The government shutting down a strike only worked because the union capitulated. It worked because when the government said no, they listened.

The rail workers could have held a strike anyway, legal consequences be damned. The government would likely escalate in retaliation: strikers would be jailed and potentially forced back into that labor while incarcerated. Strikers could then give in to the government’s demands or further escalate on their own end. This could take the form of sabotage, armed conflict, or other methods of dissent. This is the history of labor struggles and it has often been a bloody history.

At the end of the day, it becomes a matter of how desperate each group is. If the risk posed by the government retaliating is greater than your desperation to improve conditions, then workers are more likely to back down. This doesn’t address the consciousness of the workers though. They hold the true source of power (labor) in this neverending struggle and have the most to gain by taking action to exert that power over those who wish to exploit them.

Part of the problem is that taking revolutionary action isn’t easy and it’s much more comfortable to capitulate anywhere along the road to changing these dynamics.

What is to be done? Educate yourself and those around you. Organize yourselves against your oppressors and prepare for the fight ahead. Take action and persevere by supporting one another in this struggle.

The only thing that authority respects is a greater authority. The ones in power maintain their authority because we allow them to maintain that authority. Nothing happens without the labor of the masses and when they act in solidarity, nothing has the power to stop them.