Evolution of Protests, Strikes, and Mass Movements into Riots

Protests, labor strikes and mass movements have been cropping up around the globe recently, and regularly devolve into social unrest.

What drives these events and how (and why) do they proliferate? What do they share in common? Do they each derive from individual sparks, or are they somehow intertwined? Can these social phenomena be contained and extinguished, or are they destined to disrupt our daily routines?

Ricardo Torres President & CEO – PSLC

The Beginning of Labor Protests

The first worker mass movements and strikes can be traced back to ancient Egypt in the 12th Century, BCEduring Pharaoh Ramses III’s reign. Over 3,000 years ago, the craftsmen and scribes responsible for building the tombs for Egyptian royalty weretreated very well for the time. They worked hard but were also given time to rest and the ability to work on their own tombs, which are widely regarded as the most elaborate in the region. Also, as a reward for their skilled labor, they were provided enough rations to live good lives for the time.

That all came to an end after repeated late deliveries and shortages of the workers’ rations. During the 29thyear of Ramses’ reign, the workers grew tired of the mistreatment and decided to hold the first labor strike on record. The craftsmen all lefttheir tools and went to the government officials, demanding their rations. It was a successful “strike” and became a recurring event as the workers realized their refusal to work put the officials in charge in a bind, leaving them no choice but to cave to the workers’ demands.

This is the first recorded set of events that created what is now thelabor unions’ biggest (and really, only) weapon. The strike.

Mass Movements through U.S. History

Americans tend to think of mass movements as lawless acts and something that happens in mostly third-world countries. However, the United States began as a protest in the form of the Boston Tea Party. Various additional offences beyond the original Stamp Act (compulsory housing of soldiers, extradition of “criminals” to England, etc.) triggered the original protest to evolve into a mass movement that spawned the Revolutionary War.

This process has not stopped but is a phenomenon that has withstood the test of time. A few significant mass movements in the not-so-distantpast include:

The Detroit Riots

The Detroit “12th Street” Riots took place in the summer of 1967 and were viewed as a race riot sparked by police abuse; however,many interviews suggest it was a planned rebellion. The raid of a “blind pig” (unlicensed bar) led to violence pouring into the streets.

The riot was so violent, including arson, looting and reported snipers, that the Michigan National Guard and federal soldiers were eventually send it. Before that, however, the Detroit Police Department was so overwhelmed that students in the police academy were forced into early graduation so they could help bring order to the streets.

The Stonewall Riots

The catalyst for the Stonewall Riots was a raid on the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, one of the few openly gay spaces in New York City.The customers fought back against the police and resisted arrest. Spectators forced the police to barricade themselves inside the bar, after which the protests increased, with many more people joining in. This continued for six days in the summer of 1969.

Many call the Stonewall Riots the beginning of the modern movement for LGBT+ rights. New York’s first Pride Parade took place later that year, increasing the movement’s visibility across the nation.

The Kent State Riots

The Kent State Riots began as a protest against expanding the VietnamWar into the neutral Cambodia. After protestors left a bar around midnight, they began rioting, throwing objects at police, breaking windows and lighting fires in the street. This turned into a four-day riot that resulted in Ohio National Guardsmen opening fire on student protestors, killing four and wounding nine others, both protestors and bystanders.

The riot and its aftermath prompted huge protests across the United States. There were widespread reports of firebombing and arson accompanying a nationwide student strike.

Of course, there are many more examples:
•Anti-Vietnam War protests
•Solidarity Day March (260,000 people in 1981)
•The Million Man March in Washington, D.C.
•The Million Woman March in Philadelphia, PA

These examples illustrate how mass movements are generally sparked byrelatively minor incidents but result in explosive and violent outbursts. Human emotions and reactions to social repression remain the same throughout time.

Mass Movements, Global Outreach and Strikes

When I was a union official working on outreach with International Labor Federations, I studied global labor movements to leverage their momentum in the U.S. Social movement unionists aim beyond the workplace as they believe that workplace democracy will not be achieved without a broader, popular movement that has the potential to alter the law and political power. Social media is now further enhancing these movements.

We realized that if we could get the unions involved with mass movements and connect with the generations of workers who support these movements, we could simply let nature take its course to recruit new members. I spent many years in different parts of the world learning howthese mass movements developed and spread and (more importantly) how toindoctrinate people into believing in these causes so we could recruit new union members. This is why it is so important for business owners, executives, and managers to understand that there is a correlation between mass movements, strikes, and unionization.

Recent Mass Movements

Mass movements have become more frequent over the past 15 years and seem to be hitting every inhabited continent.

South America

Nearly every nation in South America has been jolted by large protests or violent clashes in recent years. These have resulted from a continental surge of anti-government anger unlike anything seen in decades. Whether left- or right-wing, the governments of Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru, Paraguay, and even tiny French Guiana have all faced major demonstrations.

Labor unions in Colombia called for mass protests and strikes resulting in more than 250,000 people taking to the streets of Bogata and many other cities such as Cali and Medellin. The situation became sodire that the Colombian government closed its borders with Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil and Peru.

South America reflects a broader global pattern, in which there is anurgent search for fresh and effective political leadership in these agitated times and polarizing societies. This growing instability is dueto the current economic malaise felt across the continent, which follows from officials unwilling to reduce the size of government, privatize state-owned industries, or clean up corruption. This frustration is made worse by the wave of prosperity that swept across the continent in the early years of the 21st century that elevated over 50 million people into the middle class. These protests mostly represent these very disgruntled sectors, but also include students, leftists and indigenous groups.

Hong Kong

The originally peaceful protests in Hong Kong, which in one day saw more than two million protesters take to the streets, eventually turned into riots after police escalated their responses. The airport and highways were closed by hundreds of thousands of people in recent weeks.Many of the protestors’ actions ended in violent clashes between the police and pockets of demonstrators. The protests initially focused on abill that would allow extradition to mainland China. The authorities’ harsh responses to the protests coupled with a refusal by Hong Kong’s executive to completely withdraw the caused the protestors to continue returning to the streets.

After more than 13 weeks of protests and a political crisis, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, Carrie Lam, stated, “The government will formally withdraw the bill in order to fully allay public concerns.” Hong Kong authorities also stated that they would add two members to an appointed council, the IPCC, to investigate police misconduct to start “direct dialogue” with Hong Kong society and invite academic, professional and community leaders to study social issues and make appropriate recommendations to the government.

This withdrawal marks Hong Kong’s and the central Chinese government’s first concession to protestors’ key demands:
1.Complete withdrawal of the extradition bill
2.Dropping characterizations of the protests as “riots”
3.Release and exonerate arrested protestors
4.Establish an independent commission to investigate alleged police brutality
5.Carrie Lam’s resignation and universal suffrage for Hong Kong government elections.

As Ms. Lam’s announcement only fulfilled one of their demands and doubled down against several others, the mass protests continue to grow and other issues, such as poverty, are being added.

After the failure of the last protests in 2014, Beijing’s continued political involvement in Hong Kong left behind a disappointed generationof young activists who have been mobilized and invigorated by their fight for democracy.

Occupy Wall Street

Due to the economic problems facing the country at the time, with over 25 million Americans without jobs and more than 100 million Americans living in poverty-stricken environments, the Occupy Wall Street movement was born on 2011. More than 60 million Americans were living below the 125% poverty line.

The Occupy Wall Street movement initially began when protestors gathered in Manhattan and marched across the Brooklyn Bridge. This led to 700 arrests and gained huge publicity. Next was a mass sit-in to occupy Times Square, which carried over to cities across the United States and the rest of the world. Ultimately, the Occupy movement spreadto more than 950 cities in 82 countries.

The groups that joined the Occupy movement around the world believed that there was increasing economic inequality happening around the globeand the corporate world held too much influence over governments. Thesegroups occupied their own cities to attempt to advocate for a “better” economy.

The Occupy movements took advantage of social media to promote their protests and gather additional proponents. Facebook, Twitter and YouTubewere used to let people know when and where they could join the protests. This made it very easy to connect with other protestors, wherever they were located throughout the world, and stand together in solidarity.

Arab Spring

In late 2010, the Arab Spring protests began in Tunisia when a streetvendor in the provincial town of Sidi Bouzid sparked mass anti-government protests. Muhammad Bouazizi’s actions were the fuse thatlit a fire in Tunisia. According to most accounts, a struggling street vendor set himself on fire after a local official confiscated his vegetable cart and humiliated him in public. This struck a chord with thousands of other Tunisians who poured into the streets over the comingweeks.

Unable to control the crowds, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was forced to flee the country in January 2011 after being dictator for 24 years. Over the next few months, Ben Ali’s downfall inspired similar uprisings across the Middle East from Morocco to Bahrain.

Battle of Seattle

In 1999, the Seattle WTO protests, commonly known as the “Battle of Seattle”, offered a glimpse of what modern mass movements would look like today. It was a complex constellation of international social movements, ideas, discussions and organizing.

The civil disobedience and protests that arrived in Seattle had a distinctly international flair as local and international activists joined labor groups to set the stage for a gathering of international justice groups from the global North and South. Unions, women’s groups and environmental organizations all united in the protests.

I was personally at this event and noted the early problems faced. First, there were too many different organizations involved and they could not agree on an agenda. The other major problem is that many activists dressed up like turtles and whales and, in all reality, removed any seriousness from the mass protest. The entire event proved too fragile to accomplish anything, but Seattle is still a powerful example that labor groups like to point to as proof that they could still gather wide public support.

21st Century Mass Movements, Protests and Strikes

The prevalence of mass movements is growing in the 21st century. They are being led by a combination of activists and global labor federations. I find it interesting how the global labor federations have extended their focus beyond just workers’ rights.

On 9/23/19, groups struck in mass numbers to bring global attention to climate change. In the weeks leading up to these protests, we followed the global labor federations and their calls to involve the climate activists into their movements. IndustriALL, who is rapidly becoming a major player on the global labor stage, was working around the world to organize their protests, which they did with great success.

The list of general strikes around the world in the 21st century may have started in Guadeloupe and Martinque in 2009. This was followed by the largest strike wave since the 1980s:
•The 2010 strikes in China
•A massive garment worker strike in Egypt, which toppled President Hosni Mubarak in 2011
•Public worker and miner strikes in South Africa
•French strikes against pension reform, followed by similar strikes in the U.K., Italy, Greece, Belgium and Portugal
•A general strike across Europe in 2012
•Automotive and part supplier strikes in India that began in 2005 and continue to this day
•The biggest strike wave in four decades started in Brazil in 2011 and is still gaining momentum
•A series of general strikes in Argentina
•The miners’ strike in Chile
•Numerous strikes in Mexico across many different industries

More recent, and more frequent, mass movements and labor strikes in the 21st century, include:
•2017: The first general strike in Brazil in over a decade launched against the President’s plan to overhaul the pension system, which reduced public spending, social security, and funding for schools and universities. Thousands of workers clashed with riot police.
•2017: The Turkish government dismissed thousands of civil servants, many of whom were trade union organizers, in retaliation for an attempted coup d’état and terrorist activities. This resulted in work stoppages and mass protests across the country.
•2017: Unions and workers joined hundreds of thousands of marchers nationwide for the April 29th People’s Climate March.
•2017: Cities across the U.S. witnessed immigrant workers refusing togo to work on “May Day”. University students walked out of their classrooms, while labor and civil rights groups protested anti-immigrantpolicies. Similar “May Day” protests against injustice, improved working conditions, and universal suffrage occurred across the globe with millions of participants. Many of these protests turned violent, including in the U.S.

Many of these movements were, and still are, fueled by new and independent trade unions, nontraditional workers organizations, and emerging female-led organizations.

The rise of global protests and strikes should not be lost on us herein the U.S. It is not a coincidence that social unrest is on a sharp increase.

Violence vs. Nonviolence: Are Violent Protests More Effective than Peaceful Protests?

What drives these movements, and how and why do they proliferate? When do protests evolve into mass movements or riots? What either triggers mass movements, or deescalates them?

A “mob” is composed of people causing a disturbance. A “protest” is the organization of a group of people to cause the disturbance. A “riot”is the “action”; when a disturbance turns violent.

If there is no disturbance of the peace, then it is not a “mob” and they did not “riot”. If there is a disturbance of the peace, then those involved may be a “mob”. If there is violence (usually widespread), thenit is a “riot”.

Predicting the effectiveness of protests is difficult. It is hard to directly link the actions of demonstrators to leaders pushing for change. However, research does find a consistent trend: The longer and louder a protest persists, the more likely leaders are going to take action.

The goal of any protest is to gain attention, whether violence is involved, and whether such violence was incited by the protestors, counter protestors or law enforcement. The bigger idea is that reports of death or injury draw attention, just by themselves. There is no doubtthat violence leads to increased attention, in the same way that large crowds lead to increased attention, in the same way that persistence over time leads to increased attention. The question is: is this tactic successful in gaining support from the general public?

And yes, nonviolence is a winning tactic, especially when the stakes are extremely high. At the University of Denver, Political Scientist Erica Chenoweth analyzed all attempts to overthrow governments from 1900to 2006 and found that “nonviolent campaigns worldwide were twice as likely to succeed outright as violent insurgency,” but many other factors must be weighed.

Robb Willer, a Stanford University Sociologist stated that he “found the reason that extreme protestors were dissuasive is that less-radical bystanders couldn’t identify with them. People generally don’t see themselves as disruptors of the social order.” Willer also stated, “Evenfor causes they supported, ultimately, our belief in something is not surpassed by our desire to conform.” “When the social order is being greatly disrupted, when property is being destroyed, when there’s some risk of harm to people, that leads to a dis-identification effect, wherepeople say, ‘I’m not like those people.'”

Many anarchists will state that violent protests are historically theonly protests that have worked and will often quote Thomas Jefferson: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Mass Movements Are in Human Beings’ DNA

Looking back to the first strike in ancient Egypt demonstrates that human beings have an expressed desire to be treated fairly and rewarded for their efforts. Human beings have a desire for change when the world,their homelife, or their workplace is having a negative effect on them.It is this desire for change that can drive a content person to the point where they are willing to make a personal investment and literallyfight for change.

This happens when a breaking point has been reached. Once this happens, the natural fight-or-flight instinct takes over. A person will either give up and settle for living a life with little purpose or meaning, or they will stand strong with others who share similar beliefsin right and wrong. When they stand together, we start to see protests,mass movements and strike action. It is far easier for the average human being to fight side-by-side with people who have a similar mindsetthan it is to stand alone. Once momentum grows and the public recognizes that there is social injustice on the line, the mass movementphenomenon takes over.

Unions Latching on to Mass Movements

21st century political and economic struggles across the globe have wrought stronger alliances between global labor federations. The resurgence of labor and working-class strikes has spread on a worldwide basis, with the bulk of them located in Asia, Africa and LatinAmerica. A large portion of the strikes have followed local and regional recessions that caused labor unrest.

Between 1998-2002 and 2007-2008, rising food prices lead to protests in at least 30 countries, including Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Morocco, Egypt, Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Cameroon,Cote d’Ivoire, Mauretania, Haiti and Mexico. At this point, traditionallabor strikes play a small part, but labor unions and labor federationswere instrumental in the organization of these movements. Many of them were based on political initiatives against authoritarian regimes, such as during the Arab Spring and the 2012-2013 Maribor protests against members of the Slovenian political elite.

Additionally, continued global financial concerns contaminate every country, including the United States, and have contributed to renewed social movements and strikes. In the beginning of the Occupy movement, unions had little to no involvement. As it grew into a major movement, however, the unions began to implant themselves into the effort, even more so as it expanded around the world.

When Unions Attempt to Create a Mass Movement

At first, the Fight for $15 campaign seemed to come out of nowhere. It garnered nationwide, and eventually, worldwide attention. What most people did not realize at the time was that it was designed and implemented by the SEIU. The SEIU spent more than $30 million on the Fight for $15 campaign. When they finally emerged from behind the curtain, it did give them a lot of publicity, but it did not garner themany significant number of new members.

The SEIU’s original goal was to organize fast food workers based on the concept that small one- to two-day strikes would energize workers tomobilize, which it did, just not towards joining the SEIU. The success instead led to a call to increase the federal minimum wage. This actually works against the SEIU as they are excluded from negotiating onbehalf of workers when legislature pass laws.

The “kick in the pants” was that the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), which has no affiliation with the AFL-CIO or Change to Win Federation, did succeed in organizing the first group of fast food workers at an Oregon Burgerville. The SEIU tried to create a mass movement, but such movements that do not result in a real change in power dynamics cannot achieve lasting positive results for the unions.

A big part of reason that the SEIU failed is because the actual fast food workers had no fundamental involvement or sense of ownership in thecampaign. Successful union organizing requires that workers take ownership of the campaign and are fully vested in a successful outcome.

Mass Movement Strategies and Tactics Used by Unions

Organizing and advocacy are very different concepts, and this disconnect has led to a lot of discontent in the unions. For many members, advocacy has been a waste of money and resources that could, and should, have been used to negotiate better contracts and directly support members. But in the 21st century, unions are confronting competing interests. While the aging, mostly Caucasian, workforce is retiring, a much more diverse workforce is entering the labor market and the unions are struggling to remain relevant. There is aquestion of how they can continue to support their existing membership,while at the same time recruit new members.

When Unions Fail to Execute Mass Movement Strategies

A glaring example of a missed opportunity by the UAW is the most recent organizing attempt at Volkswagen and demonstrates how the unions forgot how to organize new members.

The UAW never rolled up their sleeves to do the hard work of grassroots worker mobilization. They grew complacent with the fact that Volkswagen was not really objecting to organizing and made no attempt tobuild any real support among the workers at Volkswagen. The UAW was attempting to build an institution, but not one founded on worker angst.Most workers had only one or two encounters with union organizers and were not involved in the core structure of the campaign.

The UAW relied too heavily on the neutrality agreement, but they never fully explained the 22-page agreement to the workers. Some parts of it, such as the section that committed the UAW to help in maintainingfull production at the plant, were interpreted by many workers as limiting collective bargaining demands.

Worker to worker communication, both within the Volkswagen facility and with unionized workers around the world, was almost nonexistent. This should have been the centerpiece of the union’s strategy to win. Detailed scripts for worker to worker communication are essential to anyorganizing drive but were severely lacking in this campaign.

When Unions Successfully Execute Mass Movement Strategies

While the UAW-Volkswagen organizing attempt was a failure for the union as they ignored basic principles, union-motivated mass movements do have recent examples of success:

Centro de Trabajdores Unidos en la Lucha

The alignment of unions with diverse outside organizations is growing as the unions take a more aggressive approach. Take the Centro de Trabajdores Unidos en la Lucha(CTUL), or Center of Workers United in the Fight, for example. The Mission Statement of the CTUL identifies how a different approach has proven to be successful.

“CTUL is a worker-led organization where workers organize, educate and empower each other to fight for a voice in their workplaces and in their communities. We partner with other organizations and leaders to build a movement to win racial, gender and economic justice. We identify the root causes of injustice and work to shift the balance of power between those who have it and those who don’t to improve the lives of our communities for present and future generations.”

They have been very successful in their endeavors. The CTUL worked with SEIU Local 26 in unionizing 600 janitorial workers in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, which resulted in the first major metropolitan area in the country where the retail janitorial industries unionized.

UAW/GM Strike

On September 15, 2019 the UAW took 49,000 General Motors workers on strike over a contract dispute. A typical tactic upon entering negotiations is to take a strike vote before going to the table. In thiscase, approximately 96% of the workers voted YES to a strike if the company did not come up with a deal that met their satisfaction.1

When the union walked out on strike, they already had massive supportand anger built up among the workers. They also had a message prepared for the world. The UAW knew this strike would be world news. While the core issues of the strike included a balance between the two-tiered pay structures, healthcare and a clear pathway for temporary workers to obtain fulltime employment, the union had a message crafted to reach thehearts and souls of the middle class that took the strike beyond just the GM workers.

The UAW developed specific talking points for workers to spread through social media, the news outlets, and anyone who would listen. These included that the strike was not just about the 49,000 people walking the picket lines but was for all middle-class people. The workers bought into the message and spread it around the world, making the strike movement about more than just contract negotiations.

The UAW took a path to make the strike a mass movement. This was donewith purpose. They need new members. As they were successful in obtaining more than GM originally offered, even if not all their demands, they have reidentified themselves as relevant and a powerful voice for the middle class, with support from politicians and media.

Understanding Mass Movements Is Understanding Unions

Unions Are Gaining Public Support

Gallup recently released a reportstating that 64% of Americans support labor unions. This is the highestapproval rating for unions in 50 years, yet only approximately 10% of working adults are represented by labor unions.

I remember talking with former AFL/CIO President John Sweeney many times while I was a Union Official, discussing how to, as he stated timeand time again, “Organize the unorganized.” I had stated to him, and anyone else who would listen to me, that we had to create an elite organizing team comprised of members of all affiliated unions, so we could coordinate larger, more complicated campaigns. I told him that we needed to take the politics and favoritism out of decisions of who to hire and manage on the team, and work with local people on the ground. In other words, to methodically create a “Hit Team” system that would professionalize the organizing department and set high standards and accountability for the organizers. I knew we needed to accompany this with resources to provide outreach to all AFL/CIO State Federations, CLCs (Central Labor Councils), regional and local staff and members, religious organizations and supportive political organizations.

I also worked with Richard Bensinger, the founder of the AFL/CIO’s Organizing Institute and the first Organizing Director of the AFL/CIO. Bensinger is currently the acting Organizing Director for the UAW. We worked on advanced organizing strategies and submitted a detailed plan to the AFL/CIO’s Executive Committee but, as you may have guessed, the politics prevented the formation of any elite organizing team.

The radical pacifist union leader A.J. Muste wrote in 1928 that “a union is equal parts army and town meetings.” Corporations and governments can impose their will onto their workforce, but unions depend on the support of workers. In modern times, unions have been unsuccessful in fulfilling their promised to rebuild their membership and regain collective bargaining strength for their members.

Unions have failed to inspire either their members of their countries’ workforce into activism. They lacked the ability to demonstrate a vision of the posture to take when heading collective bargaining. They struggled to decide which workers to organize. The AFL/CIO also struggled on appropriately allocating resources into the local, state and national levels.

This infighting is what led to the breakup of the AFL/CIO, with a newfederation known as Change to Win taking its place. One of Change to Win’s stated goals was to centralize the power structure to inspire moreactivism and increase membership. This did see some success in the healthcare industry, mainly in California. It also increased infighting between the two federations and their members, leading to some of Changeto Win’s component unions returning to the AFL/CIO.

A New Generation of Workers

Today’s younger and more diverse union members (Generation Z and Millennials) are getting more aggressive and taking actions against the wishes of some of the older and more conservative union leaders.

Teachers

For example, look to the successful teacher strikes that have grippedthe nation and world over the last few years. Teachers, especially the younger generation of teachers, were growing tired of the norm and decided change was needed. City by city, and state by state, we saw teachers walk out due to low pay and a lack of adequate resources to properly teach students. They were smart enough to make the case not just about their low pay, but also about the betterment of our future through the children they are responsible for educating.

Healthcare

When I was developing advanced organizing tactics at the George MeanyLabor College, we knew that healthcare workers’ biggest concern was to advocate for better patient care, so we incorporated aggressive messaging against hospital management. We painted them as heartless corporate thugs who cared more about profits than the wellbeing of theirpatients. At the time, patient care was the highest priority for nurses, which kept them from voting for a union, as they thought it would distract from caring for their patients. We stole the message fromthem and attacked them with it, which resulted in the unionization of tens of thousands of healthcare workers across the country.

Are We at a Boiling Point?

When I was a strike director, I was very aggressive. During the Detroit Newspaper strike, I remember telling a news reporter that “the newspapers control the plants, but we control the streets.” The strike became a battle ground that led to a national campaign that cost the newspapers hundreds of millions of dollars, which they still haven’t recovered from

People are triggered by the perception that they are being treated unfairly, or that they have nothing left to lose. These are issues that need our immediate attention, and are the same concerns felt by people worldwide and are causing them to take to the streets.

These world-wide riots, protests, and mass movements don’t happen in avacuum. The AFL/CIO works closely with global labor federations. I traveled around the world to perform union outreach projects and to monitor mass protests and actions, including two Paris shutdowns, Colombian forces’ lethal attacks on union officials and organizers, and violent attacks on strikers by police in Mexico.

The first response of many governments facing resistance from their citizens is to overreact to stamp out any rebellion, despite history teaching us many times over that this response is like pouring gasoline on a fire.

In my personal experiences while working as a Union Official and a National Strike Director, I have been tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, and water-hosed in the middle of winter along with burn barrels being snuffed out by police and fire departments. Semi-trucks have burst through gates to run me over along with strikers and supporters. I have seen strikers injured, and some even die, on the picket lines. I have witnessed many people arrested for being involved in mass altercations with law enforcement. I have personally had many death threats sent to me.

These experiences radicalized me for many years as I watched rank andfile members, especially during aggressive strikes, turned from family men and women to “soldiers” fighting hand to hand with police on strike lines.

The frustration level among some Americans is reaching a boiling point. That is why it is more important than ever to promote a healthy culture within a work environment.

Now, as President and CEO of a labor consulting firm that works exclusively with management, I can look back on my past to understand the resistance from employees: their frustrations, poor production results, high turnover, safety issues, and drug and alcohol abuse at work. I understand why employees turn to a union as these symptoms of bigger problems, that should be a call to action to identify weakness within management, are instead either ignored or become management’s sole focus. Management teams that overreact or choose to do nothing about these symptoms are sitting on a powder keg and will forfeit any goodwill they have left with their employees along with any hope for cooperation.

As times continue to change, now is the time for corporate leaders torealize that we are living in a different world than yesterday. With that said, now is also the time to realize that we all have an opportunity to change the workplace. New generations are going to continue to reach for global causes and embed themselves in mass movements. Unions are going to continue to latch on these issues to attempt to reach younger generations. It is up to the leaders of businesses to understand that now is the time to change the way we look at our workers and learn to communicate with them using strategic empathy, while at the same time, teaching them ways to succeed without bringing unions into the workplace.