The collective withdrawal of labor — workers stopping work together to force a concession from an employer or a state. The strike is the labor movement's ultimate weapon because it converts the worker's dependence on wages into the employer's dependence on workers: when production halts, the employer loses money and must bargain. Its forms range from the orderly walkout to the factory occupation and the general strike, and its history is a long contest between that leverage and the countermeasures built to break it.
A single worker who quits is replaceable. A thousand workers who stop together, at the same hour, can shut a factory, a railroad, or a port. That is the whole idea of the strike. It does not appeal to the employer's conscience. It appeals to the employer's ledger. The worker's weakness is that he needs the wage. The strike works by making the employer, for once, need the worker more.