1. The right to engage in concerted activity for mutual aid and protection (Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act).
2. The right not to be ordered by a federal court to stop such activity (Section 4 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act).
3. The right to refuse to perform abnormally dangerous work (Section 502 of the National Labor Relations Act, and the Occupational Safety and Health Act).
4. The right to equal pay for equal work (the Equal Pay Act).
5. The right to overtime after forty hours of work in a week (the Fair Labor Standards Act).
6. The right not to be discriminated against because of race, sex, religion, national origin, pregnancy, or age (Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and subsequent statutes).
7. The right to reasonable accommodation if disabled but qualified to do particular work (the Americans with Disabilities Act).
8. The right to 12 weeks of leave in any 12-month period because of a serious health condition (the Family and Medical Leave Act).
9. The right to free speech about union affairs, and to a minimum of due process when disciplined by a union (Title I of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act).
10. The right to pension security (Employee Retirement Income Security Act).

The reality is that within a dozen years after passage of the NLRA in 1935 the right to strike was interfered with, impeded, or diminished in the following three ways:

1. In the very first collective bargaining agreements between CIO unions in auto and steel on the hand, and General Motors and U.S. Steel on the other, union negotiators agreed to prohibit strikes during the life of these contracts.6 Such surrender or “waiver” of the right to strike during the life of the contract has become one of the two standard pro-management provisions of collective bargaining agreements (along with a management prerogatives clause that permits management unilaterally to close the plant).
2. In 1938 the Supreme Court decided a case called Mackay Radio. The Court distinguished two kinds of strikes: strikes prompted by the employer’s unfair labor practices; and ordinary economic strikes. The Court held that economic strikers could be “permanently replaced,” that is, that their jobs could be given to other workers to keep even after the strike ended.
3. In 1947, in Section 8(b)(4) of the Taft-Hartley Act, Congress prohibited secondary strikes and boycotts solicited by unions or their agents.

Because all other strategies have been unsuccessful, workers think about sitting-in and occupying the plant. They perceive that if they can prevent the company from moving the machinery, there remains a possibility that production will resume and their jobs will be saved.

Between 1936 and 1939 American workers staged 583 sit-down strikes that lasted at least one day.31 Certain sympathetic law professors made a determined effort to argue that at least under some circumstances, for example when the employer had committed outrageous unfair labor practices, a sit-in might be lawful. But in NLRB v. Fansteel Metallurgical Corp., 306 U.S. 240 (1939), the Supreme Court said, No: henceforth, no matter what the employer might have done to provoke the situation, a sit-in or plant occupation was unlawful trespass for which an employee might be lawfully discharged.