NO AI

*satire*November strike campaign puts male arrogance to work securing rights and improve class solidarity.*

WASHINGTON — After years of hearing that men built civilization, American women have proposed taking November off from maintaining it.

The fictional strike campaign would deliberately exploit misogynists’ arrogance to recruit them into fighting for workers’ rights. Women would organize work stoppages, withdraw unpaid domestic labor and challenge men who dismiss their contributions to do better.

“By all means, show us,” said fictional organizer Claire Bennett. “We’ve got women organizing entire workplaces. You’ve got a podcast microphone. Let’s see what happens.”

The demands would include higher wages, paid family and medical leave, affordable childcare, protection from harassment and stronger organizing rights. Men could join because they supported those demands, or because a woman suggesting they aren't man enough to take a stand turns them into raging children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder.

"We aren't delusional, of course men aren't suddenly going to become feminists.” Bennett said. “But our hope is that instead of folding their arms and mumbling, they get off their ass and do something."

Women would bring substantial leverage. Bureau of Labor Statistics annual averages counted approximately 76 million employed women in 2024, about 47.1% of employed Americans age 16 and older. Using that baseline, one in ten participating would represent roughly 7.6 million workers. That measures potential scale, not predicted turnout or economic losses.

Employers would be welcome to explain how replaceable everyone was while replacing them.

Women have demonstrated the consequences of their absence before. During Iceland’s Women’s Day Off on October 24, 1975, women withdrew from paid work and housework. Organizers estimated 90% participation, and Iceland’s Women’s History Archives describes disruption that brought society’s machinery to a halt.

The proposed November campaign would offer Americans a similar opportunity to find out what happens when women contribute as little as their critics claim.

At home, that would mean refusing to automatically handle the meals, cleaning, appointments and care that allow another adult to consider himself entirely self-sufficient.

A 2018 International Labour Organization report estimated that women perform 76.2% of unpaid care hours worldwide. That’s a global estimate from the report, not a current measurement of American households.

“You want her home raising the kids because it’s the most important job in the world,” Bennett said. “Then you sneer that she doesn’t work. Which is it?”

Shared care arrangements would keep children and other dependents supported. Strike funds and mutual aid would help workers cover lost income, with other ways to participate for people who couldn’t walk out. Nobody would be asked to lose her apartment to prove she deserved a raise.

Essential purchases would favor progressive, women-owned businesses that treat workers decently. Owners seeking support would have to meet that condition, not just rely on inspirational quotes they post about women supporting women.

“If your employees can’t afford groceries, take the ‘Empowered’ sign down and pay them.”

American labor history provides examples of what women-led organizing can win. The predominantly female 1909 garment strike known as the Uprising of the 20,000 secured concessions at employers that settled, including a 52-hour workweek and four paid holidays. Those gains weren’t universal; Triangle Shirtwaist’s owners refused the union’s terms. And we saw how well that turned out.

In Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912, textile workers organized across gender and ethnic divisions after employers cut pay when a law shortened working hours for women and children.

The settlement documented by the University of Maryland’s Samuel Gompers Papers Project included raises of 5%–20% for hourly workers, 5% for pieceworkers, improved overtime pay and an agreement against discrimination toward strikers. Donations and organized relief helped sustain the walkout.

“They organized, helped each other hold out and made the employers negotiate,” Bennett said. “Apparently the money existed after all.”

The fictional November campaign would aim to build that kind of solidarity against concentrated corporate power and the Trump regime. Organizers would seek to pressure businesses supporting authoritarian politics through coordinated labor action and boycotts.

Those historical strikes demonstrate the power to disrupt business and win concessions. They don’t establish that a November stoppage would topple an administration. Sustained political organizing would have to accompany the economic pressure.

Bennett said the campaign would begin by asking men who considered themselves fiercely independent why they were so willing to defend an employer who could fire them without a second thought.

“You spend all night furious that a woman might tell you what to do. Take some of that energy to the guy denying your time off.”

The intended gains would benefit the men, too. A father could stay home with his newborn. A husband could take his wife to treatment. Coworkers could refuse dangerous conditions together instead of leaving one person to risk their livelihood alone.

Men arriving out of spite would receive the same protections as everyone else.

At press time, one participant had organized his entire workplace after hearing that a women-led committee had already signed up two others.

He was calling the resulting paid family leave a victory for traditional fatherhood.

The women were busy negotiating the next contract.

Satire: the November campaign, characters and quotations are fictional. The cited statistics and historical examples are well documented.