In 1936, auto workers in Flint, Michigan did something remarkable. They stopped working, sat down inside General Motors factories, and refused to leave for forty-four days. What made this possible wasn't just shared grievances—workers had those for decades. It was something harder to build: solidarity.

We often talk about solidarity as if it appears naturally whenever people share common interests. But anyone who has tried to organize anything—a neighborhood watch, a book club, a political campaign—knows that shared interests alone don't create lasting cooperation. Something more is needed.

The labor movement discovered this truth through painful trial and error. Over generations, unions developed specific practices, institutions, and rituals that transform scattered individuals into cohesive communities capable of sustained collective action. Understanding how they did this reveals something fundamental about what holds any group together.

Walk into a union meeting in the early twentieth century and you'd witness something that looked almost religious. Members stood, recited pledges, sang songs together. There were initiations for new members, commemorations of past struggles, and shared meals after business concluded.

These weren't quaint traditions or wasted time. They were solidarity technology—carefully developed practices that created emotional bonds between strangers.

Consider the union song. When textile workers sang Which Side Are You On? or when miners belted out Solidarity Forever, they weren't just passing time. Singing together synchronizes breathing and heartbeat, triggers oxytocin release, and creates what psychologists call 'collective effervescence'—the feeling of being part of something larger than yourself.

Regular meetings served similar functions. Even when there was little business to conduct, gathering weekly reinforced that members belonged to a community with its own rhythms and expectations. Missing meetings meant missing the ongoing story of collective life. The meeting hall became a second home, the fellow members a second family.

Takeaway

Solidarity isn't a feeling that arrives spontaneously—it's constructed through repeated shared experiences that synchronize people's emotions and create a sense of belonging to something larger than themselves.

Songs and meetings create emotional bonds, but solidarity faces its toughest test when members face real hardship. This is where material support becomes essential.

Strike funds represent the most obvious example. When workers walk off the job, they stop getting paid. A family can only survive so long on principle alone. By pooling resources in advance, unions ensured that no individual had to bear the full cost of collective action. The strike fund transformed an individual sacrifice into a shared burden.

But material support extended far beyond strikes. Unions created death benefits that paid for funerals and supported widows. They established sick funds for members who couldn't work. Some built vacation camps, ran educational programs, or provided legal services. The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union even built cooperative housing for members.

These benefits served a dual purpose. Obviously, they helped members during difficult times. Less obviously, they demonstrated that solidarity was real and tangible—not just words at meetings but concrete help when you needed it most. Every check from the sick fund, every funeral paid for, every child sent to union summer camp reinforced the lesson: this community takes care of its own.

Takeaway

Abstract commitments to collective action become credible only when backed by material support—strike funds, mutual aid, and member services prove that solidarity delivers real benefits, not just rhetoric.

Every community must answer a fundamental question: who belongs? Unions have struggled with this question throughout their history, and their answers reveal both the power and the limits of solidarity.

Early craft unions often defined membership narrowly. The printers' union, for instance, limited membership to skilled workers who had completed apprenticeships. This created strong bonds among members—they shared skills, career trajectories, and professional identity. But it also meant excluding less skilled workers, which employers eventually exploited.

The industrial unions that emerged in the 1930s took a different approach. The CIO organized entire industries regardless of skill level. Everyone who works here, belongs here. This broader solidarity proved more powerful against large corporations but required different techniques to maintain cohesion among workers with less in common.

The most painful boundary questions involved race and gender. Some unions actively excluded Black workers and women. Others—like the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters or the various women's auxiliaries—organized precisely those groups the mainstream labor movement ignored. These boundary decisions shaped everything: who could access union benefits, whose grievances mattered, and ultimately, how much power workers could build.

Takeaway

How a movement defines its boundaries—who counts as 'us'—determines both its internal cohesion and its ultimate power; narrow definitions create strong bonds but limited reach, while broader definitions build power but require more work to maintain unity.

The practices unions developed weren't invented from scratch. They drew on older traditions—fraternal orders, mutual aid societies, religious congregations—adapting them to the specific challenge of building power in the workplace.

What made them work was their integration. Rituals created emotional bonds. Material support made those bonds credible. Boundary work determined who could access both. Together, these elements transformed collections of individuals into communities capable of sustained collective action.

These lessons extend beyond labor history. Any group seeking lasting solidarity faces the same challenges: creating belonging, demonstrating mutual commitment, and deciding who's included. The union hall may be less central today, but the fundamental dynamics of building solidarity remain unchanged.