A sitdown strike is a form of civil disobedience in which an organized group of workers, usually employed at a factory or other centralized location, take possession of the workplace by "sitting down" at their stations, effectively preventing their employers from replacing them with scab labor or, in some cases, moving production to other locations. It has been suggested that Civil and social disobedience be merged into this article or section. ... Scab can refer to the following: The crust covering a healing wound as a result of coagulation. ...

Workers had used this technique since the beginning of the 20th century, not only in the United States, but also in Italy, Poland, Yugoslavia, and France. The United Auto Workers used this tactic with great success, most famously in the Flint Sit-Down Strike, in which strikers not only held a number of General Motors plants for more than forty days, but repelled the efforts of the police and National Guard to retake them. A wave of sitdown strikes followed, but ended by the end of the decade as the courts and the National Labor Relations Board held that sitdown strikers could be fired. While some sitdown strikes still occur in the United States, they tend to be spontaneous and short-lived. The United Auto Workers (UAW), officially the United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America International Union, is one of the largest labor unions in North America, with more than 700,000 members in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico organized into approximately 950 union locals. ... The Flint Sit-Down Strike changed the United Automobile Workers from a collection of isolated locals on the fringes of the industry into a major union and led to the unionization of the United States automobile industry. ... You may be looking for the arena found in Vancouver, see GM place General Motors Corporation NYSE: GM, also known as GM, is a United States-based automobile maker with worldwide operations and brands including Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, Holden, Hummer, Opel, Pontiac, Saturn, Saab and Vauxhall. ... In the United States the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is a five-person appointed federal agency charged with conducting elections for labor union representation and with investigating and remedying unfair labor pratices. ...

French workers engaged in a number of factory occupations in the wake of the French student revolt in May, 1968. At one point more than twenty-five percent of French workers were on strike, many of them occupying their factories. May 1968 poster: Be young and keep quiet In May 1968 a general insurrection broke out across France. ...

The sitdown strike was the inspiration for the sit-in, where an organized group of protesters would occupy an area they are not wanted by sitting and refuse to leave until their demands are met. A sit-in or sit-down is a form of direct action that involves one or more persons nonviolently occupying an area for protest, often political, social, or economic change. ...

• The Wobblies - first to employ sit-down strikes