in Europe in the early 21st century. In November 2012, for example, the first European multinational strike, a day-long event, took place across southern Europe and was accompanied by sympathetic protests in other European countries against painful austerity measures imposed in response to the European debt crisis beginning in 2009. In June 2019, hundreds of thousands of women in Switzerland conducted a day-long strike to protest gender inequality in the country. And in Belgium in November 2025, a wide range of unions participated in a three-day strike in opposition to government measures intended to reduce the country’s large national debt.

General strikes in the United States

During the second half of the 19th century several general strikes occurred in the United States. Among the first was an effort by enslaved men and women in the South to abandon farms and destroy crops near the end of the American Civil War (1861–65). Another general strike took place in New York City in 1872, when about 100,000 construction workers demanded an 8-hour workday in New York state, with only temporary success. Similar demands partly motivated a general railroad strike in multiple states in 1886 and a New Orleans general strike in 1892, which managed to secure increased wages, overtime pay, and a 10-hour workday. Later strikes occurred in Seattle in 1919, in Minneapolis, Minnesota and San Francisco in 1934, and in Oakland, California and other cities in 1946.

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General strikes in the United States came to a halt during the mid-20th century following the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 (over the veto of Pres. Harry Truman) and its amendment under the Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959. Key provisions of the combined legislation prohibited strikes conducted on political rather than economic grounds and banned “secondary boycotts,” or union efforts to stop one employer from dealing with another employer who is being struck or boycotted. The act also guaranteed employees the right not to join unions and permitted employment contracts that banned strikes or work slowdowns by union members.

As a result of such antiunion legislation and a significant decline in private sector union membership through the next 70 years (35 percent of private sector workers were unionized in 1954, 20 percent in 1981, and only 10 percent in 2024), general strikes in the United States became exceedingly rare. The first such strike took place on May 1, 2006, six months after the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005. “A Day Without Immigrants,” as the strike was called, involved demonstrations, business closers and boycotts, and worker walkouts across the country. Although it lasted only one day, the strike forcefully demonstrated widespread opposition to the legislation—particularly to a provision that would have turned undocumented immigrants into felons—and the House and U.S. Senate subsequently failed to agree upon a compromise bill.

Another general strike took place on January 23, 2026 in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota after an agent of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency shot and killed an American citizen, Renee Good, amid an anti-ICE protest in Minneapolis. “ICE Out of Minnesota: Day of Truth & Freedom,” came to be regarded as the largest general strike in the United States in 80 years. On the day after the strike, another ICE agent shot and killed another American citizen, Alex Pretti.

See 2025–26 Minnesota ICE deployment: The killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

General strikes in Asia and Africa

In some Asian and African countries, trade unions allied with independence movements often resorted to general strikes as a means of political protest during colonial rule. In contemporary times, the small scope of industry in those countries has tended to limit trade union activity. Wherever organized trade unions exist in those countries, however, they have continued to use the general strike as an instrument for achieving economic as well as political ends.