Walkout: Difference between revisions

In [[trade union|labor disputes]], a '''walkout''' is a [[strike action|labor strike]], the act of employees collectively leaving the workplace and withholding labor as an act of protest.

{{main article|East L.A. walkouts}}

In the early months of 1834, textile sales were slow and profits were not up to standard to provide sufficient wages for the women mill workers of [[Lowell, Massachusetts]]. As a result, wages were cut and the price of room and board went up. The mill factory women saw this wage cut and price increase as an offense to their dignity, social quality, and economic autonomy. The women decided to take action and many started petitions and held meetings during dinner breaks. They pledged that they would quit if the wage rates decreased. On a Friday in February 1834, a sporadic walkout began after a meeting in which an agent of a mill company dismissed a woman factory worker. Protesting began and the women quit work and started parading through the city streets, attempting to persuade other mill women to join. This walkout was short -lived, and by the middle of the next week the women either returned to work or left town. Only about one-sixth of all women workers in Lowell walked out.

In October 1836, the women workers in the [[Lowell, Massachusetts]] factory mills walked out once again for the same reasons as the strike in 1834. The young women saw the wage-cut and the increasing prices of housing board as a direct assault on their social and economic independence, and they wouldn't let the revolting wage-cut and rising prices undermined their status as “daughters"daughters of freemen”freemen". Furthermore, as influenceinfluenced by their traditional values, the young women, theydid didn'tnot accept to be treated as slaves so they protested. In this second walkout however, the women workers were more organized, and the number of workers involved in the strikes were far numerous than the one sixth of all the factory workers in 1834 whichand this had a greater impact on the success of their operation. The other cause to their success of this second walkout was the economic prosperity of the 1840s; the mills profits were booming and they needed more workers. Therefore, the walkout of 1836 affected the mills greatly because they were short in workers, and the lengthy absence of the women accentuated the impact. As a result, some of the mills were obliged to cut their charges on housing, and they were forced to cooperate with the women worker’sworkers' organization.