Ep 28: Workplace Occupations and Sit-Down Strikes

Labour Days: a labour movement podcast

Edd takes us through the history of the tactic of workplace occupations, and we discuss their re-emergence in Britain and Ireland in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash. We're very lucky to be joined by Jaymie Rigby, one of the workers who occupied the Vestas wind turbine blades factory on the Isle of Wight in 2009. As we face a new wave of job losses, can we rediscover these tactics? Some selected additional reading: “How sit-down strikes built unions in the USA” https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/04/07/how-sit-strikes-built-unions-usa Genora Johnson remembers the Flint sit-down strike http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/dollflint.html “With Babies and Banners”, documentary film on the Flint strike, focusing particularly on the role of women activists https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa75V-tdBko France 1968: https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2018-05-21/france-1968-when-ten-million-workers-took-capitalism-throat https://libcom.org/library/general-strike-france-1968-factory-factory-account Workers' Liberty's pamphlet on the Vestas occupation https://www.workersliberty.org/files/2020-11/vestas.pdf “Lessons of the Thomas Cook occupation” https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/08/29/thomas-cook-lessons-dublin-occupation An account of the Visteon occupations from a broadly libertarian/anarchist perspective https://pasttenseblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/01/today-in-london-radical-history-visteon-workers-occupy-their-factory-enfield-2009/ Articles on the occupied workplace movement in Argentina: https://libcom.org/library/occupying-resisting-producing-argentine-workers-take-over-abandoned-factories-andres-gau https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/mar/10/occupy-buenos-aires-argentina-workers-cooperative-movement https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2017-07-26/factory-without-bosses (interview with a worker from the Zanon “FaSinPat”, “factory without bosses”)