10 October 2023; AA: Three major labor strikes in the US have put the auto, health and entertainment industries in jeopardy of coming to a halt as union leaders continue to negotiate with corporate America.
"This is an unprecedented wave of labor strikes and labor protests," said Professor Kent Wong, director of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Labor Center. "There is tremendous economic insecurity among the working class."
Wong told Anadolu that the current three-month Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) strike with Disney, Netflix, Warner Bros. and NBCUniversal, the three-week United Auto Workers (UAW) strike with Ford, General Motors (GM) and Stellantis and last week's three-day Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers strike happened due to a combination of contracts coming due and union leaders wanting members to get their fair share after the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Three years of economic inequality have grown since the pandemic. Corporations made huge profits during the pandemic, but the workers who risked their safety and their lives didn't get any gains," said Wong. "There is now plenty of economic anxiety, where wages have not kept up with inflation and we are now seeing resentment from workers for what they are classifying as corporate greed. It's a source of tremendous discontent and a reaction to the fact that the pandemic was seen as a corporate grab for money."
Wong explained that work contracts for industries are based on a calendar schedule -- sometimes every two, three or four years when they come due -- but emphasized that it's "quite unusual for this many contracts to result in strikes."
"Ninety-five percent of collective bargaining agreements are resolved without strikes," said Wong. "But people want to get paid for their value, for what they're worth."
"The reality is that we have witnessed increases in rent, gas prices and food, and many working people are struggling to make ends meet, but at the same time, you are seeing record profits from companies on the other end of the spectrum," he continued.
The UAW announced last Friday that it would not be adding any additional union members to the picket lines in the coming week where 26,000 workers have been on strike since Sept. 15 against the big three US automakers.
Rhetoric is louder
"This is a different approach," said Professor Erik Gordon of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who told Anadolu that the strike appears to be "bigger than normal."
"The rhetoric is louder and more strident than normal. The strike isn't," said Gordon. "This current strike seems to be bigger, but what it really is, it's louder."
Gordon explained that the typical UAW strike usually takes place at just one of the major car companies, shutting down the entire operation, which is what happened to GM during the last strike. He said the current strike still allows all three automotive companies to produce cars and send them to dealerships, just that fewer models are being produced and only half the amount of workers are on the picket lines.
"There are currently 26,000 UAW members on strike. If the union had picked GM again, there would be about 45 to 50,000 workers on strike," said Gordon, who pointed out that new union president Shawn Fain is attempting to throw his weight at the auto executives to back up his campaign promises.
"One of the planks he ran on was that 'I am going to be tougher on the car companies than my opponent and tougher than any union leader you have seen in your lifetime,'" said Gordon. "Being louder is not more effective at getting the UAW better wages, but it is effective at positioning Fain as a rough and tough guy who can deal with the auto executives."
"The bottom line is, whatever settlement they end up with is going to be based on what the car companies can afford and what the members will ultimately accept, not how tough the UAW president talks," he added.
The SAG-AFTRA walkout has been going on since July 14 with 65,000 members on strike. The union is asking for wage increases, a higher cut of royalties from streaming programs, better health and retirement benefits and protections against the use of actor images through artificial intelligence (AI).
"SAG-AFTRA actors are concerned about losing their jobs to AI," said Gordon, pointing out that the five-month Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike that was settled on Sept. 27 did not have the same unique provisions that actors have.
"Actors have different jobs than writers, so you have to settle their demands on different terms," Gordon explained. "Actors are paid differently than writers and have other provisions that are important to them, not just money."
Healthcare workers' strike 'more crucial'
The Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers strike is also different from both the SAG-AFTRA and UAW walkouts in that it was a three-day strike involving 75,000 employees not showing up to work last week. The goal was to get the healthcare provider to the table to settle with the union sooner rather than later.
"Kaiser Permanente isn't a big high-profit organization, but workers are saying, 'We risked our health and maybe our lives during the pandemic, and we worked very long hours for months on end, but we've never been really fairly compensated for that," said Gordon. "The principle is that we should be compensated for what we did."
Gordon told Anadolu that even though the autoworkers and actors' strikes are getting the majority of the attention, he said it is more crucial to solve the healthcare workers' strike.
"We can do without new television shows and movies, we can postpone buying a new car, but if you need to go to a hospital, then the Kaiser Permanente strike is more important to the public as a whole," he said. "For Kaiser Permanente, there is more time pressure to get negotiations done quickly. You can have a 40-, 60-, 90-day car strike, but you can't have a 40-, 60-, 90-day hospital strike. If we don't have any new TV shows or movies, no one's health is going to be endangered, but with a hospital strike, if the hospital is closed, people's health can be in danger."
UCLA's Wong said the healthcare workers' strike is symbolic of what working-class Americans are asking for, whether they're in the entertainment business, automotive industry or working in hospitals.
"What links them is economic insecurity, inequality in a sense that the system is not working for them," said Wong.
Gordon said the Teamsters Union's negotiations with United Parcel Service (UPS) back in August are now being used as somewhat of a blueprint to getting union contracts settled. UPS avoided a massive strike by agreeing with the Teamsters to give pay raises to the company's 340,000 employees.
"The Teamsters got big gains and major concessions from UPS," he said. "Other unions are looking at that and saying, 'the Teamsters didn't go on strike and got big gains, we can do the same. But if we're not getting the deal UPS got, then we will go on strike.'"
For now, tens of thousands of workers remain on the picket lines counting on their union bosses to be aggressive at the negotiating table and strike a deal.
"The labor unions are getting bolder," said Gordon. "Part of it is timing. Part of it is labor unions saying, 'Wow, this is our day to roar.'"
