The year of the strike: What’s causing this labor movement and the potential impact

Kaiser Permanente is the latest company reaching a tentative deal with a union after thousands of its employees walked off the job during a three-day strike.

Labor historians say this explosion of strikes stems from decades of stagnant pay for workers.

These strikes aren’t limited to one industry, either. From Hollywood writers, to autoworkers, and even Las Vegas hotel employees, thousands have gone to the picket lines this year. Many of them are demanding more money, better benefits, and improved work conditions.

“Working people are fed up. They’re watching CEO pay rise, they’re seeing record profits,” said Mary Kay Henry, International President of the Service Employees International Union or (SEIU). “Now it’s time to be respected, protected, and paid.”

Mary Kay Henry leads the Service Employees International Union. It represents 2 million members in healthcare, property services, and public sector jobs.  She believes the pandemic was a major tipping point for these latest strikes.

“Workers have had it with a level of racial and economic inequality that has gone on for far too long. And then it was catalyzed by the public health pandemic, when workers showed up every day, and were called essential, but treated in some cases like they were sacrificial,” she said.

Data from the Economic Policy Institute shows the number of workers striking fell sharply in 2020 and 2021 but then jumped 50% last year alone.

Labor historians said another factor is the victory after some of these strikes.

“As workers do engage in these actions, they encourage each other to emulate the demands and to emulate the tactics in some ways,” said Joseph McCartin, labor historian at Georgetown University.

McCartin believes the ongoing strike between the United Auto Workers and the big three automakers could set the tone for other movements.

“Part of it is the innovative way they’ve gone about this strike, not singling out one of the automakers as they’ve done in past negotiations, but striking at all three, but not calling out all their members, doing it in a progressive fashion in order to ratchet up pressure. I think that what they’ve done has attracted the attention of the nation,” said McCartin.

As Kaiser Permanente reaches a tentative deal, Henry believes it will help more than just workers.

“When their wages go up, the wages of all health care workers around them go up,” said Henry. “It matters for the patients that they fought for safe staffing, so that patients are not on endless hold for an appointment or unable to get the health care that they need.”

Labor experts say even the threat of a strike is powerful. Recently, the Teamsters union used this method to help secure increased pay for UPS workers.