In March, a union representing thirty thousand support workers in the Los Angeles Unified School District called a three-day strike to demand higher wages. The action got the support of the teachers’ union, which asked its thirty-five thousand members to honor the strike and not cross the picket line. Members agreed, and for three days sixty-five thousand workers stayed home, shutting down the school district and eventually winning contract victories for both unions.

That strike is only the most recent and widely reported strike among public employees. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that there was a 50 percent increase in strike activity in 2022 over the previous year. Across the United States and indeed the globe, public sector workers are engaging in strikes. Beyond US borders, garbage workers in France and transit workers in Germany have walked off their jobs, and government workers in Cyprus joined a three-hour general strike there. Even the UK’s National Health Service — still popular despite a post-Thatcher turn toward privatization — has been roiled by strikes of nurses and doctors.

Ostensibly, the reasons for these strikes are wages that haven’t kept up with inflation, massive staffing shortages leading to overworked and stressed staff, and constricted resources, for example the lack of school supplies causing teachers to buy their own.