A strike is defined as ‘’a refusal to work organized by a body of employees as a form of protest, typically in an attempt to gain a concession from their employers’’. It invokes freedom of opinion and voice and allows those that feel unjustly treated to speak out against those who wronged them. Whether work related or simple prejudice, its always been a part of human nature and has recently grown more prominent in social life, but this means that there will be those that oppose it. With more and more examples of strikes in current times, with examples drawing back to the 2019 Student Climate Change Strike, the notion has been brought up about how relevant it is for less meaningful topics and whether or not it is influencing the younger generation with the older generation’s world views. The question has been raised as to whether or not a society that is all to comfortable to strike against something regardless of weight or consequence, may affect the way certain students young and old experience their learning environments, if it distracts them from learning altogether, or influences them in directions that would normally not be seen as stable.

The group results of the influence of strike-based events in a student learning facility seems to be largely split between positive and negative feedback. Being a subject that’s heavily subjective, its no surprise that the results would be so split, with both sides clearly stating their reasoning. The pros were deemed that it gave the students a chance to speak their own minds and allowed them to fight for something they believed in, and even thought that the students leaving their schools were a good thing. The other side was much more strenuous on the occasion, reprimanding the action as being to forceful and not proving a real point across to the higher ups, viewing it as more of an excuse to get off school than actually rebelling. It’s a study about strong opinions and this topic garnered a strong reaction from either side. The most surprising element of the study and a point that was made as a way of proving a point turned out to be how many of the surveyed individuals, many of who were against strikes, saw the recent Student Climate Change Strike as a positive thing or just was largely indifferent to it, showing how much of an influence that instance left on people’s minds. The strength of voice is apparent is these findings as much as it is in the results gained on the topic.

This survey was meant to spark the question of how much the general public, or more specifically younger men and women that attend schooling areas and whether or not certain striking movements or protest marches affect school learning. The research went into the difference in strike movements from older generations to younger generation, showing how the actual subjects being rebelled for had more weight in older times than now, comparing the likes of worker strikes or political movements surrounding worldwide events like the Vietnam war or the suffragette movement. In more recent times, strikes are much more politically based, instead of the more worker-oriented topics of the past. Research shows that the top four topics that strikes were based around were Unfair Labor practices against illegal activity, Economic strikes that disputes wages, recognition strikes which enforce workers to recognize unions, and jurisdictional strikes which are concerted refusals to work for an affirmed job assignment. These estimates show that the difference between the present and past is that while the past examples were enclosed due to certain locations or businesses being the focus, recent times though less important, have the internet and media to influence their ideals, with the current Student Climate Change strike according to reports shows an amount of 1.4 million students taking part in the cause.

The evidence gathered from this estimate centred around the public, mainly from the eyes of a student within a scholarly area. The estimate number of 1.4 million came from the number of students that participated in the student strike, not the number overall, so the point of the survey was to discover how much did strikes truly affect a student’s learning experience. Since the evidence and the question, itself was purely opinion based, the results that came back would be truthful from those with opinions, and complete indifference to those that don’t mind either way. The research itself about the various other strikes in history come down to who, why and how many were involved. The limits of the topic stem from the fact that strikes, despite being more mainstream, aren’t particularly common, so finding exact results for an actual event wouldn’t be easy but focusing on the student’s reactions and opinions on them were much easy to come by.

The data collected shows how the student populace of Wollongong University is mainly split in the results, with more swaying towards the positive edge, on whether or not strikes are a good thing or bad thing. These results were always going to be up for debate and such an opinion-related topic was ripe for the survey topic. The conclusive results show the viewpoint of the younger generation and how they view an act of rebellion for the forces of good as something that is at least worth striving for.