Strikes
Let's Know Things
Colin Wright
4.8 • 593 Ratings
🗓️ 26 October 2021
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week we talk about missing workers, employment numbers, and Royal Necropolis employees.
We also discuss the Chartist Petition, slaughterhouses, and unions.
Show notes/transcript: https://letsknowthings.com/episode283
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | There's historical evidence of organized work stoppages from as far back as 1152 BC, when royal necropolis workers, |
| 0:25.4 | laboring under 20th Dynasty Pharaoh, Ramsey's III, walked out on their jobs due to a lack |
| 0:32.5 | of pay from the government. This walkout apparently had its intended effect, as the government figured |
| 0:38.8 | out how to pay them shortly thereafter. We also have historical evidence of walkouts by so-called |
| 0:45.4 | plebeians, ordinary working folk in ancient Rome. According to documentation on the matter, |
| 0:51.5 | workers across several industries stopped work for a time to protest what they |
| 0:57.2 | considered to be unfair conditions for their fellow laborers, many of whom served in the government's |
| 1:03.0 | legions, their military, but were then imprisoned and used as slave labor by their creditors, |
| 1:09.8 | those they owed money for a variety of reasons, |
| 1:12.4 | many of which tied back in some way to how society was structured, and the consequent |
| 1:18.0 | disparity between these two groups, the working-class plebeians, and the wealthy asset-owning |
| 1:24.4 | patricians. The concept of a general strike, as far as historical documentation tells us at least, emerged |
| 1:32.7 | during the Industrial Revolution in Britain when a labor reform document called the Chartist |
| 1:38.1 | petition was rejected by Parliament in 1842, despite the more than 3 million signatures the presenters had acquired. |
| 1:48.2 | This document, which was basically just a signed version of a document called the People's Charter, |
| 1:54.3 | focused on six reforms that would allow non-land-owning men of 21 years or older to vote via secret ballot. |
| 2:02.6 | Would allow people who don't own property to become members of Parliament. |
| 2:07.6 | Would institute paychecks for members of Parliament, which would allow non-independently wealthy people to pursue a career in politics. |
| 2:16.6 | Would adjust how constituencies are measured so that it's based |
| 2:19.9 | on the number of people rather than the amount of land in a region, and would institute annual |
| 2:26.3 | elections for parliament with the intention of stifling bribery and intimidation in politics. |
| 2:33.6 | The rejection of this petition triggered a strike that |
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