Wildcat strike

On March 23, 2012, Air Canada ground employees suddenly walked off the job at Toronto Pearson International Airport, resulting in many flight delays, after three workers were suspended for heckling Canadian Labour Minister Lisa Raitt.

[2] Hundreds of members of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees walked out from their jobs on the morning of October 26, 2020 at healthcare centres across the province, resulting in some delays in care.

This was in protest of an announcement made 2 weeks prior by Health Minister Tyler Shandro and Alberta Health Services CEO, Verna Yiu that between 9,700 and 11,000 AHS employees, namely laboratory, linen, cleaning and food services staff, will be laid-off in efforts to outsource the work to private companies, potentially saving the province $600 million annually.

Participating in a wildcat strike is considered a refusal to work and can be met by repercussions such as a warning or the termination of one's contract by the employer on an individual level.

During the Depression, and prior to the bureaucratization of unions, leaders of different political philosophies tended to agree on the necessity and unique capabilities of local strike actions.

[6] Another concern that union leadership had was with its Communist members and other firebrands, as potentially inviting harsh repercussions from unity-minded politicians could underscore the inadequate strength of the labor movement to follow through on endangering production.

Part of this emergent anti-radical platform was an easy embrace of the Taft–Hartley Act's anti-communist agenda, resulting in virtually all Communists losing their union positions in only a couple years.

However, many of these springtime strikers held grievances with their own unions for an over-cooperative wartime attitude that placed greater value on New Deal institutions and programs than on disruptive actions to secure local concessions.

[8] It also set off a wave of state-level anti-unionism that popularized the notion of union-free zones, providing a potent weapon to businesses facing union demands: the threat of relocation.

[10] During the postwar boom, union achievement of benefits for only some employees succeeded in removing pressure from their membership as a whole and demotivated radical action from those who had gained the most.

Under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), federal courts have held that wildcat strikes are illegal and that employers may fire workers participating in them.