In the 1960s, local workers in the Arabic-speaking Gulf participated in a series of strikes. In the case of strikes that occurred in 1963 Abu Dhabi, workers went on strike in order to improve their working conditions and to express their dissatisfaction with Sheikh Shakhbut’s policies. These strikes contributed to the instability at the end of Sheikh Shakhbut’s reign and the transition to the reign of Sheikh Zayed. While the strikes were important for internal politics in Abu Dhabi, the immediate impetus for these strikes was the firing of workers from not only Abu Dhabi, but also Yemen. During these strikes, workers from all over the Gulf formed a united front through articulating an intra-regional worker identity that transcended territorial boundaries. This type of intra-regional identity was not confined to Abu Dhabi and similar strikes occurred in Qatar and Bahrain in the 1960s. This paper will consider the how tribal affiliation and regional solidarity moved through and despite the administrative borders of the Arabic-speaking Gulf and enabled worker collective action. During the Gulf strikes of the 1960s, workers used kinship and exchange relations as the foundation of solidarity and political action. For workers, these strikes moved beyond the borders of the nation and were possible only through regional solidarity. I argue that during these strikes Abu Dhabi locals made a claim for a Gulf network that moved fluidly across state boundaries, and the networks defined by the workers were not confined to the national boundaries. In doing so, these logics of belonging disrupted the oil industry. In order to deter additional strikes, I find the British administrations and oil companies’ management worked to remove politics from the oilfields. This evacuation of politics included restructuring the workforce to include more South Asians and other foreigners. In order to understand this process and its effects, I will explore the politics of the worksite and the subsequent changes to employment in the Gulf States. The result will elucidate how historic worker action impacted contemporary maps of belonging.