De vergeten staking van Amsterdam / The Forgotten Amsterdam Strike

The 1950s are known as the years of collective satisfaction, guided wage policies, and the reconstruction of the country. Yet, that's not the whole story. In the early morning of Thursday, March 31, 1955, a massive strike broke out in Amsterdam. More than four thousand municipal workers went on strike for better pay. The strike gripped the city for five days. Trams and buses were suspended, ferries were out of service, garbage wasn't collected, and on Saturday, the city ran out of gas. Striking was prohibited for civil servants. But municipal workers received strong support from the population, and the strike proceeded smoothly. The city council hesitated briefly but then took a hard line. There was no pay increase. However, soldiers were called into the city to maintain order and take over the strikers' work. All strikers were punished, and 61 of them were summarily dishonorably discharged. Among them are 22 people who participated in the February Strike in 1941, including figureheads like Dirk van Nimwegen. How could things have become so heated in Amsterdam? The Forgotten Amsterdam Strike offers a fascinating reconstruction of a tense social conflict during the Cold War and a wonderful snapshot of Amsterdam in the 1950s. Harrie Lindelauff and Jaap Hooiveld are, respectively, a historian and an industrial and organizational psychologist. Mayor Femke Halsema wrote the foreword. The book includes photos of the strike by Dolf Kruger and Ben Merk, among others.