Sweeping across the United States, a dramatic increase in rank and file Labor struggles, including several high profile economic strikes in various sectors, has charged U.S. class tensions to a degree not seen in many decades.
12,000 carpenters, 10,000 John Deere heavy farm equipment manufacturers, 31,000 Kaiser health care workers, 60,000 Hollywood TV, theater and film production workers, 1,100 Alabama coal miners and 1,400 Kellogg cereal factory workers are among tens of thousands of workers involved this year in strikes against 178 employers, including 12 strikes of 1,000 or more workers for better wages and working conditions.
This is against the pandemic economy backdrop in which 4.3 million workers quit their jobs in August, 2021 alone, intensifying what media are calling “labor shortage.” Meanwhile, corporations and owners have made record profits. John Deere profits have increased 61% in recent years and it’s CEO’s salary grew 160% during the pandemic.
Economic stress combined with heightened health risk fears and increasing class consciousness of leveraged collective workers’ power has propelled a growing wave of Labor aggression. This economic activity comes, as well, on top of 18 months of social insurgency led by national liberation militancy against racism and police terror. If the U.S. Labor rank and file adopt political dimensions into this activity a new emergence is possible of organized, class oriented Labor struggle against monopoly capitalism.
Workers everywhere should salute these struggles in the United States for increased worker power. The World Federation of Trade Unions, representing 105 million union workers in 133 countries, as the only international, democratic, class-oriented federation, stands shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with the U.S. workers’ strike wave.
