Labor unrest is a term used by employers or those generally in the business community to describe organizing and strike actions undertaken by labor unions, especially where labor disputes become violent or where industrial actions in which members of a workforce obstruct the normal process of business and generate industrial unrest are essayed.
Such a conception of labor action was common in the United States in the nineteenth century, most prominently amongst mining interests in the American West, and remained common in the twentieth century CE amongst totalitarian states, such as the Soviet Union and People's Republic of China, in which complete control of the working class is desired.