Not only are millions of people suddenly jobless with no safety net, but workers deemed "essential" are being asked to put their lives on the line by exploitative employers for the bare minimum in return. At the same time, labor is under attack as the Trump administration's labor board suspended union elections , effectively blocking the formation of new unions during the pandemic.

As the coronavirus pandemic tears across America, shutting down swaths of the economy and exposing society's failings, workers are on the frontlines.

“You’re talking about a very difficult thing to pull off,” said Erik Loomis, professor of history at the University of Rhode Island. “It requires a lot more solidarity among American workers than has typically happened in American history.”

A general strike is when workers from not just one company but across different businesses and even industries go on strike together in pursuit of some common goal. If you live in the U.S., you’d be excused for having never heard of a general strike before, because they’re extremely rare and haven’t happened since just after World War II.

Many good things that we enjoy today were the product of an active and empowered labor movement in the past, just two examples being the 8-hour work day and weekends. The things that the labor movement wins now, in this critical moment, could be even more impactful, even transformative. Society might never be the same after the coronavirus pandemic, but that's a good thing.

Coronavirus is bringing a strike wave to America, if it hasn't already, and there is the feeling that it is snowballing into something more, which the U.S. hasn't seen for 75 years: a general strike that encompasses everyone, not just workers at one company or industry. As Instacart strike organizer Vanessa Bain told us: "Bosses and CEOs across sectors and industries have failed to act, so workers are taking matters into their own hands. The time for a general strike is now."

Now, workers facing such dire circumstances are organizing labor actions aimed at improving their conditions, and everyone else's. The last few weeks have seen strikes, work stoppages, protests, and "sick-outs" from workers in the gig economy , Amazon warehouses , Whole Foods , General Electric , and many more. These workers are asking for better pay and protective gear, among other things, and the protesting GE workers demanded that their factories start producing life-saving medical ventilators for Covid-19 patients instead of airplane engines.

There hasn’t been anything resembling a general strike in the U.S. for almost 75 years. There are two reasons for this. First, the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947—perhaps most infamous for establishing Right to Work states— specifically outlaws “sympathy strikes” or other union efforts to compel another employer to bargain. The second is that under U.S. labor law, the collective bargaining process has served to defuse worker unrest and, as Lichtenstein put it, “routinizing and bureaucratizing conflict.” Instead of workers taking it to the streets, their lawyers sit in conference rooms for months or even years on end.

Such strikes can result in the strikers forming their own shadow government—the Russian word “soviet” literally translates to “council." The first such quasi-government was created during the general strike of 1905 in St. Petersburg to coordinate the strike and to provide basic services, as happened in the 1934 longshoreman's strike in America.

In the United States, three of the most well-known general strikes took place between 1919 and 1946: when shipyard workers in Seattle after World War I were trying to protect their wartime wages; the 1934 longshoremen's strike on the west coast shipyards to establish their organizing rights, and the 1946 Oakland general strike against the region’s Republican machine.

“The state is seen to be clearly illegitimate in some fashion, or what they’ve done is illegitimate,” said Lichtenstein.

A key feature of general strikes is they don’t start off as general strikes. Historically, they've begun as a regular work stoppage by a single union. In the early 20th century, these would occasionally erupt into general strikes when the state tried to suppress it, University of California, Santa Barbara history professor Nelson Lichtenstein said in an interview; workers in other unions who ordinarily would have little skin in the fight suddenly realize that’s no longer the case.

As we're now seeing, though, these times are anything but typical.

Neither Loomis nor Liechtenstein thought a general strike was likely today, but they both acknowledge times are different now. Paradoxically, the labor movement has been so defanged by the restrictions placed on unions and steps taken to prevent union formation that fewer workers than ever are bound by the rules that make general strikes legally tricky for unions. Plus, large national unions have hardly been consistent allies in general strikes, which are inherently radical. For example, the head of the Teamsters, Dave Beck, essentially broke up the 1946 Oakland general strike without accomplishing the strikers’ goals of increased wages that kept up with inflation.

Likewise, the government’s disastrous response to the coronavirus crisis has lent further credence to those who perceive the administration’s authority as illegitimate. Add to that the outrage among people being asked to die for the companies that pay them peanuts to work during a pandemic, and you have exactly the type of scenario that creates big changes.

“Some of these big companies who want people to just go to work, and then Trump and that element sort of downplaying something that’s obviously real,” Lichtenstein said, “it creates an absolute sense of ‘you’re bankrupt, you’re intellectually and morally bankrupt. And therefore we have no obligation to work.’”

Neither Lichtenstein nor Loomis were willing to go so far as to predict a general strike, but neither do they predict the status quo will prevail. Workers, especially low paid workers, have more leverage than ever. The question is, will they use it?

What are labor organizers saying about a general strike now?

Strikes often come in waves, with each group of workers emboldening the next. In the past ten days alone, the country has seen a surge of “wildcat” strikes (unauthorized work stoppages) from coast to coast.