Boots Riley’s latest absurdist film, “I Love Boosters,” follows a crew of shoplifters who take on a fashion mogul, inspiring a mass general strike. After watching, I chatted with a coworker about the potential for a social movement to generate the momentum to achieve a real, widespread general strike. Sure, Riley is known for his surreal style, but if the point of his film is to propagandize to working class people and inspire a general strike, there’s a few real obstacles that are absent in “I Love Boosters.”
Content warning! Spoilers ahead!
For those who haven’t watched the movie yet — and you should — here’s a brief synopsis. The boosters start as a small crew that are stealing and flipping luxury clothing for a living. But when the luxury designer behind the targeted brand racially insults the boosters, it becomes personal. From there, the crew gets pulled into a local campaign of luxury brand retail workers organizing for better working conditions and an international plea for justice from the workers making the clothes in China.
In the end, the boosters use a fantastical teleportation device to accelerate the conflict between employers and workers to its natural end, a mass general strike. The device allows the plot to conveniently skip through all the nitty gritty parts of organizing and instead end on an optimistic imperative that a general strike will (and must!) happen. The film doesn’t mention unions or union leadership. Rather, the organizing is entirely grassroots, with rank-and-file workers taking matters into their own hands.
In talking it over with my coworker, I wondered if Riley’s choice to leave institutional unions out of the plot wasn’t only convenient but intentional. United Auto Workers President Sean Fain is leading a campaign for a general strike in 2028, calling on unions to align their contracts to expire in two years, allowing workers to strike collectively. Fain’s timeline highlights a key obstacle to a general strike: union authorization. Most contracts include language that does not allow workers to strike while their contract is active or to strike without their union’s permission — an odd concept, since the workers are the union. If workers strike while their contract is active and without the backing of their union, it’s called a wildcat strike.
Wildcat strikes were once a powerful tool for workers. During World War I garment, iron, weapons, textile, timber, shipping and coal workers engaged in a wildcat strike wave that won massive gains for workers, including the right to organize, higher wages and shorter work weeks.
Then in 1947, the Senate passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which among many hits to workers, prohibited wildcat strikes. The new law “tamed union militancy, and set the stage for the long decline of the U.S. labor movement,” wrote the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America.
The union also noted that many leaders saw the law as a beneficial tool to regulate rank-and-file members and build their own power and wealth. By holding a wildcat strike, workers risk losing their jobs, since it’s not a protected action under the National Labor Relations Act.
Today, many labor leaders continue to disavow wildcat strikes — thus Fain’s call for unions to align their contracts and legally strike at a designated time. In 2018, teachers in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky held wildcat strikes over pay, pension and other working condition concerns. Despite being prohibited, The Guardian noted the strikes were “ultimately successful because of the mass public support.” In 2020, basketball, baseball and soccer players launched wildcat strikes after the Kenosha, Wisconsin police shooting of Jacob Blake.
Labor movement-wide momentum for a general strike struggles in part because of the refusal to engage in the conversation by one of the largest labor federations in the United States, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, or AFL-CIO.
In a 2020 article titled, “Why Won’t the US’s Largest Labor Federation Talk About a General Strike?,” Jacobin writer Jeff Schuhrke said, “Because of restrictive labor laws, no-strike clauses in union contracts, complex inter-union politics, and a culture that often avoids bold action at all costs, (the AFL-CIO) tend to consider the idea of a general strike to be too risky, too radical, perhaps even ridiculous.”
In 2021, the AFL-CIO affirmed Jacobin’s criticism, reprimanding the Vermont state labor council for calling for a general strike if Trump refused to leave office. The national organization threatened to remove the labor council leader and take control of the council if calls for a general strike continued. A sliver of hope cropped up this year when the AFL-CIO gave the Minnesota federation its blessing to support a general strike on Jan. 23 against ICE’s occupation in the state.
In sidestepping the messy cluster that is national inter-union politics, Riley turns the responsibility to working class people, sans union infrastructure. Riley’s a longtime organizer and is surely painfully aware of the obstacles to a successful general strike. “I Love Boosters” isn’t naive or filming through rose-colored glasses, it simply doesn’t bother to engage in the union political discourse. Labor leaders aren’t the audience he’s aiming for, workers are — represented and unrepresented. “I Love Boosters” tells workers to set aside the red tape and take their material conditions into their own hands. If we’re going to organize a successful general strike, it’s not going to come from the top.
In an interview with KQED after the film was released, Riley said as much: “I want the result of millions of people getting involved in class struggle, joining organizations, all of that,” he said, “because that is the only thing that can actually change the situation.”
Last month, Riley posted a screenshot from a worker tagging him on X to say the film convinced him to organize a union at his job. Workers sounded off in the comments about how Riley’s art inspired their organizing. It’s too soon to know “I Love Boosters’” influence on a general strike campaign, but the film makes one thing clear in the final scene as a booster fires the transportation device at a luxury fashion show, accelerating worker frustrations into a sea of picket signs: the power to change our material conditions is in our hands.
Labor actions
On July 14, over 1,000 caregivers at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center, including certified nursing assistants, housekeepers, dietary staff, lab assistants, sterile processing and ED techs and other staff, held an informational picket calling on Providence to settle a fair first union contract.
In a press release, the caregivers’ union, the Service Employees International Union Local 49, or SEIU, said the workers voted to unionize with SEIU in June 2025 and have been bargaining since November.
Caregivers said Providence’s proposals “fall short of what’s needed to recruit and retain staff at Oregon’s second-busiest hospital,” indicating affordable healthcare, paid time off, competitive wages and fair pay for evening, night and weekend shifts were their primary concerns.
Hundreds of members of Oregon’s labor and faith communities held a rally outside the Portland U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility on July 16 when ICE demanded Francisco Aguirre, a Portland church leader, labor and immigrant rights activist, and asylum seeker, report to the Portland facility for an unscheduled check-in. Community members and union workers called for an end to the deportations and demanded Aguirre’s safe return from his check-in. After approximately an hour, Aguirre did emerge from the facility.
On July 26, the American Postal Workers Union Local 128, National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 82, and Portland Jobs with Justice held a rally at the East Portland Post Office to protest the Trump administration’s ongoing attempts to eliminate vote by mail rights.
Yamhill County workers, represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 1422, or AFSCME, held a bargaining rally July 28, stating that management had “offered low wage increases” and proposed workers pay more for their healthcare premiums.
New campaigns and elections
Workers at Sleep Metric Systems in Lake Oswego voted 7 to 4 on July 2 to join the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555.
Serendipity Center workers in Portland voted 26 to 10 on July 9 to join the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 5.
Workers at New Punch Bowl in Portland voted 21 to 10 on July 10 to form Punch Bowl United, affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World.
Mission Linen & Uniform Service drivers in Bend filed on July 13 to join the General Teamsters Auto Truck Drivers and Helpers Local Union 162.
Professional employees at Providence Milwaukie Hospital voted 31 to 6 on July 23 to join the Oregon Nurses Association. American Rock drivers in Hermiston joined them on July 24, filing to join the sister union, the Teamsters Local 670.
Japanese Garden visitor relations employees voted 16 to 6 on July 27 to join the Laborer’s International Union of North America Local 483.
Licensed professional nurses at Legacy Good Samaritan Health in Portland voted 9 to 0 on July 28 to join the Service Employees Union Local 49.
Workers at the Hood River Electric Cooperative filed on July 29 to join the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 125.
Sunoco operations and maintenance employees in Portland added to the Teamsters’ streak, filing on July 29 to join the Teamsters Local 305.
Clinical specialists and crisis and access specialists at Protocall Services in Portland filed on July 31 to join the Office & Professional Employees International Union Local 11.
This article appears in August 19, 2026.