(Kreo) The Strike
A strike has more in common with a military campaign than a protest. It is not a simple gathering of like-minded individuals seeking to air their grievances. It is a battle – sometimes metaphorically, but often literally.
When you engage in JP Coglinton in battle, you are engaging one of the great armies of the world. If you are lucky, he will send only the city constables to “keep order”. In the interest of keeping up appearances, they will allow you to march for a day or two while one of Coglinton’s representatives pretends to listen to your grievances.
Then they will invite you back inside, and if you refuse, they will “clear the way” for a fresh batch of willing workers to come take your places. Those workers will be paid what you were asking for, and though hiring and training them will require more effort than simply meeting your demands, the expense will be deemed worthwhile. JP Coglinton, on principle, does not concede.
If you are not lucky – if your work is deemed too essential, or your union too nettlesome, or if Mr. Coglinton has recently received some bad news – he will send The Steel Resolve. Unlike the Constable, The Steel Resolve do not purport to work for anyone but JP Coglinton, nor to have any purpose other than to break the backs of those who dare dip a hand in his pocket.
The Steel Resolve arrives with truncheons swinging even before the scabs are ready to come in. They are not there to “clear the way”. They are there to send a message about what happens to those who oppose Mr. Coglinton, who spit in the face of the good gnome who has provided you with work, food, clothing, and homes for their families.
Besides, swinging the truncheons is considered a perk of the job, for the faceless soldiers of the Steel Resolve. JP Coglinton is always looking for ways to compensate his employees with something other than money.
To hold its own against these forces, a union requires organization. It needs solidarity, and community, and logistics. Someone must bring supplies and cook food and provide security for those who are getting the message out. Someone must care for the children of the workers and see that their families are fed even as they are at war with the man who owns the store. Someone must tend the wounds of the beaten.
A spontaneous walkout is a romantic gesture but a foolish endeavor. Without organization and planning, a labor action cannot succeed.
Yet that is exactly what seemed to have happened. That was the word on Kreo’s rumor network, anyway: workers at a factory no one had ever even heard of before walked out spontaneously yesterday and hadn’t yet been broken. The constables were there, but waiting at a respectful distance, merely keeping an eye on things.
What were their demands? No one seemed to know, which was odd. Usually that was the first and loudest thing for an action to communicate. Without demands, what was the point?
People had theories, but nothing credible. Kreo knew how to sniff bullshit, and every theory he heard asserted matched a little too cleanly with the pet concerns of the person doing the asserting. So he went to see for himself.
The factory was in a remote corner of the Caldera, squeezed into a crevice at the end of a dirt road and tucked up against the interior wall of the volcano. The scene was just as the rumors suggested: constables gathered at a distance, their clockwork paddywagons blocking the road some three hundred yards from where the workers were gathered.
A few dozen workers walked, crawled, or flew in a circle as their particular bodies allowed. They carried no signs, but that was not unusual. Unlike his brother, JP Coglinton did not educate his workers, believing that literacy made them lazy. They chanted only, “We won’t build,” a powerful but frustratingly vague slogan.
Kreo recognized a few other organizers who’d given up trying to talk their way past the constables and were now chatting amongst themselves. They all worked for Coglinton shops, and a new round of wary whispers went up among them when they caught sight of the satyr.
OK, Kreo, you can take it from here. There's a lot going on here, so let me know if there's anything you'd like me to elaborate on. The constables are blocking the road, so you won't be able to walk right up to the striking workers. But there's the constables, or the JP Coglinton union folks with whom you'd probably have a pre-existing hot-and-cold relationship, or you could attempt to get past the constables in some way.
Also, you'd know that the best way to win the initial trust of striking workers is to bring them useful supplies to sustain their action. What have you brought with you?