Workers chase spoils of boom on picket lines
At first glance, it may seem like a paradox: Even as the economy rides a 10-year winning streak, tens of thousands of workers across the country, from General Motors employees to teachers in Chicago, are striking to win better wages and benefits.
But, according to those on strike, the strong growth is precisely the point. Autoworkers, teachers and other workers accepted austerity when the economy was in a free fall, expecting to share in the gains once the recovery took hold.
Increasingly, however, many of those workers believe that they fell for a sucker’s bet, having watched their employers grow flush while their own incomes barely budged. Corporate profits are near a record high, up nearly
30 percent since the prerecession peak in 2006. During the same time, the income of the typical household has increased by less than 4 percent.
“That was the understanding — that if we gave up the concessions back in 2007 and 2009, that once GM got back on their feet, we would slowly get those things back,” said Tammy Daggy, who worked at the now-idled GM plant in Lordstown, Ohio, for nearly 25 years. But on many issues, “we never did.”
To an extent, the pattern of strikes reflects a recurring feature of the labor market: Workers typically become bolder the longer an expansion continues, using the leverage they have when jobs are harder to fill to demand greater compensation. This was particularly true during the three decades after World War II, according to a survey of research by Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis.
Overall strike activity has fallen sharply since the 1970s, as the ranks of unions have been depleted, dropping to about 10 percent of the workforce from over 25 percent. Employers have also responded more aggressively — for example, by permanently replacing striking employees.
Now, though, workers appear increasingly willing to walk off the job. Last year, the number of workers who participated in significant strikes soared to nearly 500,000, its highest point since the mid1980s, while the total duration of such strikes reached a 15-year high.
The backdrop for this trend is a rising gap between the money employers are making and the portion they are sharing with workers. The share of the national income that workers receive fell in the early 2000s to its lowest level since World War II according to some measures, then collapsed further in 2009. It has yet to recover. That may be partly because the labor market is weaker than the picture painted by the official unemployment rate of 3.5 percent. That rate measures only the number of out-of-work Americans who say they are looking for jobs. It excludes Americans in their prime working years who are not actively looking for work but, given the opportunity, might choose to reenter the workforce.
According to Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the group who could quickly reenter the workforce is potentially large, and may help employers avoid bidding up wages to lure those who are currently employed.