Discussions of the current state of American labor have overlooked the fact that the strike, a principal form of union and working class power, has virtually disappeared from American life. The rise of an anti-union institutional legal regime has undermined the right to strike and effectively reversed the structure of incentives for collective bargaining envisioned under the National Labor Relations Act. The dynamics of the current regime are illustrated by one of the largest and longest strikes of recent decades, the 1995 Detroit Newspapers strike. The consequences go beyond unionized labor and constitute a de-democratization of workplace governance in the United States.