Unions back: Workers now willing to strike
GM, Chicago schools are latest walkout examples
To special education teacher Maggie Sermont, the rationale for a strike against Chicago’s public schools boils down to a simple “enough!”
And more workers are joining the call by showing a willingness to strike, reawakening the nation’s organized labor movement after decades of mostly small gains.
Unions are making a powerful comeback. Americans approve of labor unions by 64%, only two percentage points shy of the highest mark recorded in the past 50 years and 16 points above the low in 2009, Gallup reported two months ago.
Last year, there were 20 major work stoppages across several industries, the highest total since 2007. The strikes and walkouts included a lot of school districts, but also big corporate names like AT&T and Marriott. The number of workers involved, 485,000, was the highest since 1986, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.
The Chicago teachers’ walkout comes as more than 46,000 General Motors workers are about to vote on a tentative agreement won after a five-week strike that scored gains for the United Auto Workers union.
As for the Chicago teachers’ action, the walkout followed a string of similar strikes around the country, including ones in conservative states like Kentucky and West Virginia that might not, on their face, seem sympathetic to labor actions by public workers.
Earlier this year, 34,000 Los Angeles educators struck for six days. Their resulting contract not only raised their pay by 6% but lowered class sizes while creating additional school nurse and librarian positions. In fact, teachers across the country have nabbed win after win.
Now, Chicago teachers are striking, hoping that their timing is right.
Amid the lowest unemployment rate since 1969 and the overall economic boom, workers are feeling emboldened. During the Great Recession, many were “very fearful, very uncertain,” Shaiken said. Now, “the political winds are shifting.”
Under the tentative contract to end the GM strike, UAW members won pay raises, retained health care benefits and will see signing bonuses of up to $11,000. The loss was failing persuade GM, which reported $2.4 billion in quarterly profit just as negotiations got underway, to retain production at its Lordstown Assembly Plant in Ohio.
Workers didn’t fight just for themselves, but for their co-workers. Creating a pathway for permanent status for GM’S temporary workers, who earn a fraction of the pay despite often doing the same job, became a big issue in the strike.
“The UAW strike touched a nerve,” said Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center in Los Angeles. Paying factory workers differently for the same tasks divides them and “will continually transform middle-class jobs into low-wage jobs.”