What do violinists, grocery store clerks, college dorm counselors, nurses, teachers, hotel housekeepers, longshoremen, television writers, auto workers, Amazon warehouse workers, and Boeing employees have in common? What is it?
Over the past year or so, they've all gone on strike, tried to get their co-workers to unionize, and lost their jobs over a variety of issues, including retirement plans, technology replacing workers, and wage lags. He even threatens to quit. Inflation has risen.
The scope of Americans organizing labor unions extends to the technology, digital media, and cannabis industries. Climbing gym employees have also formed a union.
This is happening as American workers in general find themselves in an increasingly precarious position. As a labor historian, I believe that mobilization was the result of economic disruption caused by job displacement, the impact of new technology on jobs, and the erosion of income stability. Today's workers are much less likely to stay with the same employer for decades, as my father and many men and women of his generation did.
the work of the greatest generation
My father, a butcher, worked for the same company for 40 years and raised a family of seven on union-guaranteed wages and benefits. In the 1950s and 1960s, many working-class Americans took such job security for granted, but that is no longer the case. Some career coaches believe that staying in a job for many years is a character flaw.
The rise in labor organizing is one way for workers to have some say in what happens to their jobs. It also helps employees plan for the future.
Union members are increasingly going on strike to demand higher wages, better benefits and stronger job security. Some low-income earners ask why CEO salaries soar through the stratosphere, but why does my family have to work two or three jobs to make ends meet?
In 2023, there were 33 large-scale strikes involving nearly 500,000 workers, the most since 2000. Many labor scholars attribute much of this increase in unionization to several long-term trends. These include stagnant wages, high out-of-pocket medical costs even for people with insurance, and growing concerns about job insecurity due to the increased use of labor-saving technology.
On September 24, 2024, hundreds of Los Angeles County workers rallied to show support for the union SEIU's strike. Many carried placards about alleged unfair labor practices (ULP). Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
precarious work
In many industries, many stable jobs that pay good wages for middle-class workers are in decline. This is largely due to advances in technology that have replaced labor with automation and manufacturers moving to lower-income areas, including Mexico, China, other foreign countries, and even southern states like Alabama and Tennessee. That's true. These trends have left a Rust Belt dotted with dilapidated buildings that once housed bustling factories, and “precarious” jobs with low wages and no access to sick leave, holidays or other basic protections. It is increasing.
This is nothing new.
I believe that as early as the 1920s, New England's textile industry was evacuated from cities such as Lowell, Massachusetts, to non-union hubs in South Carolina, while precision metal fabrication plants in Springfield, Massachusetts, were evacuated from the 1950s to Mississippi. I researched the circumstances behind sending work to South Carolina and South Carolina.
However, in the face of growing economic uncertainty, public support for unions is increasing. A 2024 Gallup poll found that 70% of Americans support unions, which is close to the 71% level in 2022 and the highest approval rating unions have had in half a century. It became.
Support is also rising among Americans who identify as Republicans, who have historically frowned upon organized labor. According to a Gallup poll, his approval rating in 2024 is 49%, down from 56% two years ago but up from a low of 26% in 2011. .
hotel employee strike
Over Labor Day weekend 2024, more than 10,000 hotel workers at 24 hotels from Boston to the West Coast to Hawaii went on strike on behalf of the UNITE HERE union. Their labor actions disrupted travel plans during the busy season.
Most of the hotel closures lasted three days and were aimed at putting pressure on the companies that own the hotels as part of a larger labor contract negotiation strategy. In late September, a wave of layoffs at other hotels pressured management to agree to better wages, expanded health insurance coverage, increased severance benefits, and resolution of key issues related to job security. I put it on.
While the hotel industry has been booming since 2023, UNITE HERE claims employment has fallen by nearly 40% and wages have stagnated. On the picket line, workers said they are living paycheck to paycheck and holding down one or two additional jobs to cover recent rent increases.
Hotel employees now have greater bargaining power, as industry research shows that 79% of the 450 hotels surveyed that are looking to hire say they are unable to fill open positions. I am.
The strike shows no signs of ending. Thousands more hotel workers had joined by late September.
Striking hotel workers make way for picketing airline crew members outside the Hilton Boston Park Plaza on September 2, 2024 in Boston, Massachusetts. Sophie Park/Washington Post via Getty Images
boeing strike
Unlike the short-term continuous work stoppages for hotel workers, the Boeing strike has continued unabated since it began on September 13, 2024. About 32,000 workers have quit their jobs, primarily in Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon.
Boeing workers declared a strike even though Seattle's International Association of Machinists District 751 leadership was willing to accept an agreement from Boeing management. But on September 12, 94.6% of all rank-and-file workers rejected the provisional contract that leadership had recommended the union accept.
The Boeing strike began the next day. It can last a long time. On September 25, workers rejected what the company called its “best and final offer” to resolve the strike.
This is the eighth time these workers have gone on strike since the union was formed in the 1930s. The two most recent strikes, in 2008 and 2005, lasted 57 and 28 days, respectively. Boeing executives, already reeling from the company's numerous operational and safety problems, have announced several cost-cutting measures, including furloughs for some nonunion employees.
Boeing’s non-union backup plan
Boeing assured shareholders and the public that the strike at its non-union plant in South Carolina will not disrupt production of the 787 Dreamliner.
Members of the International Association of Machinists have never forgiven Boeing for its decision to build the assembly plant. The company began operations in 2011 and currently employs approximately 6,000 people. If Boeing had built its factories or expanded production to Washington or Oregon, most of them would have become union members. This is because the existing collective agreement would have covered the new workers.
However, this agreement did not extend to South Carolina.
At the time of the decision, a Boeing spokesperson said that the contract with the machinists' union “recognizes the right to find work elsewhere, and our decision to do so in this case is based on This is because such conditions could not be obtained.” we needed it. ”
Docks workers could be next.
The timing of the hotel and Boeing strikes probably makes them more visible than before, as union members' votes are coveted by both major political parties in the 2024 presidential election.
Meanwhile, 25,000 longshoremen in the International Longshoremen's Association plan to potentially close ports from Boston to Houston on October 1, citing union concerns about job losses due to automation. I am doing it.
How the issue of job security is addressed in the wake of this series of strikes will depend on what other unions in the service, manufacturing, and transportation industries seek when contract negotiations resume. may have an impact.
