Since Labour Day of last year, US unions have exercised their power in a level that hasn’t been seen in decades. In between some losses, they’ve had several significant wins.
“It’s been a good year for unions,” declared Art Wheaton, head of labour studies at Cornell University’s Industrial and Labour Relations school in Buffalo, New York. There have been several successes, and that will be helpful moving ahead. Their grade is a B+. None of an A.
The Teamsters union, which has 340,000 members at UPS, utilised the threat of a walkout to accomplish the majority of its bargaining objectives, including notably higher wages for part-timers, who make up the majority of the union’s membership at the corporation. Additionally, a lower pay category that had been awarded to hundreds of UPS employees employed since 2018 to enable the company to switch to 6-day delivery was deleted. The arrangement was widely approved by members.
The US labour movement has seen a rise in the number of big strikes, despite the Teamsters avoiding a walkout. According to a Cornell University strike tracker database, unions called for 70 strikes between September 1 of last year and August 31 of this year, during which at least 100 workers took part for more than a week.
That is significantly more than one major strike each week, and it is up 40% from the same time last year.
One-day strikes at Starbucks stores that elected to unionise but haven’t yet agreed an initial contract are among the lesser-known strikes that are taking place. When those minor strikes are counted, the overall number of strikes during the previous year rises to around 400.
Over the past year, unions have successfully achieved many of their negotiation objectives through strikes, from non-teaching school employees in Los Angeles to nurses in New York City. However, not all of these strikes were successful.
One of the longest strikes in modern US history ended in March with almost 1,000 coal miners in Alabama going back to work at Warrior Met Coal. No new contract agreement was ever achieved by the United Mine Workers union.
Even yet, the unions have been successful, thanks in part to the near-decade-low unemployment rate and the fact that employers are posting more job opportunities than there are job seekers looking for work. The ability to demand more of what they want—higher pay and benefits or just a better work-life balance—is given to workers as a result.
Numerous health care worker unions claim that inadequate staffing and the workers’ perception that they can’t deliver the degree of service they want without more assistance are their main problems.
When freight train workers prepared to strike late last year, the Biden administration and Congress intervened in the labour conflict. If the four main freight railroads stopped down, the US economy would suffer, according to Biden and Congress. However, they drew criticism from the unions when they decided to impose a contract without sick days.
More than 100,000 freight railway employees received 14% raises that took effect right once, as well as back pay and additional raises totaling 24% over the course of the contract’s five-year term. However, the majority of voters opposed the agreements, lamenting problems with quality of life, particularly the scarcity of sick days. Many considered the result to be a loss for the train unions.
Many union members are hurting as they exercise their power, most notably the over 160,000 actors who are members of SAG-AFTRA and have been on strike since the middle of July in protest of major studios and streaming services. Since early May, an additional 11,000 members of the Writers Guild have been protesting the same employers.
For each of those strikes, observers see little hope of a resolution. The media and internet businesses who would have paid for the series and films that the unions stopped production on are actually saving money as a result of the absence of filming, which supports their recent cost-cutting initiatives.
In these disagreements, the general public has typically supported the union members. According to a Gallup survey released at the end of August, more Americans sympathise with television and movie authors than with the production studios, with 72% of respondents backing the writers and 67% of respondents supporting the performers.
According to the survey, the public also believes that unions now have greater authority than in the past and they support this. Unions are seen as having a net positive impact on the US economy by a record-breaking 61% of respondents, breaking the previous record from 1999 by six points. And today, 43% of respondents say they want unions to have more influence, up from a record-low 25% who said they did in a 2009 poll conducted in the wake of the Great Recession.
According to a press release from Gallup, “labour unions are currently experiencing a period of high public approval and strong belief in the benefits they give to employees, firms, and the economy. Given the increased public support for unions now, striking workers may have a stronger negotiating position than they would have in the past.
The United Auto Workers union, which has up to 145,000 members, has threatened to strike one or more of the three major US manufacturers that are unionised: General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis, which produces cars under the Jeep, Ram, Dodge, and Chrysler brands.
At the negotiating table, the union, which has the support of 75% of the Americans polled, outlined a bold set of objectives. They want raises of at least 40% throughout the duration of the contract, the reinstatement of cost-of-living pay adjustments to shield members from rising prices, and the recovery of concessions made to the automakers earlier this century when several automakers were having financial difficulties and GM and Chrysler were on the verge of bankruptcy and government bailout.
With a strike deadline set for September 14 at 11:59 p.m., the two parties don’t seem to be any closer to striking an agreement at this time.
The unions that represent 85,000 healthcare professionals, including nurses and other support personnel, at Kaiser Permanente locations across seven states are scheduled to wrap up their own strike authorization vote shortly after that deadline. For those workers, a strike could begin as early as October 1.