Two thousand workers at the Kohler faucet plant in southeastern Wisconsin have been walking the picket since November 16. Such a strike would have been commonplace decades ago. Nowadays it is a rarity — major strikes of over one thousand workers are few and far between. Even rarer are open-ended strikes at an industrial plant.

Today’s battered labor movement no longer thinks of watershed strikes; we are so beaten down and used to defeat that no particular loss is seen as critical. And sadly, it’s not as if labor must win this particular battle to survive. The truth is labor has learned to live with defeat. But a more fundamental point is at stake: labor must redevelop the ability to win this type of strike if we are to have any chance of survival.

The Kohler strike is an open-ended, large-scale, non-publicity-style strike in manufacturing, a traditionally organized industry. Labor has become adept at hit-and-run publicity strikes such as the Walmart, retail, and fast-food strikes of recent years. Although important, these are not fight-to-the-finish battles, nor do they involve anywhere near the number of workers or level of participation that this strike does. It is likely that more days of work lost to striking have accumulated in two weeks of the Kohler strike than in five years of retail and fast-food strike activity.