"Blue Flu", or sometimes just called a sick-out, is when all the workers call in sick, usually because their contracts or local laws prevent them from striking. The B5 episode is one of fairly few TV SF representations of union activity. Union activity at the time Weinbaum was writing altogether more robust than today's US union activity. Companies would hire armed union-breakers, union activists would be arrested and in some cases executed on trumped up charges. There was a number of big and sometimes very violent strikes in the US coal industry in the teen's and 20's (the film Matewan depicts a famous one), there were big strikes by the Detroit car workers in the 30's. There was the growth and decline of the I.W.W. (the Wobblies). The portrayals of union activity I can recall from early SF are few, mostly from a later era (40s/50s) and almost entirely very negative, usually showing union reps to be corrupt, greedy, anti-progress and probably communist, and were drawn without much subtlety.
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Union activity at the time Weinbaum was writing altogether more robust than today's US union activity. Companies would hire armed union-breakers, union activists would be arrested and in some cases executed on trumped up charges. There was a number of big and sometimes very violent strikes in the US coal industry in the teen's and 20's (the film Matewan depicts a famous one), there were big strikes by the Detroit car workers in the 30's. There was the growth and decline of the I.W.W. (the Wobblies).
The portrayals of union activity I can recall from early SF are few, mostly from a later era (40s/50s) and almost entirely very negative, usually showing union reps to be corrupt, greedy, anti-progress and probably communist, and were drawn without much subtlety.