These days strikes have almost become an inevitable part of our daily dose of news. Many a time we read and ignore the relation it has with the psyche of the entire workforce, including all of us. This article discusses the reasons why people get together and resort to strikes. What forces them to come together and unite for a common cause despite perceiving each other as competitors under normal circumstances, and what should be done to handle this?

Strikes by labor unions can cause great disruptions, not only in the organization but also in the economy, and most importantly, in the lives of many people who are not even directly related to it. The recent decision by the autorickshaw unions in Delhi to go on a two-day strike left the common public in a harassed state and in another recent incidence, the Jet Airways pilots went on a mass sick leave. In any case, the final sufferers are the end customers, especially as far as the service industry is concerned.

When tracking the history of strikes, it is very difficult to state the exact time of the first real labor strike that occurred in any economy. However, as far as history can be quoted, the strike tactic has a very long lineage and it was not before the 17^th century that the word `strike' was first used. The word `strike' probably deals with the notion of `giving a blow to the employer'. The first known strike of workers that was ever recorded in history was towards the end of the 20^th dynasty. It was under the reign of Pharaoh Ramses III in ancient Egypt on November 14, 1152 BC, when the artisans of the Royal Necropolis organized and staged the first known strike. Later, in the year 1786, a group of painters in Philadelphia stopped working in protest of the rejection of their proposal for a pay rise, and finally got their pay revised after the strike. In the next few decades, other professionals followed the same procedure and finally by the 18^th century, formal trade unions and guilds started taking shape.

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