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.

  • CrocodilloBombardino@piefed.socialEnglish
    17·
    10 days ago

    Your intent may be aimed at the administration, but the way it actually is supposed to work is that you’re withholding labor from your workplace, which then makes less money, which affects the economy. A one-day strike is really more of a threat that you could do such a thing for longer term and hold the economy hostage.

    In reality, if your fellow workers are not organized and on the same page as you, this is kind of an empty threat, since the company can probably fire and replace you without much issue. That would make your one-day, one-person action primarily symbolic, like marching down a street holding a sign. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with calling out sick for this, since you can’t actually threaten an effective strike right now.

    The real work, then, is to organize your coworkers. If you have a union, you can strike for real.