ABSTRACT
This chapter describes author's view on the study of labor history where he learned that the workers power that appears unilateral may instead be asymmetrical. When workers see themselves as having interests in common with other workers and in conflict with their employers, they may turn to collective rather than individual strategies for solving their problems. Mass strikes, like the Great Upheaval of 1877 and the sit-down strikes of the 1930s, revealed the power of workers to virtually stop society, counter the forces of repression, and organize cooperative action on an extended scale. Workers have made use of their potential power in ways ranging from on-the-job resistance to strikes against a single employer to wider forms of solidarity. Employers exercised power over workers, but workers could acquire counter-power albeit of a different kind when they joined together. The need for that power provided a motive for workers to join together to pursue what he would later call common preservation.
