Strikes: Meaning and Types

A strike is commonly considered the last weapon in the armoury of organised

labour for settling industrial disputes. When all other options for amicable
settlement of an industrial dispute have exhausted and negotiations with the
employer have failed, the workmen resort to strike action.
The word strike is 100 years old. The first recorded phrase about, it was ' to strike
work' is used in the year 1778. In 1867, the Royal commission on trade unions
referred to workers having been fined for going to work in a shop that had been
struck. In 1891, the world. Striking a firm made a note its metamorphosis in 1910,
made the world strike, the most dreaded word in industrial corridors. The word
strike sounded like a blacksmith's hammer, the woman's acts and the Patriots for
ants till today has maintained its violent character.
As per Cambridge Dictionary “Strike is to refuse to continue working because of
an argument with an employer about working conditions, pay levels, or job losses”.
The weapon is stoppage of work, which popularly known as strike. Strikes are
important not only from industrial point of view but also from social and economic
points of view as well as they leave an impact on the society as they do on labour
and employees.
The word strike is an artificial character and does not represent any legal definition
or description. It is an agreement between persons who are working for a particular
employer, not to continue working for him. It is simultaneous cessation of work by
labour or workers temporarily in order to express grievance or to enforce a demand
concerning changes in work condition.
The strike is defined in Section 2(q) of the Industrial Disputes Act 1947.
According to the section, “strike means a cessation of work by a body of persons
employed in any industry acting in combination or a concerted refusal, or a refusal
under a common understanding, of any number of persons who are or have been so
employed to continue to work or to accept employment.”
Mere stoppage of work does not come within the meaning of strike unless it can be
shown that such stoppage of work was a concerted action for the enforcement of an
industrial demand.
The essential elements, according to the definition of Strike are:
1. There must be cessation of work.
2. The cessation of work must be by a body of persons employed in any
industry;
3. The strikers must have been acting in combination;
4. The strikers must be working in any establishment which can be called
industry within the meaning of Section 2(j) of the Industrial Disputes Act; or
5. There must be a concerted refusal; or
6. Refusal under a common understanding of any number of persons who are
or have been so employed to continue to work or to accept employment;
7. They must stop work for some demands relating to employment, non-
employment or the terms of employment or the conditions of labour of the
workmen.
Causes of Strike
Some of the common causes of Strikes are:
 Dissatisfaction with company policy
 Salary and incentive problems
 Increment not up to the mark
 Wrongful discharge or dismissal of workmen
 Withdrawal of any concession or privilege
 Hours of work and rest intervals
 Leaves with wages and holidays
 Bonus, profit sharing, Provident fund and gratuity
 Retrenchment of workmen and closure of establishment
 Dispute connected with minimum wages
Types of Strikes
1) Economic Strike
Most of the strikes of workers are for more facilities and increase in wage levels.
In economic strike, the labourers demand increase in wages, travelling allowance,
and house rent allowance, dearness allowance and other facilities such as increase
in privilege leave and casual leave.
2) General Strike
It means a strike by members of all or most of the unions in a region or an industry.
It may be a strike of the workers in a particular region of industry to force demands
common to all the workers. It may also be an extension of the strike to express
generalised protest by the workers.
3) Stay-in, Sit down Strikes
In this case, workers do not absent themselves from their place of work when they
are on strike. They keep control over production facilities. But do not work. Such a
strike is also known as ‘pen down’ or ‘tool down’ strike.
4) Go slow
Go slow in the form of strike wherein there is a deliberate delaying of production
by the workmen pretending to be engaged in working. In such strikes, there is a
delayed production, reduced output and many a times the machineries also kept
going on a reduced speed which is extremely damaging to the machinery parts.
The workers remain entitled to full wages and other emoluments, as well as
conditions of service, which even otherwise are to flow through them, but at the
same time, the managements do not get the quantum of production which is
expected from the workers for the salaries which they get.
5) Boycott
The workers may decide to boycott the company in two ways. Firstly by not using
its products and secondly by making an appeal to the public in general. In the
former case, the boycott is known as primary and in the latter secondary. It is a
coercive method whereby the management is forced to accept their demands.
6) Sympathetic Strike
When workers of one unit or industry go on strike in sympathy with workers of
another unit or industry who are already on strike, it is called a sympathetic strike.
The members of other unions involve themselves in a strike to support or express
their sympathy with the members of unions who are on strike in other
undertakings.
7) Hunger strike
It is one of the painful strikes by the striker where workers go on strike without
having food/water to redress the grievances.
8) All-out strike
A strike that embraces all workers involved in a dispute and that will continue for
‘as long as it takes’ to secure a settlement. All-out strikes can be contrasted with
selective strikes that involve only a proportion of the workforce and protest strikes
that may last for only a day or two.
9) Picketing
When workers are dissuaded from work by stationing certain men at the factory
gates, such a step is known as picketing. If picketing does not involve any
violence, it is perfectly legal. Pickets are workers who are on strike that stand at the
entrance to their workplace. It is basically a method of drawing public attention
towards the fact that there is a dispute between the management and employees.
10) Gherao
Gherao is a Hindi word, which means to encircle. The workers may gherao the
members of the management by blocking their exits and forcing them to stay inside
their cabins. The main object of gherao is to inflict-physical and mental torture to
the person i.e., employers till the demands of workers are met. This weapon
disturbs the industrial peace to a great extent.
11) Unauthorised Strike (Wild Cat Strike)
A strike called by a section of workmen without authorisation from the union and
often in defiance of the direction of the competent authority in a union. It also
represents “a rebellion on the part of rank- and-file membership against the union
leadership or rebellion by a part of the membership against the total membership.”
Such strikes were very common in the U.K. during 1960s.
12) Jurisdictional Strike
Jurisdictional strikes are related mainly to jurisdiction of rival unions. They are
conducted with a view to pressurising the employer to recognise one union instead
of another claiming to be the real representative of the workers. Such strikes were
common in the USA, especially in respect of rival claims of craft unions.
13) Token Strike
Token strike is resorted to for a short period such as a day or two to give the
employer a warning of the likely wider form of confrontation if their demands’ are
not promptly conceded.
14) Lightning or quickly strikes
As the name suggests, the strikes are held in a flash of a second. And that is why
they are called as lightning or quickly strikes. These strikes are staged all of a
sudden and the thought behind it is to spread the message of an instant strike with
all the workers. Normally, the workers, if at all they are to go on strike given notice
and then carry the thought into an action, but here, the strikers first strike and then
start to bargain. As there is no notice present in the strike, such strikes are illegal
ex-facie.
15) Work to rule strike
This is a new form of a strike which is resorted to by the disgruntled workmen to
circumvent the provisions of law governing their service conditions. The striking
employees here added to the service rules in such a fashion that it causes
harassment to the general public. The striking employees do not usually added to
the rules in such a manner which they do it in this form of a strike. Such strikes are
usually staged in public utility services where the object is to harass the public in
an indirect manner so that the government is pressurized to succumb to the
demands of the workmen.
16) Mass resignations
Mass resignations is another form of a strike wherein all the workmen who are
employed in an industry submit their resignations to the management. It becomes
cumbersome and difficult for the management to accept every worker's resignation
as that would have an effect of bringing the very industry to a standstill. The
pressure which is exerted by the workers. By giving a mass resignation is basically
to make the management agree to their demands and the standpoint of view.