Labor Wins Some as Workers Face Economic Crisis

Thousands of union workers have gone on strike for better work hours, pay and benefits at food plants operated by Kellogg’s, Nabisco and Frito-Lay. At Kaiser Permanente in California, more than 24,000 healthcare workers voted to authorize a strike. Some 10,000 United Automobile Workers walked off the job and onto picket lines at John Deere — the first strike against the farming equipment manufacturer in 35 years — saying they were forced to work overtime while the company’s stock price hit an all-time high. The list goes on and includes more than 1,000 coal miners on strike for months at Warrior Met in Alabama. Some are calling it “Striketober,” but workers would have to sustain their militance much longer than one month to wrest back decades of concessions.

Illegal Layoff of Truckers after Union Vote

Universal Intermodal, which oversees multiple companies that handle goods coming through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, was ruled to have violated multiple counts of federal labor law by laying off 70 employees in retaliation for their vote to join the Teamsters Union. Administrative Law Judge Michael A. Rosas ordered Universal Intermodal to rehire the fired workers, give them back pay with interest and negotiate wages and benefits with the union-backed employees.

California UFCW Workers Ratify New Contract

On Oct. 14, an overwhelming majority of union workers at Rite Aid  ratified a three-year contract that secures wage increases of nearly 10% (retroactive to July 2021), improves health benefits, and adds new measures to keep stores safe. CVS workers recently ratified a similar contract, adding strong gains to UFCW 770’s Drug Division.

It established a ground-breaking worker-composed Health and Safety Committee to address the hazards of working in this sector, both from the pandemic and the rash of violence in stores. Workers from both pharmacies across California actively participated in bargaining. Negotiations involved eight UFCW Locals. Approximately 13,000 drug retail workers in the state from CVS and Rite Aid will be impacted by the contracts. 

IATSE in Tentative Agreement in LA

Some call it “Striketober” as IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees union of 60,000 television and film production workers, averted a strike when it reached a tentative agreement with an association of Hollywood producers representing companies like Walt Disney, Netflix and Amazon. The tentative deal brings members of IATSE higher pay, longer breaks, better healthcare and pension benefits. 

Some members say the deal doesn’t go far enough, reports Democracy Now. Members are concerned with what’s called turnaround times, which is the minimum amount of time a worker has from when she leaves work to when she is expected to be back. Proposed wage increases for many members are only 3% a year, whereas currently, inflation is 5%.

About 40,000 members from 13 Hollywood locals must still approve the pact. Jacobin writer Alex Press says the averted strike is part of a “broader moment” of labor militancy across the United States, including workers at Amazon, Kellogg and elsewhere. “Workers are willing to fight back,” she says. “They understand they have more leverage right now.” The labor market is tighter than usual with unemployment high. It’s harder to replace workers if they go on strike. Maybe this is the beginning of a fightback of labor, and the near future contract expiration of the ILWU will be telling.

Strike Vote at Kaiser Permanente

An overwhelming majority of Kaiser Permanente employees represented by UFCW 770 in Southern California authorized economic actions, including a strike. The employees are standing in solidarity with thousands of Kaiser employees across the country who have already voted to authorize a strike. 

UFCW 770 represents nearly 2,000 skilled employees in Southern California at laboratories and pharmacies including pharmacy technicians, pharmacy assistants, clinical laboratory scientists and medical laboratory techs, as well as admins and medical assistants, among other health care specialists.

“Our workload increased due to COVID-19, adding new duties such as curbside pickups and arranging for special home deliveries. The company took away a whole distribution center which also increased our workload but did not provide additional staffing. We have been there for our patients even though we ourselves got infected,” says Tracy Cason, a pharmacy assistant at Kaiser Permanente, Baldwin Hills, who recovered from COVID-19.

“Kaiser Permanente makes billions of dollars in profits. The company keeps $45 billion dollars in reserves. There’s no reason why they can’t take care of their employees when as frontline workers, we provide extremely critical care to our patients,” says Christopher Porter, an inpatient/oncology pharmacy technician at Kaiser Permanente, Antelope Valley. 

In recent days, members of the Alliance of Health Care Unions, including the United Nurses Association of California/Union of Health Care Professionals (UNAC/UHCP) and the United Steelworkers of America (USW) 7600 have overwhelmingly voted to approve a strike. The workers’ strike authorization comes after six months of unsuccessful negotiations with the company.

John Deere Workers Strike After Overwhelmingly Rejecting Contract

Ten thousand Auto Workers members at John Deere in Iowa, Illinois, and Kansas began an open-ended strike on Oct. 13. The last Deere strike began in 1986 and lasted for five months.

Workers overwhelmingly voted down the first tentative agreement between the UAW and the company, frustrated with what many felt were inadequate wage increases and the decision to end the pension for new hires. Deere is in the midst of its most profitable year ever. The farm equipment manufacturer expects to rake in $5.7 to $5.9 billion in net income this year, far exceeding its previous high of $3.5 billion in 2013.

The company’s initial offer, presented to members at their strike authorization vote meetings in September, contained a host of concessions. The union had warned that Deere was set on ending the plant closure moratorium, doing away with overtime after eight hours, eliminating seniority-based wage progressions, and many other draconian concessions. Ninety-nine percent of members voted to authorize a strike. Under pressure the officials surprisingly let the members see the contract before the strike vote. 

Deere backed down on many of these concessions. But the tentative agreement didn’t repair the decades-long grievances that workers hold against Deere. The biggest one is the two-tier retirement system: Only pre-1997 hires get a full pension and health care after they retire.

The UAW, like SEIU in California, has been plagued with corruption by union officials, undermining union strength and turning many away from joining a union. 

The Deere contract is the biggest deal negotiated by the UAW since the resignation of the union’s corrupt former president Gary Jones in November 2019. Former UAW Vice President Norwood Jewell, who led bargaining on the last Deere contract, was sentenced to 15 months in prison in August 2019 for taking illegal payments from Fiat Chrysler. 

While government officials have brought charges against union officials, many members oppose this intervention, citing that, “We have to clean our own house, nothing good will come of government intervention;” citing the U.S. intervention into the Teamsters union going back to 1934. At that time, the U.S. government, with the complicity of Teamster President Daniel Tobin, jailed militant leaders from Minneapolis who had mobilized workers to make it a union town. The Minneapolis local 544 had opposed U.S. involvement in World War II, calling it an imperialist war.

NYC Taxi Drivers on Hunger Strike for Debt relief

A group of New York City taxi drivers launched a hunger strike Oct. 20 demanding the city provide debt relief from their taxi medallion loans, reported Democracy Now!

Since 9/11, thousands of taxi drivers in New York City, many of whom are immigrants and people of color, have accrued massive debt largely due to the city artificially inflating the cost of taxi medallions, the permits required to drive a taxi. Drivers also denounced the mental health impacts triggered by the financial ruin; nine have died by suicide.

 “At this point, drivers have an average debt of $550,000, [and] the city has basically no solution. They’ve come out with what’s really just a cash bailout to the banks with no relief for the drivers,” says Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. “Thousands of families are going to be left in a debt that will be beyond their lifetime, and they’ll be earning below minimum wage just to pay it off.” Despite popular congressional support for a solution being put forth by the union, Desai says Mayor Bill de Blasio hasn’t been willing to discuss the proposal.

The infiltration of app-based rideshare services like Uber and Lyft has been disastrous for taxi workers and their industry, undercutting rates and creating a perpetual race to the bottom for everyone. 

Striking Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union Return to work

After weeks on the picket line, striking Nabisco workers, represented by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, returned to work having won modest retroactive raises of 2.25 percent, $5,000 bonuses and increased employer contributions to their retirement plans. The company, which reported a 12 percent increase in revenue earlier this year, can well afford this and more.

South Korean Workers hold General Strike

“On Oct. 20,” as Jia Hong and Ju-Hyun Park report, “at least half a million workers in South Korea—from across the construction, transportation, service, and other sectors—walked off their jobs in a one-day general strike. The strike was followed by mass demonstrations in urban centers and rural farmlands, culminating in a national all-people’s mobilization in January 2022. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), the country’s largest labor union umbrella with 1.1 million members, is organizing these mobilizations.

Workers in South Korea are exhausted by employers’ relentless, profit-hungry push to make people work as many hours as humanly possible, leaving virtually no time to actually live a life outside of their jobs.

South Koreans are feeling crushed by a housing crisis. On top of that, one of the central demands from striking workers is an end to “irregular work”; that is, an end to the underpaid, under-protected, erratic forms of work — like part-time and “gig” work — that have spread like a virus throughout the global labor market.

What does this uptick in labor actions mean?

Taken together with mass resignations, such strike votes and strikes reveal a deep dissatisfaction with working conditions and wages that have been decades in the making. We are witnessing the largest number of strikes in recent years as workers come out of the pandemic and see massive profits by companies; they are trying to win back what has been negotiated away and getting ready for increased inflation which undermines their purchasing power.

The union bureaucrats have undermined some of these struggles, but they are straining against the rising militancy of a working-class that is unwilling to shoulder the economic burden of the pandemic crisis while the bosses’ profits soar.

Times they are a-changing…and for the better.