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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.
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.