Talk:Sitdown strike
This article is written in British English with Oxford spelling (colour, realize, organization, analyse; note that -ize is used instead of -ise) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||
|
A fact from Sitdown strike appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 19 June 2024 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
|
First public prediction of a sit-down strike?
[edit]A book about Lucy Parsons apparently states that in 1905 she predicted sit-down strikes:
In her 1905 speech at the Founding Convention of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), for example, Parsons predicted the sit-down actions of the `30s when she stated, "My conception of the strike of the future is not to strike and go out and starve but to strike and remain in and take possession of the necessary property of production."
Lucy Parsons: Freedom, Equality & Solidarity, Writings & Speeches, 1878-1937, Charles H. Kerr, Chicago, 2003
This sounds like a worthwhile addition to the article, if someone can obtain a copy of the book to verify. Richard Myers (talk) 12:47, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
Did you know nomination
[edit]- The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.
The result was: promoted by AirshipJungleman29 talk 11:30, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
... that there were 583 sitdown strikes in the United States from 1936 to 1939, affecting over a half-million workers?Source:
- US Department of Labor, Division of Industrial Relations (May 1939). "Analysis of Strikes in 1938". Monthly Labor Review: Table 16.
- US Department of Labor, Division of Industrial Relations (May 1940). "Strikes in 1939". Monthly Labor Review: 28-29.
- Reviewed:
- Comment: The cited sources are online here: https://www.bls.gov/wsp/publications/annual-summaries/pdf/strikes-in-1939.pdf and here: https://www.bls.gov/wsp/publications/annual-summaries/pdf/analysis-of-strikes-in-1938.pdf
Source 1 states: "The number of sit-down strikes in 1936, 1937, and 1938 by months, with the number' of workers involved, is given in table 16."
Table 16 lists the same numbers of strikes given in source 2 below. It lists workers involved as follows: 1936: 87,817 1937: 398,117 1938: 28,749
Source 2 states: "In 1936 there were 48 so-called sit-down strikes. In 1937 the number increased to 477, but by 1938 they decreased to 52. There were only 6 strikes during 1939 in which all or part of the strikers remained at their workplaces for one or more days after ceasing work. he number of workers idle in connection with these 6 strikes was 3,416, although the number participating in the sit-down or stay-in feature is not known."
This sentence involves a very encyclopedic form of synthesis in that it adds numbers from two consecutive studies by the same source. Similar synthesis, but without inclusion of the latter number appears in Sidney Fine's book Sitdown, cited in the article.
Number of QPQs required: 0. Nominator has less than 5 past nominations.
Post-promotion hook changes will be logged on the talk page; consider watching the nomination until the hook appears on the Main Page.Carwil (talk) 16:00, 13 April 2024 (UTC).
- QPQ not needed, expansion is recent and article is long enough. Hook is properly sourced. However, Earwig detected a 43.2% similarity. Before I pass this nom, I think it would be suitable to trim down some quotes, if possible. Davest3r08 >:3 (talk) 22:33, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
- I've reviewed the Earwig similarity report, which highlights passages that are either in quotes or comprise part of citations (including the journal name and another cited article). The longest passage is the summary of the Matignon Agreement, a quotation I don't think I can improve upon. I've revised the article to reduce the amount of material directly quoted from Torigian and from Adamic, but keep Adamic's longer definition and Torigian's POV that the mid-1930s strikes were a distinct phase of using the tactic. Let me know whether you think these changes sufficiently reduce the reliance of direct quotations.--Carwil (talk) 13:29, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
- FYI, here's the Earwig similarity report with bibliography temporarily removed.
- Fair rationale. Passing nomination. LunaEcplise (for the record I'm Davest3r08) (talk) 20:33, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
@Carwil, LunaEclipse, AirshipJungleman29, and RoySmith: - given that there was no definite resolution to the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Did you know#Sitdown strike, I'm reopening this. A couple of issues were raised regarding the state of the article, and also whether the figures from the Dept. of Labor should be given in Wikivoice. — Amakuru (talk) 22:47, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
- Upon additional consideration, I'm fine with the wikivoice thing. RoySmith (talk) 21:52, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
- Replying here as I'm traveling and on mobile only: Hmm... I'm not sure this makes sense as a general principle for DYK hooks (in voice sourcing for official statistics), though I'm not adverse to a "by official counts" phrase being added. There's no reason to suspect that the government counted any non-existent strikes and political reasons to suspect that this government attempted to both be complete in its count and to accurately report both the rise and fall of the phenomenon in its counts. Unintended errors of categorization could fall in both ways. But this seems like the kind of fact routinely sourced in a footnote in a lead section or DYK. - - User:Carwil
Alt0a ... that by official counts there were 583 sitdown strikes in the United States from 1936 to 1939, affecting over a half-million workers?- Alt0b ... that according to the U.S. Department of Labor there were 583 sitdown strikes in the United States from 1936 to 1939, affecting over a half-million workers?
- --evrik (talk) 18:15, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
- I wonder if there were exactly 583 sitdown strikes between 1936 and 1939 – I think that there should be some lip service to the idea that a figure like that probably can't be exact. Attributing inline makes sense to me, if only briefly. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 19:14, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
- Comment - @Carwil: there are still some citation needed templates in the article itself, which need fixing. Plus we need a consensus on which hook to use. If this isn't resolved soon, this may have to be rejected and archived. Cheers — Amakuru (talk) 20:27, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
- @LunaEcplise: I think the sourcing problems are fixed. What about the hooks? --evrik (talk) 01:56, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
- I'm dropping this review. Someone else should take my place. 🌙Eclipse (talk) (contribs) 10:38, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
- @Carwil: Much to whinge about here I'm afraid. There are a couple of unsourced bits and unattributed quotes in the article, which I've annotated accordingly, and I don't really think it's on to comment out unsourced content while it's here, so I've taken it out. As written, the Form and purpose section would deserve {{disputed}}, because an account of the late 1930s can't really be written in 1936 and I'd question whether it should even be there given WP:NOTDEF. I'd be willing to approve ALT0b, although I would suggest the below as a WP:DYKTRIMmed variant of ALT0b:
- ALT0c:
... that the U.S. Department of Labor recognises 583 sitdown strikes in the U.S., affecting half a million workers? - which says everything ALT0b says in fewer words. (If I had my druthers, we'd be running some variant of "that quickies have disrupted the rubber industry", but pigs will fly before that gets past WP:DYKGRAT.)--Launchballer 11:40, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
- @Launchballer:, while I appreciate the principle that we're not providing dictionary definitions, it's helpful to know what this concept actually means. As it turns out White (2010) and Adamic (1936) offer pretty close parallels, as does Fine (1965): "The term "sit-down strike" has generally been used to embrace a variety of work stoppages ranging from the brief strike or "quickie," in which a group of workers cease their labors for a few minutes or hours or for a single shift until their grievances are settled, to the "stay-in strike," in which a portion or all of the workers remain in the plant overnight and perhaps for an extended period of time. Most commonly when the term is used the reference is to the extended sit-down strike, the so-called stay-in strike." In my view, the goal of the encyclopedic text should be to lay out both how such strikes work and how the types differ as clearly as possible, and I think the Adamic quote helps to do that. I've added a new sentence at the beginning of the section to try to make that clearer.--Carwil (talk) 15:23, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
- I'm dropping this review. Someone else should take my place. 🌙Eclipse (talk) (contribs) 10:38, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
- @LunaEclipse: I'll try to finish this. @Launchballer: I like ALt0c and will approve it. @Carwil: I went through and did a final clean-up. I found the sources, and dealt with the other tags. --evrik (talk) 22:01, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks so much for the clean-up work.--Carwil (talk) 15:23, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
- ALT0c gives the impression that 583 sitdown strikes have occurred in the U.S. from whenever they began to the present day, while the sources for this hook are from 1939 and 1940 covering only 1936 through 1939, and the article goes on to mention quite a few both before and after those years. Trimming a hook like ALT0b is one thing—I don't see any obvious issues with it—but trimming it to the point that it's misleading if not inaccurate is quite another; I have struck it. I think, given the circumstances, we need a new reviewer; it's a stretch for evrik to be approving a tightened version of their own hook, especially given its issues. BlueMoonset (talk) 23:51, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
- I'm going to unstrike Alt0b. --evrik (talk) 23:55, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
- Apologies, I meant ALT0d: ... that the U.S. Department of Labor recognises 583 sitdown strikes in the U.S. between 1936 and 1939, affecting half a million workers?--Launchballer 11:35, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
- Review needed of hook "ALT0d". --evrik (talk) 14:36, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
- I'm not sure of my role here, but I think Alt0d is accurate, though the tense of this government agency's recognition feels awkward to me. Perhaps, ALT0e: ... that the U.S. Department of Labor recorded 583 sitdown strikes in the U.S. between 1936 and 1939, affecting half a million workers?--Carwil (talk) 14:31, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
- Approve ALT0e. AGF on the offline sources. (Please note that I have only really checked the hook, and merely glanced over the article otherwise. But as far as I understand, it has been throughly vetted by previous reviewers.) –LordPeterII (talk) 19:25, 11 June 2024 (UTC)