Unions Fighting In The Street
Disputes at work places can escalate into street fights when management tries to stop a strike by bringing in workers breaking the strike across the lines. Around the later nineteenth and earlier twentieth century, factory management would in some cases hire private security guards (like the Pinkerton’s in the USA) or so called hired muscles to physically intimidate and harass picket lines. Street fights may also happen during a general strike or labor unrest.
The general strike in Winnipeg in 1919 resulted in the deputization by a group of local companies who tried to end the strike, literally hundreds of goons who were given orders to end the disturbance at any cost. Street fighting was also a spawned by the Minneapolis General Strike in 1934 which led to confrontations between representatives of business owners as well as the police and “workers defense brigades” created by the Teamsters union.