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Union Workers Are Winning Gains

Working people fed up with low wages, high rent, and other injustices take note: You are not alone in your frustration. As the crisis of the global capitalist system continues, workers and op-pressed communities suffer. The upside is that more workers are fighting back by joining unions and going on strike.
This was becoming evident as even mainstream news outlets like CNN had to cover the incredible teacher strike wave of 2018, which has spilled over into 2019. Labor organizing among Amazon, USPS, and other workers also broke through into mass consciousness.

But now the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (the official federal agency that studies these things) has confirmed that the increase in labor activity is real.

According to a bureau news release on Feb. 8, there were at least 20 major work stoppages involving 485,000 workers in 2018. This is the biggest increase in the number of U.S. workers involved in work stoppages since 1986, when 533,000 workers engaged in strikes or walkouts. And this is the largest increase in the number of major work stoppages since 2007, a year that saw 21 such stop-pages, according to the bureau.

Ninety percent of striking workers in 2018 are in education, healthcare, or social assistance (e.g., childcare), fields not usually associated with militant labor activity. Strikes also occurred in many states often described as “conservative,” such as West Virginia and Kentucky. The longest major stoppage in 2018 involved the National Grid and United Steelworkers, began on June 25 and was on-going through 2018.

One aspect not covered by the bureau’s news release is the degree to which the strikes have been effective. The strike upturn is notable not only because of the number of workers involved, or the number of stoppages. It is also impressive that striking workers in 2018 tended to stick to their guns to the end, bosses to make concessions. Most of the big strikes that made the news resulted into new contracts, higher wages, and other gains.

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31,000 Grocery Workers Win Strike in New England Save Health Coverage and Get Raises

Image Credit: UFCW Local 328
By Gregory William

Thirty-one thousand Stop & Shop workers went on strike in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island and beat back company cuts to health care, pensions, and wages. The work stoppage carried out by unionized employees of the grocery store chain shut 240 stores. The scale of the strike rivals that of the West Virginia teachers’ strike last year and is the largest private sector strike in the entire U.S. in three years. Stop & Shop workers are organized with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

Cashiers, stockers, bakers, deli clerks, butchers and others walked off the job on April 11, after the company presented a “final offer” in contract negotiations which included higher health care premiums and deductible, and replacing proposed pay raises with bonuses. The company intended to cut pensions and roll back overtime pay.

Employees considered this a slap in the face when the grocery chain’s parent company, Ahold Delhaize, is worth $44 billion; they have also saved millions over the past couple years because of Trump’s corporate tax breaks.
One associate, who was picketing outside a Stop & Shop in Middletown, Connecticut said, “They’re a billion-dollar company because of us. We’re out here striking and protesting to show what’s fair and what’s right.”

Many Stop & Shop shoppers have shown solidarity by boycotting the stores that have remained open during the strike. Some posted to Twitter and other social media sites. Twitter user, Hester Prynne, wrote, “#Solidarity well done. I’ve never crossed a picket line, I’m not about to start now!” On the same platform, a shopper by the name of Julias, said, “Good for you. All of you. Our country is moving backwards in many ways. I work in an entirely different industry, but like most, ours is putting profit before employees. We are stressed, overworked and fed up.”