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CHICAGO — City officials are exploring how they can support a nationwide general strike after Mayor Brandon Johnson became one of the most prominent elected officials in modern American history to call for workers to “throw down their tools.”

“If my ancestors, as slaves, can lead the greatest general strike in the history of this country, taking it to the ultra-rich and big corporations, we can do it too,” Johnson said at the Oct. 18 No Kings march Downtown.

Johnson was alluding to the mass exodus of enslaved persons from Southern plantations that crippled the Confederate economy during the Civil War, an action that scholar W.E.B. DuBois called a general strike. Such a strike is necessary to combat the growing wealth gap between the working and billionaire classes, Johnson said at the massive rally against President Donald Trump. 

The mayor’s comments went viral on social media as he contributed to a growing chorus of people calling for a general strike.

Johnson clarified in an interview with Block Club that he is calling for a national general strike — not just citywide. The mayor also hasn’t laid out exact plans for a strike, and he doesn’t intend to. That responsibility cannot rest in the hands of just one man, he said.

Others are willing to pick up that mantle.

Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th) said he and other progressives fully support the mayor’s call for a general strike and are looking into how the city can legally aid in this effort by meeting with local labor leaders and amassing a list of small businesses to support and large corporations to boycott.

There are multiple movements calling for general strikes in various forms, with Johnson and Sigcho-Lopez throwing their support behind a strike planned for May Day 2028. Others are looking to organize a general strike next year.

The idea has caught on at recent protests against the Trump administration and its local immigration enforcement efforts, including at one Saturday in Little Village, where dozens of attendees held signs calling for a general strike. 

Local union leaders are split. The Chicago Teachers Union expressed support, while a Local 63 Ironworkers representative said general strikes are complicated for those working in industries like construction and emphasized that workers must be protected. 

So, how feasible would a nationwide general strike be, and what would it look like?

Lessons Learned  

Historically, general strikes are large-scale work stoppages that span across all or nearly all industries, arising from one incendiary event or the failure of smaller collective bargaining actions, said Mike Matejka, president of the Illinois Labor History Society. 

“When they’ve happened, it’s like something so outrageous happens that everybody in the whole city walks out,” Matejka said.

This is an important distinction that separates a general strike from walkouts or strikes used by a union or a group of workers to apply pressure to one company or industry, Matejka said. 

Boycotts, on the other hand, call upon consumers to avoid buying from a specific company or country. The two are often used together as striking workers may call upon the community to boycott their company as a way of applying more pressure, Matejka said. For example, beginning in 2003, there was a decade-long strike and boycott at Chicago’s Congress Hotel as it refused to negotiate a contract with hotel workers. 

Throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries, most American strike actions that have been given the “general strike” moniker have taken place within a single city or region. Those include:

• In 1835, when 20,000 Philadelphians working across dozens of trades went on strike for a 10-hour workday and higher pay.
• In 1892, New Orleans dockworkers inspired a city-wide strike that lasted three days and earned laborers increased wages and shorter workdays.
• In 1919, over 100,000 workers across Seattle went on strike — to less success than previous strikes.
• In 1946, women workers in two department stores in Oakland, California, led a general strike for wealth equality that led over 100,000 workers to strike for over two days. 

The first time a so-called general strike came to Chicago was the Great Uprising of 1877, when workers across the northeast and Midwest “erupted in protest” over falling wages, spreading from railroad workers to coal mines and factories, Matejka said. The movement was not centrally organized. Independent uprisings sprang up at the same time across the country in response to intense economic injustice, as is often the case with general strikes, he said. 

In 1886, Chicago was the epicenter of one of the most significant strikes in U.S. history during the fight for the eight-hour workday, which spanned several cities across the country. The strike, started by McCormick Harvest Works employees, sparked deadly clashes with police.

On May 3, 1886, Chicago police shot and killed peaceful protesters picketing at what was then the McCormick Reaper Plant. A meeting of protesters in Haymarket Square the next day turned violent when a bomb went off and police opened fire, resulting in the death of four civilians and seven officers. This came to be known as the Haymarket Affair or Haymarket Riots. 

The riots “broke the back” of the fight for the eight-hour work day at that time, Matejka said. It wasn’t until 1938 that the eight-hour workday was codified in law with the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Chicago workers can draw a few key lessons from its labor history regarding the kinds of considerations that must be made in preparing for a general strike, Matejka said. 

“When you say we’re going to have a general strike, is it a one-day protest walk-out, or is it we’re going to shut down the city until we get what we want?” he said. “If you say we’re going to do more than one day of protest, then how long are you going to keep people out on the streets, and how long will people be willing to stay out on the streets?”

Historically, if workers wanted general strikes to last for multiple days, they would keep people posted in key positions, namely hospitals and soup kitchens, setting up systems to make sure community members were fed and taken care of, he said. 

What’s Next 

Johnson wants to “inspire conversations” among organizing groups and working people, he said. He and Sigcho-Lopez said they support plans for a general strike on May Day 2028 drawn up by the powerful United Auto Workers union.

Some unions in Chicago are gearing up to strike much sooner — this May 1 — to address the urgency of the moment, said CTU Vice President Jackson Potter.

“We’re working towards building a more spectacular, broader and stronger version of [United Auto Workers’] call for a General Strike on May 1st of 2028,” Potter said. “We want to align our contracts and make some demands that can benefit all working families, not just those in our unions, not just those in our cities, but across the country, things like national health care, free college for all, you know … things that every working family needs and deserves but is struggling to get.”

The mayor’s call was a step in the right direction for the labor movement, Potter said. Several organizers alongside Potter called for the strike at a Saturday afternoon rally in Little Village, which followed a week of targeted operations and standoffs between federal agents and neighbors in the Southwest Side neighborhood.

It is unclear whether the mayor has been in communication with groups planning a May Day 2026 strike.

Others are skeptical of the mayor’s call to action and said that while the sentiment is appreciated, much work has to be done to bring a general strike to fruition.

The United States hasn’t seen anything resembling a general strike since the 1940s, and a few key legal changes have been made since then. Namely, most unions have contracts, and many of these contracts contain no-strike clauses. Construction unions have project-based contracts called project labor agreements that are particularly stringent, and developers are likely to sue the unions if workers break their contracts to strike, said Paul Wende, business manager of Ironworkers Local 63. 

“Strikes are effective, but they got to be at the right time, and they got to be done correctly,” Wende said. “If you hurry into something and do it incorrectly, you’re going to lose and you’re going to lose hard, and a lot of people are going to get hurt in the process.”

Local 63 will stand with workers when the time comes and has been working to increase its membership in the meantime, but Wende said rushing into things without a united front would end up hurting workers rather than the intended target.

“We are nowhere near ready for a general strike in a country with union membership density in the gutter … doesn’t matter who’s calling it and how many times,” Amazon Labor Union leader Chris Smalls said in a viral thread on X two days after the No Kings march. 

National union membership has shrunk from a third of Americans in 1954 to about 10 percent in the 2020s, according to the Congressional Research Service. Chicago and Illinois are union-friendly, Matejka said, so the percentage of workers in the state — 13 percent — is significantly higher than the national average. Still, he stressed the importance of unions as power centers for the broader labor movement. 

When asked about the feasibility of a general strike, Johnson cited the improbable odds he faced in helping organize the 2012 CTU Strike, when then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel helped codify a 75 percent voting threshold for teachers strikes in state law. Ninety percent of CTU members voted to strike for seven days to negotiate an upgraded contract.

“All due respect to the awareness that brother Smalls has provided,” Johnson said of the Amazon union organizer. “But this is not simply about organized labor. This is about workers, it’s about families. I understand why people will have some level of trepidation. This moment can be intimidating for people. … You got to put that demand forward.”

Johnson will “do [his] part” by putting forth yearly budget proposals that meet the needs of the working class while consulting with labor unions, he said. Johnson’s $16.6 billion budget proposal suggests $586.6 million in taxes on large companies, including a new tax on social media platforms, a corporate head tax and an expanded tax on big tech. 

“Donald Trump declared war on Chicago and on American cities across the country,” Johnson said. “What he has done in a very dramatic way is essentially made it clear that the billionaire class, they’re all united, and we as working people have to be organized and even more united to ensure that we’re protecting our democracy and protecting the interests of working people.”

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October 28, 2025 at 08:18AM