In Perspective: The Black Friday Walmart strikes signify a possible resurgence of labor activism

The gap between Thanksgiving dinner and Black Friday narrows more and more every year. As physical retailers struggle to compete with online giants like Amazon, the so-called “Black Friday Creep” is a means of remaining competitive and milking Black Friday mania as much as possible. The recent strikes at Walmart reflect workers’ growing discontent with major retailers over wages and working conditions. Labor historian and UCLA history professor Tobias Higbie discusses this latest instance of labor activism and its relationship to the broader decline in organized labor’s prominence in the U.S. over the past century.