In industry, health and entertainment, tens of thousands of American workers, tired from working long hours during the pandemic and frustrated by the profits of their companies, went on strike this fall. If they do not reach an agreement with Hollywood studios on the adoption of a new collective agreement, the 60,000 members of the IATSE union, which represents film crews in the country, are scheduled to walk out on Monday.
Some 31,000 employees of the Kaiser Permanente health group in the western United States are also threatening to cease work shortly. Since Thursday, 10,000 employees of the tractor manufacturer John Deere are already on strike; 1,400 at cereal maker Kellogg’s since October 5, and more than 2,000 employees at Mercy Hospital in Buffalo since October 1. The word “Striketober”, a contraction of “strike” and october (October), has appeared on social networks. Democratic left-wing star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez even put it on Twitter Thursday.
An improvement in working conditions rather than increases
The strikers “mostly demand improved working conditions,” notes Kate Bronfenbrenner, a specialist in trade union movements at Cornell University. “Organizations are making more profits than ever and are asking employees to work more than ever, sometimes risking their lives with the Covid,” she underlines. But faced with management refusing compromises, employees “are less inclined to accept collective agreements that do not meet their needs,” she notes.
It is difficult to know the exact number of strikes, as the US government only lists those involving more than 1,000 workers. But the trend is clearly on the rise since the teacher movement in West Virginia in 2018, says Josh Murray, professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University. Disappointed by the agreement negotiated by their union, the teachers decided to go on strike, obtaining satisfaction. Then there was a phenomenon of contagion.
Victories that give momentum
“The more strikes that get their way, the more that get started, because people start to really believe that they can win and are willing to risk their wages or their jobs,” says Josh Murray. The strike at Kellogg’s follows that in July of 600 employees in Kansas of a factory of Frito-Lay aperitif cakes, a subsidiary of PepsiCo. They had stopped work for nineteen days to obtain, among other things, the guarantee of one day off per week and increases. The thousand strikers of Nabisco snacks (a subsidiary of the giant Mondelez) obtained concessions in September after five weeks of conflict.
Another source of motivation, “during the pandemic, these workers realized that they were essential, that the economy could not function without them,” notes Josh Murray. “There will inevitably be a pendulum effect, companies will not let wage costs increase too much,” says the professor. But in the meantime, “economists and sociologists have shown that the tighter the labor market (as is currently the case in the United States, editor’s note), the more power workers have, the higher the probability of strikes. “.
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