[Increased militancy after pandemic sacrifices and tighter labor
market contributed to impressive contract deals in the last year]
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US UNIONS WINNING BIG GAINS AMID ‘GREAT RESET’ IN WORKER POWER  
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Steven Greenhouse
October 24, 2023
The Guardian
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_ Increased militancy after pandemic sacrifices and tighter labor
market contributed to impressive contract deals in the last year _

, Las Vegas Culinary Union

 

Call it the Great Reset. Across the US, labor unions are winning
surprisingly large contract settlements as workers have reset their
expectations to demand considerably more than they did just a few
years ago, and that has in turn pressured many corporations to reset
– and increase – the pay packages they are giving in union
contracts.

The result has been a wave of impressive – sometimes eye-popping –
union contracts over the past year, far more generous than in recent
decades. In August, 15,000 American Airlines pilots won pay increases
of 46% over four years
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In a huge labor confrontation last summer, 340,000 Teamster members at
UPS won raises
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of $7.50 an hour over five years, with drivers’ pay climbing to $49
an hour and part-time workers receiving a pay increase of 48% on
average.

After a three-day strike earlier this month, 85,000 Kaiser Permanente
workers
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won raises of 21%, as well as a $25 minimum wage for Kaiser’s
workers in California. In March, 30,000 Los Angeles school district
workers
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– bus drivers, cafeteria workers and teachers’ aides – won a 30%
wage hike over four years. In Oregon, 1,400 nurses at Providence
Portland
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hospital secured raises between 17% and 27% over two years.

Union leaders and rank-and-file workers hailed these contracts as
great and historic, but Thomas Kochan, a longtime professor of
industrial relations at MIT, put it another way: “All this reflects
a a reset in expectations and wage norms for workers and for
employers.

“These successes,” Kochan continued, “are a reflection of the
workforce’s strong expectations and the workforce’s demands to
make up for lost ground due to inflation – and to signal that times
have changed. The modest wage increases of the past will no longer be
adequate to deal with our situation.”

Workers are feeling not only rising expectations, but also rising
frustration and anger, seeing corporate profits and CEO pay soar,
while their pay has often failed to keep up with inflation. The United
Auto Workers, before going on strike a month ago against GM, Ford and
Stellantis, kept hammering the point that auto workers’ hourly pay
has trailed inflation by 19%
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while CEO pay has jumped by 40%. The union’s initial bargaining
proposal was for a 46% raise, far more than the union won from
Detroit’s automakers in 2019 – a four-year contract
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raises of 3% in the second and fourth years and a 4% lump sum (but no
raise) in years one and three.

“I’ve talked with labor relations people at several companies,”
Kochan said, “and they have had to get their CEOs and CFOs [chief
financial officers] to reset their expectations. They were used to
getting modest wage settlements, but they haven’t experienced this
level of pressure from unions and they haven’t experienced this
amount of bargaining power on the side of workers.”

Feeling angry and emboldened, workers have been flexing their muscles.
There were 301 strikes in the first nine months of his year, up from
172 over the same period in 2021, according t0 ILR Labor Action
Tracker [[link removed]]. This has ratcheted
up pressure on employers, and this increased militancy has often
translated into better contracts.

“I’ve never seen a moment quite like this. I’ve never seen this
level of action and enthusiasm among workers, especially among young
workers,” said Lane Windham, associate director of the Kalmanovitz
Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University.
“People drew a line in terms of their expectations. For 40 years,
workers have been putting up with low wages and bad jobs. But after
coming through the pandemic, many people said: ‘I’m not going to
do this any more. I’m not going to put up with this any more.’”

Windham said many employers had been surprised by the level of labor
militancy they are encountering. “Employers are entering
negotiations and beginning with their old calculations, but they’re
seeing this is not business as usual. They’ve had to recalibrate
what they’re willing to give.”

[A WGA support sign rests near Sag-Aftra members picketing outside
Warner Bros Studio as the actors’ strike continues in Burbank,
California, last month.]
A WGA support sign rests near Sag-Aftra members picketing outside
Warner Bros Studio as the actors’ strike continues in Burbank,
California, last month. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

That has been the case with Hollywood’s studios, which didn’t
expect 165,000 television and movie actors and 15,000 Hollywood
writers to go on strike at the same time. Before the Writers Guild’s
members walked out
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Hollywood’s studios dug in against that union’s demands, but after
the writers were out nearly five months, the studios largely acceded
to the union’s wishes on pay, minimum staffing levels for writers
and limiting the use of artificial intelligence in scripts.

“There are three main factors driving the big contract wins,” said
Eric Blanc, a labor studies professor at Rutgers University. “One is
the tight labor market. Second is increased union momentum generally.
Third is more effective and militant bargaining methods.”

Blanc added: “You can’t underestimate how crucial the tight labor
market has been and continues to be for giving workers leverage. In
the past if you were on strike for an extended period and the labor
market wasn’t tight, employers could replace you easily. For years,
unions were reluctant to go on strike because of that. But today’s
tight labor market is important for giving workers and unions
confidence.”

The tight labor market has encouraged unions to think and act bigger
and bolder. “If you’re not thinking big gains, there’s probably
something wrong with what you’re doing as a union,” Blanc said.
“People see that they can fight back and really get corporate
America to cough up concessions to workers.”

Even as workers at companies with long-established unions rack up big
gains, workers at some prominent, newly unionized companies, most
notably Starbucks, Amazon and Trader Joe’s, are struggling to reach
their first contract to win improved pay and benefits. But some newly
unionized workers have won excellent contracts: this month more than
3,800 graduate student workers at MIT
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won a 12.6% increase in their stipend, a $10,000 needs-based childcare
subsidy and an 84% dental subsidy. At the Whitney Museum in New York,
the 180-member union won a 30% raise on average
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in its first contract, with entry-level pay jumping to $54,100 from
$40,500.

Professor Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center, said the fact
that unions have their strongest public approval in more than 50 years
– not to mention a US president who bills himself as the most
pro-union president
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ever – has created an atmosphere that helps unions do well in their
contract fights. “They’re winning the public opinion war and
they’re building on other union victories,” Wong said.
“Victories inspire other victories.”

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* US Unions; Union Contract Victories; The Great Reset;
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