May Day in the United States was born out of workers’ struggle for the 8 hour work day over 100 years ago.
Today’s technology and the growing gig economy make the 8-hour workday almost obsolete. Yet technology is not being used to improve workers’ conditions or quality of life. Corporations are using technology to make millions in profits while they impoverish workers and destroy the planet because, under capitalism, the drive for profits is unrelenting.
The corporations that can afford to automate are laying off workers by the thousands. Other corporations are forced to exploit their workers even more until they can afford to automate.
Technology is changing everything and workers are responding to these changing conditions.
2023 proved to be a historic year for workers’ actions to improve their working and living conditions. These actions include forming new organizations and strikes, threats of strikes, and one or two-day actions. Workers organized across different industries like transportation, entertainment, manufacturing, retail, and hospitality to name a few. In many cases, strikes were averted as in the case of hundreds of thousands of UPS workers.
“There were 312 strikes involving roughly 453,000 workers so far in 2023, compared with 180 strikes involving 43,700 workers over the same period two years ago, according to data by Johnnie Kallas, of the ILR Labor Action Tracker.
Number of workers
The horizontal bars show the number of strikes and workers involved in 2021, 2022, and 2023 (as of Oct. 5).
Note: Strike counts for 2021 and 2022 are for the full calendar year.Source: Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations Labor Action Tracker
Data as of October 2023
U.S. Labor Actions Increase in 2023
Some of the most publicized strikes from unions such as United Auto Workers, Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) Writers Guild (WGA), hotel and casino workers in California and Detroit, and some 35,000 United Teachers of Los Angeles (of the Los Angeles Unified School District) accounted for nearly 65% of the striking workers. Kaiser Permanente workers, for example, walked off the job in October in the largest strike of healthcare workers in U.S. history.
These labor actions did not start in 2023 but they are part of the development of more militant labor activity in recent years.
Most of the strike activity of 2023 was workers in the private sector. Different from the 2018-2020 walkouts in the public sector when public school teachers organized the “Red for Ed”. Organizing campaigns at airports, coffee shops, newsrooms, orchestras, and warehouses has had a big impact even if they have not been able to get contracts with employers yet.
“Striketober” was a labor strike wave in October 2021 by workers in the United States in the context of strikes during the COVID-19 pandemic. The labor movement began with workers who were made to work long hours for low wages observing businesses making increasing profits while income inequality in the United States intensified.
Strikes occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic due to many factors including hazard pay or low pay, unsafe working conditions (due to poor social distancing or a lack of personal protective equipment), and inability to pay rent. These strikes are separate from the various protests that occurred over responses to the pandemic.
Due to the labor shortage of the Great Resignation – which some economists described as a general strike – workers held more leverage over companies who required additional labor.
New organizing battles with corporations
Corporations are routinely breaking the law to resist worker’s needs and demands. They lie and intimidate workers to keep them from organizing. They spend millions of dollars on anti-union campaigns and consultants to keep workers isolated and vulnerable.
Our experience in the last 15 to 20 years has been the ongoing great recession, the financial crisis of 2007-08, and the pandemic where the banks and corporations were bailed out and assured to maintain profit levels at the expense of everyone else.
Technology can liberate workers and advance our living and working conditions, but corporations are not interested in sacrificing some of their profits for this cause. The labor movement, the unions, our needs, and demands are moving towards unity at a time when forces are attempting to do everything to the point of promoting fascism to maintain or increase divisions among us.
There is no doubt the actions of workers both union and non-union through contract negotiations (and threatened strikes), strikes, resignations, and organizing drives (Amazon, Starbucks) have been heroic, successful, and unprecedented. Parallel to the surging social movements, the economic struggle of workers as workers continue to increasingly reflect a more “conscious” labor movement.
This May Day 2024 we welcome the growing movement as reflected at the workplace to help influence (and be influenced) and shape an incipient political movement with all the struggles that continue to grow and develop.
This May Day let’s celebrate these heroes.
May Day is for everyone! It is our day!
We are stronger together!
Nanzi Muro
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