Restore the Right to Strike

The right of workers to withhold their labor—to strike—is among the most important of human rights. No society can truly claim to respect liberty and deny workers the right to strike. International law recognizes the right to strike as a fundamental human right.

One of UE’s core principles, embedded in the preamble to our Constitution, is to “pursue at all times a policy of aggressive struggle to improve our conditions.” Throughout history, strikes have been critical to the growth of the labor movement, including UE. The right to strike is vital to maintain and improve our wages, benefits, and working conditions, and to resist the attack on democracy by anti-working class elements.

Strike action, and credible strike threats, played an important role in securing several UE contracts over the past two years. In June 2025, members of Local 1018, the union representing workers at Lanterman Regional Center, a non-profit organization in Los Angeles, California, won a 4.5-percent pay increase and the right to strike during the reopener negotiations after a 17-day strike. In May 2024, members of GOLD-UE Local 261, the union representing graduate teachers and researchers at Dartmouth College, went out on a 59-day strike that ended in a 17.5 percent raise, union shop, the right to arbitrate Title IX harassment grievances, and innovative just cause language, among others.

Strike threats from thousands of members in Locals 1043 and 300 (representing graduate workers at Stanford and Cornell) won both unions industry-leading contracts, including union shop, just cause, and wage increases. In Local 300, the quality of the strike threat from graduate workers, especially international graduate workers, forced their employer to agree to one of the strongest just cause protections in higher education.

In Local 1123, representing workers at National Consolidation Services (NCS) in Bolingbrook, Illinois, every single member signed a public strike pledge, winning just cause protections, reasonable cause before drug tests, and a wage reopener for 2026 that includes the right to strike over wages.

In the public sector, workers in 39 states lack the legal right to strike. As UE’s public-employee members can attest, mandatory arbitration disempowers the rank and file in the negotiation of their own contract. Recent legislative attacks on public workers included rollbacks of the right to strike where it once existed.

As was the case with the public-sector labor upsurge in the 1970s, just because a strike action is nominally “illegal” doesn’t mean it can’t be successful. Teachers in Massachusetts went on strike in 2024, risking fines and worse consequences in a state where public-sector employees are barred from striking. They won a living wage and parental leave by standing together on the picket line and forcing their employers to cave.

The Trump administration and far-right organizations like the National Right to Work Committee are trying to strip away our legal rights to bargain collectively on behalf of our fellow workers. For higher education locals in the private sector, this possibility is closer and more real than ever. The one power we will always retain—a power that no government or legal entity can strip from us—is the power to mobilize workers in a strike.

It is not just UE members who are using strikes to improve their conditions. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 31 major work stoppages in 2024, involving 271,500 workers—fewer than in 2023, but still near a 25-year high.

Fundamentally, the legal power we have to enforce our contracts, the authority we bring to the bargaining table, and the ability to advocate for our coworkers all exist only because we have organized enough workers that by standing together we can shut down production. Our right to strike is our most fundamental right as workers, and in times of legal peril and threats to all the other rights we have, striking could become our only recourse.

History is clear that, when faced with authoritarian or fascist governments, the labor movement is key to restoring democracy, precisely because unions have the power to strike and shut down significant parts of the economy. This was demonstrated most recently in South Korea when the president declared martial law in order to overcome political opposition and the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions led the successful effort to overturn the coup through not only demonstrations but also strikes in key industries.

Across the world, unions have made use of general strikes both to bring down authoritarian regimes and to protect or advance important social programs and protections. It is a tool that the U.S. labor movement has failed to learn how to use, but it appears to be increasingly necessary that we do so.

It is essential that we prepare to strike. We prepare financially, we prepare locally, we prepare nationally, and we prepare together. When the boss tries to divide us, we fight—and we win—by standing together as unions and as workers.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 79^th UE CONVENTION:

1. Calls for the continued use of the strike as the primary weapon against the employer, characterized by careful planning and timing, full membership involvement, and mobilization of community and political support;
2. Urges locals to increase communication and coordination, and align their timelines, to maximize the collective strike power of UE workers;
3. Calls upon locals and regions to include as part of their political action work a demand for the restoration of the right to strike for private and public workers without retaliation or replacement;
4. Directs the national union to provide renewed member education on UE strike policy;
5. Urges locals to seek the right to strike on grievances as part of their collective bargaining demands;
6. Encourages UE members and locals to learn more about the need to restore the right to strike by reading Joe Burns’ books Reviving the Strike and Strike Back; and learn about their legal rights and effective tactics in strikes by reading Robert Schwartz’s Strikes, Picketing and Inside Campaigns; and the UE pamphlet Preparing For and Conducting A Strike: A UE Guide.