Already affected by the strike of Hollywood screenwriters and actors, the country could see other sectors of its economy paralyzed by social mobilizations among UPS delivery people and in the automobile industry.
American unions have rarely made so much noise across the Atlantic. Hollywood actors and screenwriters, UPS delivery drivers, workers of the “Big Three” of the automobile… More than 650,000 American workers threaten to go on strike across the Atlantic, reports Bloomberg. An unprecedented combination for half a century.
While actors joined a week ago the strike movement launched by Hollywood screenwriters in May, the walkouts could indeed multiply and spread to other sectors of the American economy in the weeks to come.
Air conditioning for UPS drivers
Starting with the package delivery company United Parcel Service (UPS). The Teamsters union, which represents 330,000 employees of the company, has indeed initiated the renegotiation of the agreement which binds it to UPS. But as the end of the month approaches, the hope of seeing an agreement between the two parties dwindle.
Among the demands made by UPS employees are the installation of air conditioning in more trucks and the upgrading of working conditions for UPS drivers.
The union’s battle for air conditioning is not new. UPS trucks have the particularity of not having doors, which makes it easier for delivery people to get out of the vehicles to make their delivery. However, the major drawback of this structure is that it lets heat into the truck and, combined with that of the engine, makes the thermometer rise very high. As a result, employees are currently reporting temperatures of over 40°C inside their vehicles.
On Twitter, the union mentioned, last June, cases of “death, heat stroke and dehydration” which occurred due to these temperatures, among employees.
And if points of agreement have been found on these two subjects, disagreements persist in particular concerning the salaries of part-time employees. Employee representatives, however, point to the record profits recorded by the company over the past two years. They reached $12.9 billion in 2022, compared to $4.8 billion in 2018.
Negotiations therefore failed in early July, raising fears of a strike followed by hundreds of thousands of workers. To avoid this scenario, union and management will have to reach an agreement before July 31, the date on which the collective agreement between UPS and Teamsters will expire.
Guaranteed jobs in the electrical industry
The automotive industry could also be affected by a major strike movement. This time, it is the United Auto Workers (UAW) which would be the instigator. The UAW’s agreements with Detroit’s three main automakers, the famous “Big Three”, namely General Motors, Ford and Fiat-Chrysler (owned by the Stellantis group) have started for a few days, while the agreements will expire in September.
But union boss Shawn Fain has already been very aggressive. He warned that nearly 150,000 members would strike if the builders did not meet their demands, reports CNN. The three groups “have made a quarter of a trillion dollars (250 billion, editor’s note) in profit in North America over the last ten years, they can afford to do things well” for the workers, he said.
“If the ‘Big Three’ don’t give us our fair share of the profits, then they make the choice to strike themselves and we won’t be afraid to take action,” he threatened.
In addition to an increase in their wages, as well as better support for their health care and their retirement, the members of the UAW do not want to be excluded from the transition to electric. The union wishes to ensure representation within the battery construction factories in particular.
A structural resurgence of strikes?
For labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein, head of the Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy at the University of California, quoted by Bloomberg, the country could thus experience the “biggest strike episode since the 1970s”.
An increase in the number of strikers had been observed from the start of the semester, adds the American media. On the other side of the Atlantic, and particularly in France, inflation and the decline in purchasing power have also led to numerous mobilizations.
But even before this price increase, tensions in the American labor market linked to the pandemic could have increased the power of influence of employees. The resurgence of social movements could therefore be structural in nature and occur at a technological and industrial turning point. Just as artificial intelligence and its consequences are at the heart of the claims of Hollywood screenwriters, the transition to electric is one of the topics that will be discussed during union negotiations with car manufacturers.
If UAW members and the Teamsters also went on strike, the number of strikers would rise to nearly 800,000 in the United States, according to Bloomberg data.
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2023-07-21 15:17:24
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