NEW YORK, Oct 17, 2021 (BSS/AFP) - Exhausted after working long hours
during the coronavirus pandemic and resentful that their bosses are not
sharing sometimes huge profits, tens of thousands of nurses, laborers and
entertainment workers are going on strike across the United States.
If they fail to reach agreement with the Hollywood studios on a new
collective bargaining contract, 60,000 members of the International Alliance
of Theatrical Stage Employees plan to strike on Monday. The IATSE includes
cinematographers, hairdressers, makeup artists and sound editors.
Some 31,000 employees of the Kaiser Permanente healthcare group in the
western states of California and Oregon are also poised to strike soon.
Since Thursday, 10,000 employees of the John Deere farm equipment company
have been on strike; while 1,400 workers walked off the job at the Kellogg's
cereal company on October 5, and more than 2,000 employees of Mercy Hospital
in Buffalo, New York, began striking on October 1.
The sudden rash of strikes this month has even led some to coin the word
"Striketober," a neologism since embraced on social media even by prominent
progressive Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
- Pandemic sacrifices -
During the pandemic, workers say, they often had to bear extra burdens to
make up for others who were staying home.
"We've sacrificed our time with our families, we missed ballgames with our
kids and dinners and weddings, in order to keep boxes of cereal on the
shelves," said Dan Osborn, a mechanic at Kellogg's for 18 years.
"And this is how we're getting repaid," he continued, "by asking us to take
concessions at a time when the CEO and executives have taken increases in
their compensation."
Osborn, the president of a local chapter of the Bakery, Confectionery,
Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union (BCTGM), said workers object to a
two-tier pay system that leaves some newer employees making far less than
older workers.
"We are not asking for anything as far as increases in our wages and
benefits," he said. Nor are workers opposing long hours.
But they do reject a pay system that leaves some employees earning less for
the same work, and to a revocation of inflation-linked pay raises --
particularly at a time when prices have been surging.
"The strike can go however long it takes," Osborn said. "All we have to do
is hold out one day longer than the company."
- Success inspires others -
Most of the strikes are motivated by demands for better working conditions,
said Kate Bronfenbrenner, who specializes in union and labor issues at
Cornell University in New York.
"Companies are making more profits than ever, and workers are being pushed
to work harder than ever, sometimes risking their lives to go back to work in
the context of Covid," she said.
So when employers refuse to compromise, Bronfenbrenner added, "workers are
less willing to ratify contracts they feel don't meet their needs."
The exact number of strikes now under way is difficult to know, as the US
government keeps track only of those affecting more than 1,000 employees.
But the movement has grown since a 2018 strike by West Virginia teachers,
said Josh Murray, a sociology professor at Vanderbilt University in
Tennessee.
Unhappy with the contract negotiated by their union, those teachers went on
strike -- and were rewarded with a five-percent pay raise.
The result: a contagion of strikes.
"The more strikes that are successful, the more strikes follow, because
workers start to believe they can actually win something and are willing to
take the risk of not getting paid, of losing their job," Murray said.
- Social movements -
The Kellogg's strike followed another job action in July by 600 workers at
a Frito-Lay snack food factory in Kansas (Frito-Lay is a subsidiary of
PepsiCo).
That 19-day strike resulted in a guarantee of weekly time off, as well as
pay raises.
And after a five-week strike by 1,000 employees of the Nabisco snack
corporation (a subsidiary of profitable giant Mondelez International), the
company dropped plans for a two-tier pay plan.
For many workers, the pandemic has been an empowering time.
"Some workers started seeing that, 'Oh, wow, we're actually essential, the
economy shuts down without us,'" Murray said.
Unions have also profited in recent years from the rise in social movements
with similar interests -- as when an Arizona hotel workers union allied
itself to immigrant groups.
But Murray does not expect companies to give in easily.
"Eventually there will be backlash," he said. "Corporations aren't in the
business of giving away or letting labor costs rise."
But the current dynamic reflects one economists and sociologists have seen
over time, Murray said: "The tighter the labor market, the more powerful
labor is, the more likely there are to be strikes."