USA: Workplace strikes surge as high pandemic profits fail to translate into better working conditions
"Workplace strikes are surging. Here’s why they won’t stop anytime soon.", 31 October 2021
Factory workers, nurses and school bus drivers are among the tens of thousands of Americans who walked off jobs in October amid a surge of labor activism that economists and labor leaders have dubbed “Striketober.”
...Having seen the massive profits their companies collected during the coronavirus pandemic, they want their contributions acknowledged in the form of better pay and working conditions.
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There are a number of reasons, but ultimately it comes down to how the pandemic has changed the way people see themselves, their employers and their jobs — especially if going to work heightened their risk of exposure to the deadly virus. So while millions of people quit or switched positions, others have staged walkouts — or at least are threatening to.
...At John Deere, where 10,000 workers at 14 factories walked off the job on Oct. 14, employees want better pay and retirement benefits. The company offered 5 to 6 percent raises in a new collective bargaining agreement, but workers say it’s not enough, given the company’s soaring profits.
...The “Great Resignation” is the term some economists are using to describe how workers are reevaluating their jobs nearly two years into the pandemic. ...A record 4.3 million people — or nearly 3 percent of the U.S. workforce — quit their jobs in August alone, Labor Department data shows. went on strike in October, according to a Bloomberg Law work stoppage database. Of the 119 union strikes so far this year, 15 are “major” strikes involving 1,000 or more individuals, according to the database. That compares with nine major strikes in 2020, when the pandemic took hold, and 30 in 2019.
Results are mixed, economists and labor leaders say. Nabisco and Frito-Lay workers won big concessions from their employers, and both groups returned to work in September.
...Those new contracts have galvanized other strike drives across the country, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in an interview.
...Kellogg and John Deere have both run their factories without union members. But 400 Kellogg mechanics broke their strike on Oct. 19 after the company threatened to contract out their work to a third-party vendor.