The UAW Wins Big & The State Of Strikes.
We’ve talked about it before, but this has been a year of strikes - and successful ones, at that. Today we chronicle some of these.
Hello, friends,
Last week, we discussed how my home state of New York needs better Democrats to be in charge. This week, in the hopes of having a positive, fun story (for a change!), we’re gonna talk about how striking workers are coming up victorious all over the place.
Let’s begin with the absolute basics: Among other functions, unions are a means by which workers can collectivize their bargaining with their bosses. The popular saying is “Alone we beg, united we bargain.”
The idea is simple: Employers have to negotiate with a union to provide better working conditions for all employees, whereas without unions it’s individual employees negotiating individual employment terms that are rarely, if ever as good.
It’s also worth noting that unions do other stuff, as well. Most notably, they help arrange workplace conditions so that workers who are disciplined by their employer have resources and procedures they can use to prove that they do not deserve certain punishments. They protect workers’ rights in the workplace. They even do things like set conditions for workplace safety, protecting their workers physically as well as mentally.
We’ve talked a lot about various workplace situations before, from all the protests that took place this summer to the Writers Guild Of America strike. We’ve also featured numerous protest updates in our “In Other News” section at the bottom of our articles.
With all that said, let’s dive into some recent union victories.
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The United Auto Workers Win Big - Even Bigger Than You’d Think!
As reported far and wide, in this case by the Labor Notes organization, the UAW’s striking efforts paid off. They managed to win massive increases in pay and benefits from Ford, GM, and Stellantis. This is a wonderful bit of news, and it means a lot more people will be a lot better off while also getting them back to work to make cars for the company.
Ahh, but this victory had effects ranging far outside of its victory.
First off, and most simply, it inspired Toyota to provide a significant pay hike to its U.S. workers. This might be to keep up with attracting workers to their plants, but it also serves as a way to try to keep them from choosing to unionize, as well. Either way, it’s a knock-on victory that the UAW’s win helped inspire.
Either way, the UAW’s win will serve as an inspiration for other workers in other fields to unionize and/or go on strike. For example, production workers at Disney Animation just voted with 93% to unionize. They are far from the first and only new group of union-seeking people. Marvel’s VFX workers did, too.
But then there’s Las Vegas. 35,000 hospitality workers are planning to go on strike if they don’t win a fair deal. Earlier this month, 75,000 healthcare workers went on strike against Kaiser Permanente. Surely, there are others I’m not even aware of. Like I said at the start, this summer has been strike-laden - and it’s continued on into the Fall, and it looks like it’s heading to the winter.
But the UAW did something even more interesting.
They put out a public call for unions to synchronize their contract clocks.
Working Towards Even Greater Labor Power
I would be far from the first person to point this out, but UAW leader Shawn Fain arranged for all of the new contracts to expire on the same date: April 30th, 2028. That seems like a long time, clocking in at four and a half years. One thing that grants is stability: Workers and prospective new hires know that the contract is good for a long time.
The other thing? If the UAW needs to strike after this contract ends, that strike begins on May 1st, 2028. May 1st is the internationally recognized International Workers’ Day. While it’s proving hard to find a non-paywalled source, metatexts and common sense both suggest that Fain has been clear with his plan:
He’s welcoming other unions to set an April 30th, 2028 deadline as well.
The last real effort at a general strike was the Oakland General Strike in 1946. A General Strike is, simply put, what it sounds like - It isn’t restricted to one company or one industry, it’s as wide as possible. In a general strike, well, just about everyone refuses to work. It calls to mind the Roman tradition of the Secessio Plebis, or “Secession Of The Plebs,” when the Plebian class of Romans would leave the city and leave the wealthy Patricians who were dependent upon their labor to fend for themselves until they met Plebian demands.
To be clear, this is no easy task, especially with America’s economy. Whether you believe inflation is rampant and out of control, or you look at the 4.9% quarterly growth report for Q3, it’s hard to deny that many Americans are living on the edge of their credit card. Younger (but not exclusively young) Americans are reeling from Student Loan repayments restarting, while older Americans are afraid that a recession might hit. Rent is stupid high, and mortgage payments are hard to make.
In other words, it’s really hard to justify skipping even one day of work, especially if you lack resources such as the strike funds that unions usually have on hand for just such contingencies.
But that’s part of why the date for such an action is so far out. It gives people a clear date, a clear time, and a clear purpose. “If we collectively pool our actions and resources, we can hold out and demand better.” And the evidence before us - all of these union victories, one after the other - stands to prove that theory correct. If you know you might be going on strike in four and change years, sure, you might not take it seriously and save up.
You also might take it seriously and save up!
But There’s Still More To Come
As many victories as there have been, there’s still more battles going on, coming up, and the like.
SAG-AFTRA is fighting a major battle to, among other things, prohibit the practice of scanning actors and using AI to duplicate them. It’s very similar to the battle the WGA fought - and won - to keep AI programs like Chat-GPT from writing your next streaming series. But there’s still a lot more to come.
To begin with, the WGA is still fighting isolated battles. Perhaps you’d be surprised that no less “progressive” a company as MSNBC is fighting against union demands. Ironic, isn’t it, that the “ultra far left” media company would be fighting so hard against union demands?
Then there’s the fact that Senator Joe Manchin is trying to kill a recently-enacted National Labor Relations Board ruling protecting contract workers hired by megacorpoations. “It basically just destroys the entrepreneurial spirit” says Joe Manchin III, the Coal Baron’s Coal Baron, who also said it destroys “The Capitalist spirit,” which, well, tracks a lot better than the image of some plucky creator with a billion-dollar idea does.
Pharmacists & Pharmacy Technicians across the country are striking for better conditions. I’ve talked before about my health issues, and for all I know the next time I go to the pharmacy I’m not going to be able to pick up my medications because of this strike, but I support it anyway because the people at my local CVS are extremely overworked, under-staffed, and certainly not paid enough to deal with all that they have to put up with.
But the bottom line is that workers deserve to have decent lives. They deserve to be able to afford housing, good food, childcare, and higher education for their children. Well…Okay, to be fair childcare and higher education should be free, but since it isn’t, they deserve to be able to afford it based on their work
And they deserve not to be told, “If you want nice things, get a second job.”
If, as Joe Manchin seems to think, the spirit of Capitalism is in danger, it’s in danger precisely because we don’t have enough Socialism mixed in with it. We don’t have proper societal safety nets, nor do we have proper avenues for societal advancement. “Get a second job” just doesn’t cut it.
People deserve not to have to suffer, and unions are responsible for things like the concept of the weekend and the eight-hour workday, even if your weekend isn’t Saturday and Sunday.
In Other News
Legendary Medicare For All proponent Ady Barkan passed away from complications related to ALS. Our condolences to his family, and our hopes that there’s an afterlife that he’s healthy and happy within.
The wars in Israel-Palestine and Ukraine continue. This week, I am highlighting a statement by Israeli Knesset member Galit Distel Atabrian, who put out a call for a “vengeful and cruel” Israeli Defense Force, and who called for the “Erasing of Gaza from the face of the Earth.”
This genocidal language, paired with Netanyahu’s multiple utterances of similar talk which we’ve chronicled previously (“Children Of Darkness,” “Amalek”), does not help Israel’s goal of eliminating Hamas. To the contrary, it directly creates more terrorists that will kill more innocent Israelis, either soon or in the future.
Former President Donald J. Trump’s trial for fraud continues. His sons took the witness stand. It did not go well. Joy of joys. And this isn’t even one of Trump’s criminal trials.
Senate Republicans are taking Senator Tommy Tuberville to task for his implicit support of Hamas and other hostile forces due to his blockade of military promotions. If only they’d say the same about his fellow Hamas supporter Rand Paul’s blockade on ambassadorial positions.
My representative, George Santos, survived a vote to expel him in the House. Over thirty Democrats voted against expelling him. Jeff Jackson, among others, said they don’t want to establish a precedent that someone can be kicked out without a finding by the Ethics committee, citing a lack of due process. I would say that the due process in this case is the need for a two-thirds vote to remove someone. It’s suggested that the ethics committee will be finished with its investigation in about three weeks, but I suggest that Republicans will probably say something like, “Well we didn’t learn anything new so we aren’t holding a re-vote.”
To finish with some good news: Portugal (the nation) was powered exclusively by renewables last weekend. With more installation of more generative capacity, there will be more weekends like it - and less of a negative environmental impact for power generation. Less carbon footprint. Less reliance on, for example, Russian oil and gas. Very good.
Thank you for reading The Progressive Cafe. If this article has helped you, please consider signing up for our mailing list. This article is by Jesse Pohlman, a sci-fi/fantasy author from Long Island, New York, whose website you can check out here.