Comment by ryanmercer

>In the UK, the 1970 Equal Pay Act was triggered by the Ford sewing machinists strike of 1968.

And 1970 might as well have been 1870. The 21st century is an entirely different world.

Most of the jobs that triggered actual labor reform in the 19th and 20th centuries just don't exist any more. The factories of the 1800's wouldn't survive a single day of business today because modern, largely automated, equipment would leave them sitting in the dust when it came to profitability.

In this case you list, same thing. There aren't sewing machinists like that now, that stuff is largely automated. Very few automotive manufacturers use people to do the sewing and when they do it's a highly skilled artisan job that involves hand stitching for luxury vehicles, not machines.

I do not deny unions reformed working conditions, most of it however was many, many, decades ago in a world that doesn't begin to resemble today's world.

Fact is, unions are dying in the western world. Union membership is free-falling. Who needs a union when you have a cell phone and organizations like OSHA here in the US that you can directly file safety violations to for investigation.

Unions made changes with striking. Striking is no longer a useful tool and no longer needed.

If you strike now, especially if you aren't in a union, you should be fired. For each of those people that strikes over this, there's probably 50 people that would ecstatically take their job in the city they are in.

Striking isn't going to do jack for discrimination/harassment. We don't live in the 20th century anymore. Documenting and reporting incidents will bring change, not walking out of work like a child throwing a temper tantrum.