Since colonial times, when fishermen, bakers, refuse collectors and tailors tried to get more money or fairer treatment by refusing to perform their jobs, going on strike has been an important tactic of American labor. Strikes figured prominently in the rise of the organized labor movement that began in earnest in the mid-to-late 1800s. Over the years, they played a part in many of the labor movement’s hard-fought gains—from better wages to the eight-hour-work day and other improvements in working conditions.

“They don’t happen without workers in large numbers going on strike,” explains Erik Loomis, an associate professor and director of graduate studies in the history department at the University of Rhode Island, and author of the 2018 book A History of America in Ten Strikes. “It was the pressure they were putting on both employers and the government to do something.”

But labor stoppages also have been a perilous move for workers. In the 1800s and early 1900s, picketers often faced the risk of being beaten up by police or thugs recruited by management. “The U.S. has one of the most violent labor histories in the world,” says Judith Stepan-Norris, a research professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, and co-author of an upcoming book on the U.S. labor movement from 1900 to 2015.