The conference “Reclaiming Power: Bridging Social Movements and Industrial Relations in Labour Mobilisation” held at in Florence on May 26-27, 2025 was also an opportunity to present the first findings from the second International Strike Report, a work that involves scholars from eleven countries from both the global North and South, a group of countries constitutes nearly one-third of the world’s population and over half of the global GDP – Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, China, Italy, South Africa, Turkey, the UK, the US, and Uruguay – and analyzes 2023 strike trends across them.

(Here the 2022 version of the report)

Austerity measures, Covid-19, inflation and other recent crises have contributed to a resurgence of social and labor protests after 2010 and this work wants to track mobilization around the world (scholars from other countries are invited to join the effort). This wave of strikes is somehow a reversal of recent historic lows.

Collecting data on strike at an international level is both important, as it helps understand patterns in Labor mobilization and organization, and a complicated exercise, because of different legislation, official data collection, traditional strength of trade unions. As we read in the report: “Relying on official strike data is highly problematic in many national contexts (…) In Brazil, there are no official statistics on strikes. In Chile, while the Labor Directorate Office produces high-quality data, it only captures legal strikes (…). The Chinese government does not release any data on strikes, partly because such labor actions are not legally recognized. In Italy, the Italian National Institute of Statistics ceased collecting labor conflict statistics in 2010. Although the Strike Guarantee Commission partially collects official strike data, it only covers strikes affecting so-called ‘essential services’ (…) In Turkey, the Ministry of Labor provides data solely on legal strikes. Due to extremely restrictive union and collective bargaining laws, coupled with deepening authoritarianism, legal strikes have become exceedingly rare, constituting only about ten per cent of all strikes in the country as of 2023. In the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics only records strikes involving 1,000 or more workers that last for at least one shift and occur on weekdays, a set of criteria that excludes the vast majority of strike actions. Similarly, in Uruguay, there are no official data on strikes. Our report highlights innovative efforts by activists and scholars to address these limitations of official data sources”.

The report collects three main kind of data (number of strikes, number of workers taking part to strikes, number of working days lost) and, for each country, also gives word to a Unionist or a striking worker. As an example, the Italian chapter, written by Katia Pilati, Sabrina Perra, Vincenzo Maccarrone, and Armanda Cetrulo, contains an interview to a worker who was part of a 5-months long strike that hit a company part of the subcontracting chain of the retailer Mondo Convenienza in Campi Bisenzio (Florence).

“While it is tempting to provide some explanations for the comparisons between countries, the extensive existing literature demonstrates that this is a complex and contentious endeavor. To illustrate this point, once again, we can refer to Roberto Franzosi’s The power of strike (Cambridge University Press, 2010)  who summarizes the strike literature by arguing that the temporal patterns of strikes emerge from complex interactions of four set of factors:  

(1) economic (GDP, unemployment, inflation, wages, etc.), 

(2) organizational (union densities, ideologies, etc.), 

(3) institutional (collective bargaining institutions, cycles, extensions, etc.), 

(4) political (levels of state and employer repression, labor’s political standing, etc.). 

For now, let us acknowledge the complexity of explaining these differences both theoretically and statistically, and focus on presenting descriptive statistics.

We detected a total of 9,853 strikes in 2023 in ten countries (…) Our data includes strike frequencies for Brazil, China, and Italy from 2022. The trends reveal three distinct patterns: a modest increase in Brazil, a two-fold increase in China and relative stability in Italy. (…)

Brazil and Italy lack participation data. Excluding these countries, we identified a total of 4,459,126 workers involved in strikes in 2023 across nine countries (…) it is fair to say that nearly five out of every 1,000 workers across these nine countries went on strike in 2023.

In terms of participation, Uruguay stands out, while there were increases in participation in Chile and the US, while there was a decrease in Turkey.

We identified a total of 37 million days lost to strikes in 2023 across the eight countries with available volume data. Brazil, China, and Italy lack this data. (…) Once again, Uruguay emerges as the most strike-prone country in terms of volume, followed by Argentina and South Africa.

The report also looks at the frequency of strikes by industry in eight countries (Argentina, Belgium, UK not included) I and the top five are: education, manufacturing, transportation, public administration and human health who account for 69% of the total strike activity. These are the same sectors that made it to the top five in 2022.

“This suggests a remarkable degree of continuity in strike-prone industries”.

“Education is considered one of Silver’s four likely successors to the automobile complex as the leading industry of world capitalism (Beverly Silver, Forces of Labor, Cambridge University Press, 2003). and, consequently, a significant source of labor unrest. As the historical stronghold of the labor movement, manufacturing requires no explanation. In her historical study on workers’ protests, Silver also found that transportation ranks at the top among other industries.  This sector has expanded even further due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has drawn thousands of new workers, leading couriers of various kinds to increasingly mobilize to improve their working conditions.

(…) Education ranks first in three Latin American countries: Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay. It also ranks second in the US. Manufacturing is among the top three industries in four countries: Turkey, China, South Africa and Uruguay. Additionally, human health ranks among the top three industries in Brazil, and the US”.

The report also watches at legislation: where were the strikes legal and where they were not? “With the exception of Belgium and the US (where legality data was unavailable), significant variation emerges (…). In 2023, all documented strikes were legal in Argentina, the UK, and Uruguay, while none were legal in China. The figures for Italy, Brazil, Chile, South Africa, and Turkey show dramatic divergence, ranging from 99 per cent to 11 per cent. Notably, Turkey alarmingly low rate of legal strikes (11%) reflects the country’s authoritarian consolidation since the 2010s—a key factor in explaining its comparatively low strike participation and volume”.

One last important point is related to the frequency of strikes in the public sector: in almost every country public employees are among the groups that has called for more work stoppages. “In Argentina, Italy, Brazil, and Uruguay, where over 50 per cent of strikes occur in the public sector, far exceeding its share of total employment. Türkiye’s notably low ratio likely reflects the legal prohibition on strikes by civil servants. They still do organize non-legal strikes, but they are riskier”.