By Cassandra Stephenson
Thousands of unionized AT&T workers across the southeast marked their 20th day on strike Thursday amid a bargaining stalemate over a new contract with the telecommunications giant.
AT&T on Wednesday presented the southeast district of The Communications Workers of America (CWA) with what it calls its “final offer,” proposing cumulative wage increases of up to 18% over the life of the 5-year agreement and higher company contributions to employees’ health care benefits.
More than 75,000 Kaiser Permanente health care workers began a three-day strike in Virginia, California, Colorado, Washington state, Oregon and Washington, D.C., on Oct. 4, 2023, after company executives and eight unions representing aides, techs, support staff and other employees failed to agree on the terms of new contracts. This is the largest U.S. health care strike on record. In a statement it released when the walkout started, Kaiser asserted that it wanted to reach a deal soon with the striking workers.
Although hospitals and emergency rooms are still open during the strike, and Kaiser is making use of temporary workers, many of its noncritical services are temporarily closed or operating under reduced hours. The strike does not include any nurses unions or doctors.
The Conversation asked Michael McQuarrie, an Arizona State University sociologist who directs its Center for Work and Democracy, to explain why this strike is happening now and how labor actions like this can affect patient care.
The two main reasons are concerns over staffing levels and practices and dissatisfaction with pay that hasn’t kept up with inflation and was too low to begin with.
Kaiser says its options are limited due to a national shortfall in all sorts of health care workers, including home health aides and nurse practitioners. Workers counter that higher pay and better working conditions would attract more applicants.
Health care workers have long worried that inadequate staffing is undercutting the quality of care for patients – this has been a central issue in contract negotiations and strikes for years. But the COVID-19 pandemic greatly exacerbated the problem.
At the same time, inflation has outstripped negotiated wage increases for Kaiser workers. Kaiser is currently offering some workers in Northern California and Washington state 4% annual raises for the four years covered by the new contract and lower raises for everyone else. The unions have rejected this offer, which they say would not make up for past inflation and would unnecessarily create different wage scales based on the region where workers are located.
Kaiser, which provides health care for 12.7 million Americans, took in US$95.4 billion in revenue in 2022 but ran a $1.2 billion operating loss that it attributed to “strong economic headwinds in the financial markets” – suggesting that its investments were to blame rather than its health care operations.
For 2021, Kaiser reported that it had about $56 billion in unrestricted cash and investments, excluding assets tied to employee and retiree pensions.
Kaiser’s profits in the first half of 2023 totaled about $3.4 billion, however. And with the exception of its losses in 2022, Kaiser has been consistently profitable for years.
Concerns over low worker pay are growing while Kaiser’s executive compensation is increasing. As of 2021, its CEO Gregory Adams was making more than $15.5 million a year in pay and “other” compensation.
Like many health care systems, Kaiser is a nonprofit. This means it pays very little in taxes. In exchange for their special tax status, nonprofits are supposed to provide public benefits.
Nonprofits may make more money than they spend, but they can’t distribute profits to its shareholders. Nonprofit executive compensation must be “reasonable,” according to the Internal Revenue Service – although it can be hard to determine how much is too much.
Health care strikes are not unusual, with more than 40 occurring in the past two years. However, the industry and the workforce are heavily fragmented, which means that these strikes tend to be relatively small.
In September 2022, the Minnesota Nurses Association took 15,000 members on strike over many of the same issues, such as staffing and inflation. That strike, which lasted three days, was the largest health care strike in U.S. history by that point in terms the number of workers involved.
Prior to that, the largest was probably another Minnesota strike in 2010, in which about 12,000 nurses walked off the job for 24 hours.
Kaiser has experienced much smaller strikes in the past, such as a walkout in 2015 of about 75 mental health clinicians.
It depends on the strike, but usually not much.
Critical care Kaiser facilities will remain open, though the strike will likely cause some delays in care due to short staffing and long lines.
Some appointments and elective procedures at the affected hospitals are being postponed, and nonessential functions like labs and radiology departments are temporarily closed or their hours are being reduced.
Nurses, who are very important bedside caregivers, are part of a different coalition of Kaiser unions. While they won’t be on strike, they may have to help cover work not being done by aides and other support staff who are on the picket lines.
Michael McQuarrie, Director of the Center for Work and Democracy, Arizona State University
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The initial wave of strikes hit select Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis facilities, with the union deploying a tactic it has described as a " stand-up strike."
UAW members at General Motors' Wentzville Assembly in Missouri, Ford's Michigan Assembly, and Stellantis' Toledo Assembly in Ohio were the first to walk off the job on Friday, and additional locals will be called on to strike in the coming days as negotiations continue.
Those who remain on the job will be working under an expired collective bargaining agreement, though they still have status quo protections.
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The labor actions mark the first time the UAW has ever gone on strike against all three major automakers simultaneously.
"We've been working hard, trying to reach a deal for economic and social justice for our members," UAW president Shawn Fain said in a speech late Thursday, just ahead of the midnight strike deadline. "We have been firm. We are committed to winning an agreement with the Big Three that reflects the incredible sacrifice and contributions UAW members have made to these companies."
"The money is there, the cause is righteous, the world is watching, and the UAW is ready to stand up," Fain added. "This is our defining moment."
The companies' latest publicized offers to the UAW included raises of up to 20% over the course of a four-year contract, but the proposals thus far have fallen well short of the union's demands on wages, cost-of-living adjustments, retiree benefits, and other key issues.
Ford CEO Jim Farley, who brought in nearly $21 million in total compensation last year, told CNN that the UAW's push for a near-40% wage increase would "put us out of business," a claim that Fain dismissed as a "joke."
"The cost of labor for a vehicle is 5% of the vehicle," Fain said from the picket line outside Ford's Michigan Assembly plant. "They could double our wages and not raise the prices of vehicles, and they would still make billions of dollars. It's a lie like everything else that comes out of their mouths."
Between 2013 and 2022, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis released this week, the Big Three automakers saw roughly $250 billion in total profits—an increase of 92%—and the companies' CEOs received a 40% pay increase. The automakers also rewarded shareholders with $66 billion in dividend payouts and stock buybacks.
U.S. autoworkers' wages, meanwhile, have declined by over 19% since the car industry's 2008 crisis, during which workers gave up cost-of-living adjustments and other benefits to help keep the major automakers afloat.
"As a single parent, I'm working paycheck to paycheck," Adelisa LeBron, a striking Ford worker, toldThe Washington Post. "I love the way Shawn is fighting for us, how he's not going to settle."
In his address late Thursday, Fain urged locals that are not currently on strike to "keep organizing" to "show the companies you are ready to join the stand-up strike at a moment's notice."
"This strategy will keep the companies guessing," he said. "It will give our national negotiators maximum leverage and flexibility in bargaining. And if we need to go all out, we will. Everything is on the table."
On Friday evening, the UAW is planning to hold what Fain dubbed a "mass rally" outside of a Ford building in downtown Detroit, where U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is expected to appear.
"We must show the world that our fight is a righteous fight," said Fain.
This article originally appeared at CommonDreams.org on September 15th, 2023.
Marick Masters, Wayne State University
Workers organized and took to the picket line in increased numbers in 2022 to demand better pay and working conditions, leading to optimism among labor leaders and advocates that they’re witnessing a turnaround in labor’s sagging fortunes.
Teachers, journalists and baristas were among the tens of thousands of workers who went on strike – and it took an act of Congress to prevent 115,000 railroad employees from walking out as well. In total, there have been at least 20 major work stoppages involving at least 1,000 workers each in 2022, up from 16 in 2021, and hundreds more that were smaller.
At the same time, workers at Starbucks, Amazon, Apple and dozens of other companies filed over 2,000 petitions to form unions during the year – the most since 2015. Workers won 76% of the 1,363 elections that were held.
Historically, however, these figures are pretty tepid. The number of major work stoppages has been plunging for decades, from nearly 200 as recently as 1980, while union elections typically exceeded 5,000 a year before the 1980s. As of 2021, union membership was at about the lowest level on record, at 10.3%. In the 1950s, over 1 in 3 workers belonged to a union.
As a labor scholar, I agree that the evidence shows a surge in union activism. The obvious question is: Do these developments manifest a tipping point?
First, let’s take a closer look at 2022.
The most noteworthy sign of labor’s revival has been the rise in the number of petitions filed with the National Labor Relations Board. In fiscal year 2022, which ended in September, workers filed 2,072 petitions, up 63% from the previous year. Starbucks workers alone filed 354 of these petitions, winning the vast majority of the elections held. In addition, employees at companies historically deemed untouchable by unions, including Apple, Microsoft and Wells Fargo, also scored wins.
The increase in strike activity is also important. And while the major strikes that involve 1,000 or more employees and are tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics arouse the greatest attention, they represent only the tip of the iceberg.
The bureau recorded 20 major strikes in 2022, which is about 25% more than the average of 16 a year over the past two decades. Examples of these major strikes include the recent one-day New York Times walkout, two strikes in California involving more than 3,000 workers at health care company Kaiser Permanente, 2,100 workers at Frontier Communications and 48,000 workers at the University of California.
Since 2021, Cornell University has been keeping track of any labor action, however small, and found that there were a total of 385 strikes in calendar year 2022, up from 270 in the previous year. In total, these reported strikes have occurred in nearly 600 locations in 19 states., signifying the geographic breadth of activism.
Of course, these figures are still quite low by historical standards.
I believe two previous spikes in the early 20th century offer some clues as to whether recent events could lead to sustained gains in union membership.
From 1934 to 1939, union membership soared from 7.6% to 19.2%. A few years later, from 1941 to 1945, membership climbed from 20% to 27%.
Both spikes occurred during periods of national and global upheaval. The first spike came in the latter half of the Great Depression, when unemployment in the U.S. reached as high as a quarter of the workforce. Economic deprivation and a lack of workplace protections led to widespread political and social activism and sweeping efforts to organize workers in response. It also contributed to the enactment of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, which stimulated organizing in the industrial sector.
The second jump came as the U.S. mobilized the economy to fight a two-front war in Europe and Asia. National economic mobilization to support the war led to growth in manufacturing employment, where unions had been making substantial gains. Government wartime policy encouraged unionization as part of a bargain for industrial peace during the war.
Today’s situation is a far cry from the economic misery of the Great Depression or the social upheaval of a global war, but there are some parallels worth exploring.
Overall unemployment may be near record lows, but economic inequality is higher than it was during the Depression. The top 10% of households hold over 68% of the wealth in the U.S. In 1936, this was about 47%.
In addition, the top 0.1% of wage earners experienced a nearly 390% increase in real wages from 1979 to 2020, versus a meager 28.2% pay hike for the bottom 90%. And employment in manufacturing, where unions had gained a stronghold in the 1940s and 1950s, slipped over 33% from 1979 to 2022.
Another parallel to the two historical precedents concerns national mobilization. The pandemic required a massive response in early 2020, as workers in industries deemed essential, such as health care, public safety and food and agriculture, bore the brunt of its impact, earning them the label “heroes” for their efforts. In such an environment, workers began to appreciate more the protections they derived from unions for occupational safety and health, eventually helping birth much-hyped recent labor trends like the “great resignation” and “quiet quitting.”
And unions are limited in how much they can change public policy or the structure of the U.S. economy that makes unionization difficult. Reforming labor law through legislation has remained elusive, and the results of the 2022 midterms are not likely to make it any easier.
This makes me unconvinced that recent signs of progress represent a turning point.
An ace up labor’s sleeve may be public sentiment. Support for labor is at its highest since 1965, with 71% saying they approve of unions, according to a Gallup poll in August. And workers themselves are increasingly showing an interest in joining them. In 2017, 48% of workers polled said they would vote for union representation, up from 32% in 1995, the last time this question was asked.
Future success may depend on unions’ ability to tap into their growing popularity and emulate the recent wins at Starbucks and Amazon, as well as the successful “Fight for $15” campaign, which since 2012 has helped pass $15 minimum wage laws in a dozen states and Washington, D.C.
The odds may be steep, but the seeds of opportunity are there if labor is able to exploit them.
Marick Masters, Professor of Business and Adjunct Professor of Political Science, Wayne State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
