Striking for Dummies: How to skip work to join Occupy Wall Street’s May 1 General Strike

On May 1 (May Day), or the International Worker’s Day holiday, Occupy Wall Street will stage a general strike. Oddly, though, union workers suffer under the yolk of a piece of 1947 GOP legislation called the Taft-Hartley Act, which requires unions to give 60 days notice for any strike action, and bans a variety of actions like the general strike.

However, as we saw wtih Wisconsin’s Scott Walker protests last year, many schoolteachers took a personal day or called in sick, so there are ways around Taft-Hartley. This, of course, doesn’t cover non-union workers who might be sympathetic to the May 1 General Strike, but are worried that showing solidarity will imperil their job.

And so I present to you a list of methods for union and non-union workers to skip work and join the strike and protest actions on May 1. Some are serious, some less so. If none seem to work, then the hope is that they’ll get you thinking creatively.

Be sure to start laying the groundwork in the next few days—some of these will take some prep work prior to May 1. And if you don’t plan to strike, at least have some fun reading the get-out-of-work tactics.

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