I would like to join the single-day general strike that is being called for the US this Friday, January 30th, but I’m wondering exactly how to do this. I’ve never had the occasion to strike before and have now been researching online for a little while and not finding conclusive answers to my question:
How do I call or report this to my employer? PTO? Vacation? Sick Day? Dock Pay? Obviously they don’t have a “strike” category for reporting employee’s time.
One of my search results led to a discussion about this on Reddit and a big debate seems to be whether to take PTO or not. Many people said that taking PTO defeated the purpose of the strike, but I think that this situation is different than a normal strike because the point of this one is not to impact my employer but to send a message that we can impact the economy to hurt the Federal administration.
Edit: marked a phrase as bold.
Right, I’m thinking this way too, but it seems that there are many dimensions to this question. Aside from potential impacts on me and on my employer, I’m wondering by which mechanism does a general strike create an impact? Upward pressure? News coverage? Public sentiment and consciousness? All of them combined?
As an individual, you’re mostly just stuck with “symbolic solidarity”.
Ideally you would have prepared beforehand and talked with your fellow employees. Hopefully, as a group, you all would decide to take part in the general strike with some prepared talking points and statements to be made to your employer/customers/local media.
Ideally, on such a large scale, the impact could be in the “All of them combined” category.
Thank you, that is insightful and useful. I’ll definitely keep that in mind for if another opportunity like this comes up.