Thousands of working-class New Englanders brought a big corporation to its knees, boldly taking the recent strike wave into the private sector.

Late last week, 31,000 Stop & Shop workers from over 240 stores in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island walked off the job after months of fruitless negotiations between the company and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).

In large part, the recent wave of strikes and strike threats — many of them in sectors with heavily female workforces, including massive teachers’ strikes from West Virginia to Arizona and the threat from flight attendants’ union leader Sara Nelson to shut down the airlines if Trump didn’t reopen the government — has focused on challenging austerity in the public sector. Along with last year’s eight-city Marriott hotel workers’ strike and some recent actions by nurses, the Stop & Shop action puts workers in more direct confrontation with private capital.