'Enough's enough': tight U.S. job market triggers strikes for more pay
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[October 18, 2021] By
Ben Klayman
(Reuters) - Thousands of workers remain on
strike across the United States demanding higher pay and better
conditions despite Hollywood make-up artists and camera operators
reaching a deal over the weekend to avoid a walkout, and the tight jobs
market has only emboldened them.
Kevin Bradshaw is an employee at Kellogg Co's cereal plant in Memphis,
Tennessee, where most of North America's Frosted Flakes are made. He
feels anything but great about cuts to healthcare coverage, retirement
benefits and vacation time that union officials say the company is
pushing for from about 1,400 workers on strike since Oct. 5 at plants in
Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.
"Enough is enough," said Bradshaw, vice president of Bakery,
Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union
Local 252G at the Memphis plant. "We can't afford to keep giving away
things to a company that financially has made record-breaking returns."
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Some 60,000 behind-the-scenes workers on movies and TV shows on Saturday
avoided joining the Kellogg strikers, but the near-walkout was the
latest demonstration of force by union members who say they are fed up
with meager or no raises and other givebacks. Kellogg officials could
not be reached for comment but have said the company's compensation is
among the industry's best.
Labor activists complain that while many of their members were deemed
essential during the COVID-19 crisis, that has not been reflected in how
they are treated by employers. With an administration in the White House
that they see as sympathetic and a job market that saw a record number
of Americans quitting in August, unions are ready to test companies'
resolve.
So far, at least 176 strikes have been launched this year, including 17
in October, according to Cornell University's Labor Action Tracker.
"Workers are on strike for a better deal and a better life," Liz Shuler,
president of the AFL-CIO, the nation's biggest labor federation, said
last week at a SABEW journalism conference.
"The pandemic really did lay bare the inequities of our system and
working people are refusing to return to crappy jobs that put their
health at risk," she added, noting that the term #Striketober was
trending on Twitter.
Despite some setbacks, including a failed organizing drive earlier this
year at an Amazon.com facility outside Birmingham, Alabama, union
leaders feel the stars are aligned for them to make gains.
"We have entered a new era in labor relations," said Harley Shaiken,
professor emeritus of labor at the University of California Berkeley.
"Workers feel they're in the driver's seat and there's plenty of lost
ground to make up."
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"What we're seeing is a fight to return or at least stay in the middle
class," he said.
SUPPORT IN THE WHITE HOUSE
Union membership has been declining steadily in recent decades, falling
to under 11% of employed Americans in 2020 from 20% in 1983, according
to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
However, 68% of Americans now approve of unions, the highest proportion
since 1965, according to a Gallup poll in August, and that rate climbs
to almost 78% for those aged 18 to 29.
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![](../images/101821PIX/2021-10-18T102115Z_3_LYNXMPEH9H0HC_RTROPTP_4_USA-UNIONS-STRIKES%20(1)_small.JPG)
Healthcare workers take part in a strike to protest working
conditions in hospitals amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at
Mercy Hospital in Buffalo, New York, U.S., October 4, 2021.
REUTERS/Lindsay DeDario
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Helping fuel the hopes of union leaders is the widespread view among organizers
that President Joe Biden is the most pro-union president in modern times. In
April, the Democrat created a task force to promote labor organizing.
Two months earlier, he defended workers' rights to form unions in the run-up to
the unsuccessful push to organize Amazon workers in Alabama. The teamsters have
vowed to continue trying to organize the company's warehouse operations.
Other setbacks for unions have included in Beaumont, Texas, where Exxon Mobil
locked out 650 workers from its refinery and an adjacent plant in May after a
local United Steelworkers union refused to submit a contract proposal. Union
leaders have scheduled a vote on the contract for Tuesday, but have urged
members to reject it.
Exxon said the lockout was necessary to avoid the disruption of a possible
strike and the changes to seniority it wants to impose were needed to ensure
profitability. Meanwhile, some union members have moved to decertify the union.
In some sectors the discontent has been striking: 90% of Deere & Co's hourly
workers, represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, rejected the
company's contract offer last week and went on strike.
The largest farm equipment maker's 10,000 workers are seeking higher wages and
retirement benefits, or as UAW Region 8 director Mitchell Smith said, "a better
share of the pie."
Deere declined to comment, but after UAW members voted to go on strike the
company said it wanted to maintain its employees' position as the highest paid
in the industry.
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The behind-the-scenes workers in Hollywood, represented by the International
Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), had sought reduced working
hours, more rest periods, meal breaks and pay increases for those at the bottom
of the wage scale.
While the Hollywood workers avoided a strike, the picket lines could still
become more crowded.
More than 28,000 healthcare workers at 13 Southern California Kaiser Permanente
hospitals and hundreds of medical centers voted overwhelmingly earlier this
month to authorize a strike. They want more pay and higher levels of staffing to
reduce burnout worsened by the pandemic.
That demand is echoed by nearly 2,000 healthcare workers who have been on strike
since Oct. 1 in Buffalo, New York.
"We've been working short at Mercy for five years," Kathy Kelly, who has been a
nurse for 38 years at the Catholic Health System's Mercy Hospital, said while on
break from picketing. "Enough's enough. We can only give so much."
(Reporting by Ben Klayman in Detroit; Additional reporting by Erwin Seba in
Houston, Julia Love and Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco, and Kannaki Deka in
Bengaluru; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
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