13 September 2021, Berlin: “More staff” and a listing of the striking hospital wards are written on posters by nurses in front of the Glass House at Charite Campus Virchow-Klinikum. The strike at Berlin’s Charite and Vivantes hospitals continues. The demonstrators at both facilities are striking for a relief collective agreement. Photo: Annette Riedl/dpa (Photo by Annette Riedl/picture alliance via Getty Images)
The particular conversational technique that worked so well is part of Jane McAlevey’s tool kit for building mass-participation strikes, developed by drawing on the tactics of the radical Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) unions of 1930s America.