Workers, nurses… Tens of thousands of American employees, tired by long hours of work during the pandemic and frustrated by the profits of their employers, started strike movements this fall.
Some 31,000 employees of the Kaiser Permanente health group in the western United States are threatening to stop work soon.
Since Thursday, 10,000 employees of the tractor manufacturer John Deere have already been on strike; 1,400 at cereal maker Kellogg’s since Oct. 5, and over 2,000 employees at Mercy Hospital in Buffalo since Oct. 1er October.
In Hollywood, a strike by film crews that threatened to paralyze the American film industry from Monday was narrowly avoided over the weekend, with the conclusion of an agreement on the working conditions of these technical employees.
Word striketober, contraction of strike (strike) andOctober (October), appeared on social networks. Democratic left-wing star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez even put it on Twitter Thursday.
Sacrifices
During the pandemic, to compensate for the many absent, “we sacrificed time with our families, we missed the children’s games, dinners, to ensure that the cereal boxes are in the stores”, says Dan Osborn, mechanic with Kellogg’s for 18 years.
“And is that how we are rewarded?” By asking us to make concessions even as the CEO and the big bosses agree to increases? He is offended. This president of the local section of the BCTGM union feels cheated.
“We are not asking for salary increases,” he remarks. And employees don’t mind the long hours. But they oppose the generalization of a category of employees who do not have access to the same benefits and the abolition of the automatic adjustment of wages to the cost of living, an important point at a time when inflation is strong.
The strike “will last as long as it takes, it suffices to hold out one day longer than the company,” he said.
Contagion phenomenon
The strikers “are mostly demanding improved working conditions,” notes Kate Bronfenbrenner, a specialist in labor 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 COVID-19,” she said.
But faced with employers refusing to compromise, 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 has clearly been on the rise since the teachers’ movement in West Virginia in 2018, notes Josh Murray, a 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.
“The more strikes that succeed, the more strikes that start, because people start to really believe that they can win and are willing to risk their wages or their jobs,” says Murray.
Social movements
The strike at Kellogg’s follows that in July of 600 employees in Kansas at a factory of Frito-Lay aperitif cakes, a subsidiary of PepsiCo. They had stopped work for 19 days to obtain, among other things, the guarantee of one day off per week and increases. The 1,000 strikers from Nabisco (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”, specifies Mr. Murray.
Unions have also benefited in recent years from the rise of various social movements with which they have been able to partner, such as the hospitality trade union in Arizona, Unite Here, with migrant organizations.
“There will inevitably be a pendulum effect, companies will not let wage costs increase too much,” says Murray.
But in the meantime, “economists and sociologists have shown that the tighter the labor market is [comme c’est le cas actuellement aux États-Unis], the more power the workers have, the higher the probability of strikes ”.