The Strike Returns
By Don McIntosh and Mallory Gruben/Northwest Labor Press/ Mar 1, 2024 [Excerpts below] It’s official: 2023 had more big strikes than any year since 2000. According to the most recent annual report on strike activity by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), 2023 saw 33 major work stoppages, defined as a strike or lockout involving more than 1,000 workers and lasting at least one shift during a weekday. Last year’s work major stoppages involved 458,900 workers. That’s almost double the three previous years combined, and it’s a return to the levels of the massive teacher strike wave of 2018 and 2019. The biggest strike in 2023 was the 82-day strike by 160,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild, followed by the three-day strike by 75,600 members of three unions at Kaiser Permanente; the three-day strike by 65,000 workers at Los Angeles Unified School District; and the gradually expanding 31-day strike at Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis by 49,800 members of United Auto Workers. The majority of the strikes lasted less than a week, but some were much longer. The longest major work stoppage that began in 2023 was a 104-day strike by 2,300 members of the Graduate Employees Organization at University of Michigan. The next longest was the 102-day strike by 11,500 members of Writers Guild of America against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Strike levels are still far below the levels of the 1950s to the 1970s, when there were hundreds of large strikes a year. The all-time record was 1952, with 470 large work stoppages. Strikes fell off dramatically in the 1980s, declining to an all-time low of five in 2009. ***** But because the Labor Action Tracker picks up more detailed information than BLS can, it paints a more complete picture of the labor movement. For example, it showed that in about 22% of 2023’s strikes, workers on the picket line did not belong to a union. Those strikes tend to be much smaller and shorter than union strikes, so they wouldn’t make it into BLS data, said project manager Johnnie Kallas said. But they still show the power of collective action; one strike led by non-union workers at a movie theater in Utah results in $2.50 an hour raises for workers there, he said. ***** Full at: https://nwlaborpress.org/2024/03/the-strike-returns/?utm_source=Northwest+Labor+Press&utm_campaign=d478ddab2c-June_29_2016_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a098a455a3-d478ddab2c-708703894 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#29302): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/29302 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/104780844/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
