Strikes are more common today than in the 2010s, but they’re still rare. Only two in a thousand U.S. workers took part in a strike last year. We asked readers who’ve struck to tell their stories.  

The sweet smell of self-respect

No contract, no cookies

The first day on strike at the Nabisco bakery felt like a relief to Regina Klavano. 

Tensions had been rising for weeks as Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco, and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local 364 neared a strike. Supervisors were filming workers in order to train scabs once the strike started. Klavano herself had been locked out two weeks before the strike after confronting a supervisor about the filming.

Workers at the Mondelez International-owned bakery walked out at noon on Aug. 10, 2021.

“When we finally got out there on strike, just seeing people’s faces, you could tell it was a relief and people were happy because it finally happened,” Klavano said.

Union leaders didn’t tell workers when the strike would happen to avoid word getting back to management. Klavano learned of the strike just hours before it began. 

More than 200 workers at the Portland facility went on strike after years of concessions that saw Mondelez take away pensions, raise the age for retirement eligibility, bring in non-union cleaners, and more. 

“I just remember being so angry. It’s exhausting, being that angry,” Klavano said of the years of losses leading up to the strike. Klavano started working at Nabisco in 2000 and joined the Local 364 executive board in 2003. 

That anger helped keep up the energy on the picket line, but uncertainty over the strike’s outcome started to nag at Klavano. “As a couple of weeks go by, that’s when it starts weighing on you,” Klavano said.

Mondelez bussed in scab workers and hired security guards who were physically aggressive toward protesters. Strikers blocked railroad tracks to prevent a delivery of sugar and flour. Workers at other Nabisco factories joined in the strike. 

Strikers maintained the picket line every day, with big rallies on Saturdays that Klavano described as like their own church. Allies joined the rallies, other unions refused to cross the picket line, and supporters dropped off food and water.

“It makes you realize, when you stand up to a huge company like that, how many other people admire that and want to do that, but they’re scared, or maybe their union isn’t strong,” Klavano said.

The strike lasted five weeks and resulted in a new contract in which Mondelez backed off demands for concessions and made improvements to pay and retirement contributions.

Your savings account is your strike fund  

Sheet metal shutdown

In Dave Page’s view, neither side wins in a drawn-out strike.

Page was a 26-year-old journeyman when he and other members of Sheet Metal Workers Local 16 went on strike in April 1979. The strike ended after nearly four weeks with members winning significant raises that brought wages up to $14.59 per hour, the Labor Press reported at the time.

“We had a lot of things to look forward to. It was a great time. There was plenty of work around. Everything was going to be fine. And then the ‘80s came, and we ended up giving back most of what we had earned,” Page said. The early 1980s recession was, at the time, the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Page worked at American Sheet Metal, one of around 25 shops where workers went on strike. American Sheet Metal shut down its fabrication work at the end of 1979, less than a year after the strike. Members weren’t supposed to picket at their own shops, but because of a clerical error, Page was assigned to picket outside his work. 

The environment on the picket line didn’t get ugly, Page said, even as strikers watched office workers enter the shop to finish up the union members’ work. The shop wasn’t in a high-traffic area where striking workers could get the public’s attention with marches and chants. The picket line’s main function was to get delivery truck drivers to turn around, Page said.

“There was probably more turmoil at home than at the work site, because of the unknown,” Page said. When the strike started, Page and his wife had a six-month-old baby, had just purchased a home, and were living paycheck to paycheck. 

Page’s main advice for potential strikers — or for just about anyone — is to save money. “Put those three months of living expenses away, because you never know what’s going to happen — and it just might be a strike,” Page said.

The experience of being on strike, not knowing how or when it would end, was unsettling, Page said. That feeling has made him even more supportive of workers on strike now.

Page has now been a member of the union for more than 50 years, joining in 1972, reaching journeyman status in 1978, and maintaining his membership since retiring in 2009. 

A picket line means do not cross

Grounded for good reason

Melynda Zauner had been an American Airlines flight attendant for less than a year when the Association of Professional Flight Attendants went out on strike.

On the morning of Nov. 18, 1993, Zauner walked out of the Raleigh, North Carolina airport teary-eyed, clutching the hands of her fellow striking flight attendants as they led their group out of the airport.

“I was really emotional because I just thought I would never be returning to a job that I loved,” Zauner said.

Leading up to the strike, Zauner wasn’t sure what she would do. Looking back more than 30 years later, she feels proud of herself for trusting her gut.

“If all of these women that have been flying for 20, 30, 40 years are willing to give it all up, then there’s a reason, and I need to just stick with them,” Zauner recalled thinking.

Zauner was supposed to work another flight out of Raleigh and eventually make it back to her base in Miami. Instead, Zauner and her coworkers rented a car and sped back to Florida.

She spent the drive sleeping in the backseat and worrying about her job as her two more experienced coworkers reassured her that everything would be fine.

At the time, Zauner was living with two other young American Airlines flight attendants. Their supervisors kept calling, claiming tons of flight attendants were working and offering base transfers to wherever they wanted if they came back to work. Zauner said she didn’t answer the phone, but her roommates did. Both crossed the picket line.

Zauner said she didn’t talk to her roommates for years after that.

The strike lasted five days before President Bill Clinton brokered a deal that ended the strike and sent the union and airline to arbitration, which the airline had previously refused.

Zauner spent those days calling into the union, writing to politicians, and looking for a new place to live after her roommates got base transfers in exchange for crossing the picket line.

It took nearly two more years, but arbitrators eventually awarded flight attendants a 17% raise over the five-year contract, and maintained their vacation benefits and most rules the airline had tried to change, but allowed the airline to reduce the number of flight attendants on some flights.