I think the problem in the current US political system is that a tiny majority of votes wins you everything. If this won you the 49% you deserve, then things would be different.
They are unemployed, not striking. Being unemployed means they are not needed by a corporation, thus them not working does not damage the profit of any corporation by disrupting its function. But when you are employed in a corporation and run its functions, then you can strike and exert pressure by disrupting its flow.
If we consider this striking, it would appear that a large portion of the population (I don't know the actual percentage), composed of all walks of life, has decided it's of the utmost important to union bust and push people back to work without really making any attempts at resolving anything, and even with the knowledge that forcing people back to work will result in additional loss of life. "Sure, the mine is collapsing on people and giving you all black lung, but if you don't get back in there the town will shut down".
Doesn't really bode well for any future mass action.
I don't think you can categorize layoffs as unintentional striking. Businesses are capable of laying off a lot of their workforce without crumbling, they just wind up running leaner and pruning some of the growth they had in the last few quarters. Striking means you organize enough of the employees that once they're gone the business cannot operate, no work gets done and there's an active effort by the strikers to advertise that the business is not operating in order to put further pressure on them.
The difference is purpose, and intent. The people not at work right now have been judged non-important, and have no purpose.
If the 10% was distributed differently, in the intent of maximum damage instead of minimum damage, and if they had a clear goal of overthrow, the ruling class would be fucked and the stock market would be at 0.
Of course, having a "strike" where everyone is willing to go back to work and only non-essential people are striking will not do much of anything as far as power relations. That much is obvious to anyone.
