How to Win Strikes--Part 1

By Harry DeBoer

Harry DeBoer was a leader of the 1934 Minneapolis General Strike and he spent the next 60 years of his life teaching and agitating for militant unionism. This is the first of two parts of a pamphlet he wrote in 1984. In the first installment, DeBoer makes the case that “nothing has fundamentally changed in the relationship between employer and employee” since the great class battles that built the CIO. In Part 2 he shows how union leaders can activate and mobilize members to fight and win strikes and, in so doing, to rebuild a militant mass working class movement in this country.


Corporations are increasingly taking advantage of workers. Despite huge profits, companies are demanding—and getting—big concessions.

When unions are able to get wage raises, many times the increases are small and don’t keep pace with inflation.

The standard of living is falling. Many workers can barely get by and their debts continue to climb.

Non-unionized workers are especially hard hit. Low paid jobs are proliferating. Without the job protection of unions, unorganized workers face all kinds of attacks on their job conditions. Their hours are cut. They are laid off at the employers’ whim with no seniority rules in force.

A New Mood

It need not be this way. The era of concessions can, must and will come to an end. There’s evidence of a new mood among workers. Unions report that some unorganized workers are asking for organizing drives. They want higher wages, better working conditions and on-the-job protections that come with union membership. One senses a greater desire among rank-and-filers to fight back. Big battles are ahead and I predict a major labor upsurge in the near future. This pamphlet is aimed at the leaders and participants of the battles to come. Strikes can be won.

A strike is always a last resort. That’s how it should be. But these days, unless workers are prepared to strike, employers will not give workers a fair deal at the bargaining table. Workers need to be prepared to withhold their labor in order to obtain a just settlement.

In the past few years, significant strikes have been lost. Workers who walk off the job are replaced by scabs. Major strikes have been broken. Workers have permanently lost their jobs.

This has led some in the labor movement to wrongly conclude that strikes can no longer succeed. They point to the recent defeats and say, “What’s the point of fighting?” As a result, unions have signed contracts with wholesale concessions, even though the employer could afford good wage raises and improved working conditions.

Some unions, fearful of strikes, have resorted to alternative tactics such as public pressure campaigns. Some union leaders have proposed such tactics as a substitute for strikes. But while public pressure campaigns can help, if the employer knows that the union is not prepared to strike, such campaigns have much less chance of success. The employer will squeeze the union dry if he knows the union is not going to strike.

The 1934 Strike was a Model

I have confidence in the new generation of workers. I believe they will begin to turn toward labor militancy in order to achieve a decent standard of living for themselves and their families.

The 1934 truck drivers strike in Minneapolis was a model of how to fight and win. We brought truck traffic to a standstill in the city, we drove the scabs off the streets and we won a decisive victory. We gained union recognition, won our first contract and came away with wage increases and improved conditions.

Strikes in Minneapolis, Toledo and San Francisco in 1934 set off a wave of militant job actions that led the way to the formation of the great unions in this country. Those militant strikes of the 1930’s forged the industrial unions that exist today.

But during the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, unions became more complacent. The picket line battles of earlier times subsided. Unions set up picket lines, generally expecting them to be honored and they were. But in the late 1970s and the 1980s, that changed.

Employers became more aggressive. They tested the waters and found they could break strikes without too much trouble. Scabbing became more common. Years ago, no one dared cross a picket line. Today, in cities across the nation, workers can recount stories of employers who broke strikes by sending in scabs.

A Brief History of the Strike

There is only one way to win a strike: Shut the operation down. If it is a factory or other business, it cannot operate. If it is a transportation industry, it cannot move. A strike means all work must stop. It means that supervisors cannot be permitted to keep things going. It means scabs must be prevented from taking over the workers’ jobs. Today, a strike cannot be won with a handful of pickets. It requires mass action in the street, led by the striking union.

The 1934 Minneapolis truckers strike was, in reality, three strikes: the coal drivers strike in February, a broader strike in May, and a resumption of the strike in July in which we finally achieved victory. In the coal divers strike, we did not have enough pickets at the beginning of the walkout to successfully close all the yards that were being struck. I organized what became known as cruising pickets. We could picket a gate, and let trucks that were still operating out of the coal yards so police would think the trucks were home free. We’d let the trucks get two or three blocks from the yard, drive up in cars, force the trucks to stop and pour the coal on the street. In several days, virtually all the coal truck driving operations had come to a halt. It was a bitterly cold winter, families and businesses needed coal. The companies caved in and we won.

Farrell Dobbs, another young Teamster leader and myself, were assigned to stay at the union hall in the evenings and sign up new members. They came by the thousands to join our union, Teamster Local 574 (it’s now called Local 544). When workers see a leadership that knows how to fight and win, they will not hesitate to join. The February victory had made our union considerably stronger.

In the May strike, the police recruited several deputies and handed them clubs to drive the strikers off the street. In one incident, some of our pickets were ambushed by police and a number of men and women pickets were beaten badly. We got some sticks in self-defense and, in a major street battle, drove the special deputies off the streets. It became knows as The Battle of Deputy’s Run.

In the July strike, which began after the companies reneged on their agreement with the union, the police open fired on unarmed strikers. Two workers were killed and nearly 60 strikers were wounded, many of them shot in the back.

This brutal attack backfired. Instead of weakening the union, it strengthened the workers’ resolve, and drew even more public support to our side. Finally, in August 1934, the company accepted a settlement, a giant victory for the Teamsters and the entire labor movement. The strike put Minneapolis on the road to becoming a union town, spurring organizing drives throughout the city and state and across the Midwest.

The School Books

The school books today don’t tell much about labor’s story. They have little to say about the rise of unions and the enormous sacrifices of workers in order to make this a better world. The employers would like workers to forget their past.

Indeed, the bosses like to say that things are different now. They contend that the old fighting days are behind us, that militancy is ancient history. Some companies show workers expensive films, touting labor-management cooperation and “quality circle” meetings that encourage workers to meet with managers to solve the company’s problems. Work faster, produce more, and above all don’t fight us—that’s the company’s line.

These employers, with their slick appeals for collaboration, are invariably the same ones who go to the bargaining table to demand concessions and wage freezes from the union.

The truth is that nothing has fundamentally changed in the relationship between employer and employees. The boss is still the boss. Only today, he hires high-priced union busting consultants who coat the union busting message in syrup. “Collaborate with management” are often code words for undermining and breaking the union.

Union leaders should understand the capitalist system. Our leaders in 1934 knew that the profit system drove the business leaders to try to break our union. While the union leadership did not attempt to press its revolutionary perspective on the membership, that perspective—and organization—were important to winning the strike.

What Workers Learned

What workers learned in the 1930’s was that standing together in large numbers, they could beat back the union busters, and win the necessary wage increases and improved conditions. Fifty years later that still applies. Workers today must take a militant stance in order to achieve success. Token picket lines are insufficient. Unions must organize mass picketing with hundreds or thousands of workers to stop any possibility of scabbing. Some union leaders say that’s impossible today. Within a day or two, they argue, the employer will go to court and obtain an injunction to limit the number of pickets to three or four per gate.

My answer: In 1934 we papered the wall with injunctions. The employer can always find some anti-union judge to sign a piece of paper. But strikes come down to a relationship of forces. If our forces are bigger and more powerful than theirs, we will win.

But, if we ignore the injunction and continue to mass picket, the police will arrest us, some union leaders argue.

My answer: So be it. Let them fill the jails to overflow. The union should bail them out and get the mass of workers back on the picket lines, joined by fresh forces that have been angered by the arbitrary actions of the authorities. We must keep the workplace we are striking shut down.

In Part 2, DeBoer talks about how union leaders can overcome passivity of the members and mobilize militant mass actions. Look for Part 2 at LaborLeft Blog in two weeks.

How to Win Strikes is available in pamphlet form, with additional material from the International Workers League, at www.wellreduse.com.

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