On September 18, McDonald’s workers in 10 cities will make history, striking to protest what they say is a persistent failure to enforce company rules against sexual harassment at work. The Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund will provide legal support for women who have filed sexual harassment claims, and the strike is backed by the Fight for 15 movement of fast-food workers organizing for a living minimum wage. As reported by Fortune, hundreds of employees in worker-led women’s committees organized the strike, “demanding improved procedures for receiving and responding to sexual harassment complaints, plus required anti-harassment training for managers and employees.” It will be the first time McDonald’s workers have taken such action on sexual harassment.

For nearly a year, the #MeToo moment calling out sexual misconduct has revolved mostly around the already-famous: in Hollywood, in media, and in politics. On Friday, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh became the latest to be accused publicly of assault. But #MeToo originally had nothing to do with the rich and powerful. Tarana Burke, a Bronx-based activist, coined the term over a decade before it became a hashtag; at the time, Burke intended it as a response to the prevalent sexual abuse of young, working-class women of color. Sexual harassment and assault has also been a focal point for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which organizes farmworkers against the exploitation and sexual harassment of women in the fields. CIW activists recently held a hunger strike in front of the corporate headquarters of Wendy’s over the chain’s refusal to comply with CIW’s Fair Food program, which sets out a program of rules and regulations meant to protect workers from harassment and abuse. “There’s no new news here, aside from the CIW trying to exploit the positive momentum that has been generated by and for women in the #MeToo and Time’s Up movement to advance their interests,” a Wendy’s spokeswoman asserted to the Huffington Post in March.

Tuesday’s strike is a reminder that #MeToo’s roots are deep, and they were planted by working-class women. But the strike is still an unusual tactic. “There’s not a deep history of large coordinated strikes over sexual harassment,” Rebecca Kolins Givan, an associate professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University, told me. “Usually when sexual harassment has been an issue, it’s one of many issues about disrespect and lack of dignity in the workplace and, like with McDonald’s, it’s in the context of a broader campaign of organizing for recognition and respect.”

“There are some key recent cases, not necessarily of strikes but of demands around sexual harassment, the major recent one being the hotel workers in Chicago, with what they called their ‘Hands Off, Pants On’ campaign to get panic button for housekeepers,” Givan said. In October 2017, the Chicago city council approved an ordinance that requires hotel owners to give panic buttons to workers and to develop anti-sexual harassment policies.

Annelise Orleck, a professor of history at Dartmouth College who has participated in a public relations campaign on behalf of striking McDonald’s workers, told me that the earliest example she could find of a strike provoked by sexual harassment dates to 1912. “Corset-makers in Kalamazoo, Michigan were the first that I could find to publicly say that they were walking out to protest physical and verbal harassment by their foreman, in addition to his demands for quid pro quo sex,” she said. According to Orleck, unions were “nervous” about the prospect of taking action on workplace sexual harassment, and preferred behind-the-scenes action as opposed to a strike.