Unions are the strongest in decades. Nearly a million Americans got double-digit raises as a result

Nearly 900,000 Americans sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner this week will have unions – and the double-digit pay increases they won – to thank.

That’s how many unionized workers have won immediate pay hikes of 10% or more in just the last year, according to an analysis by CNN.

And the pace of increases of that size have been picking up. More than 700,000 of those workers won pay hikes over the course of the last six months, and of that group, nearly 300,000 saw deals reached in just the last six weeks.

“I would say this is the best run of wage increases won by labor since the period right after the end of World War II,” said Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations in Buffalo.

corsicanguppy,

Remember that the raises are almost always barely playing catch-up with contemporaries. I’ve not seen a case where a union member of staff is making even the average pay for a given job function.

tinkeringidiot,

It’s nice to celebrate the wins this year, but I think there were just as many warning bells.

UAW, WGA, and SAG got thrown their bones, sure, but we also watched those huge multinational companies gleefully ignore them for huge spans of time. These massive companies can just fall back on their international components, knowing the company can go on indefinitely without them, and wait for the union to run out of money. Then when the union members are desperate, the company finally comes to the table with a fraction of what the union wanted at the start.

This years events showed pretty clearly that strikes are not (always) the existential threat to the business that made organized labor so powerful in the past. I hope the movement is hearing that warning bell.

Alexstarfire,

Millions got $10-$99 raises? Whoopty doo, but what does it all mean Basil?

MargotRobbie,

Love it. Unions got us to where we are, and we are thankful for them.

Strikes work.

KingThrillgore,
@KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml avatar

An organized workforce is a workforce that will fight fascism.

Coach,

…cept teachers. 🤬

FlavoredButtHair,
@FlavoredButtHair@lemmy.world avatar

Teachers should make at least 90K

lntl, (edited )

When I worked at Amazon, i learned that unions are bad for workers.

I remember that if we get/keep unions out of the way then more of the money we make can go to us instead of the union.

Wiwiweb,
@Wiwiweb@sh.itjust.works avatar

Are you telling us this as an example of the kind of things they will tell you at Amazon, or is this something you believe too?

DiatomeceousGirth,

Say sike right now

Sanyanov,

Unfortunately, it very much doesn’t work like that.

The goal of any company, Amazon included, is to pay you as little as possible while extracting as much work from you as possible.

Without a union, they will pay you absolute minimum they can to have you stay at that job, regardless of other expenses - in fact, corporations keep renewing records in profits without workers getting anything from it.

With a union, strikes and legal actions increase your power over the company and allow you to get a bigger slice of the pie (and poor poor Bezos will have to give out a little of his for that).

lntl,

I want to believe you, but Amazon gave us lunch during their class on unions and lunch is one of my favorites. Besides youre coming off like a know-it-all and aren’t buying me lunch

USSEthernet,

I guess I should expect headlines in the next year that blame more inflation on union workers for getting big raises…

SuiXi3D,
SuiXi3D avatar

It’s not enough. Not until everyone is paid what they’re actually worth will it ever be enough.

MonsiuerPatEBrown, (edited )

Now imagine if we had some way to send people that could represent our needs to the government. If only we could house such a group of people near the seat of government so that they could petition our needs in the form of … I don’t know let’s call it a bill of writ and law.

If only we could have something like that, too.

blazera,
blazera avatar

The most important metric, membership, doesnt seem to be doing so hot.

avidamoeba,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

Not nearly enough. We need a lot more participation. That’s gonna help with the money in politics problem too. This is the solution used the last time inequality and its socioeconomic effects were at this level, and it worked for a while.

SCB,

Strong unions make strong businesses.

Now let’s pass some union reform laws and get rid of “right to work” on the federal level.

bitwise,

Maybe I'm becoming too cynical, but the raises these unions have been settling on don't really cover inflation over the periods where they received no increase.
These articles just feel like the media wings of these megacorps are trying to stroke our egos. "Yes, so much bargaining power!"

I can't find the article I'm thinking of where someone used a bunch of privately sourced data to peg the average annual inflation at 7%, but this article shows how economists don't even agree on what metrics to measure for calculating inflation.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/consumerpriceindex.asp

bitwise,

Adding to this with a post I found on wallstreetbets.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/15uo06v/inflation_data_has_always_been_a_lie/

Not exactly a reputable source, but the OP does go through several key indicators and shows their math (with screenshots of a calculator, lol)

SCB,

So you’re probably wondering how it’s possible that the dollar supply has been expanding at over 7% for the past 52 years, but inflation has only been 3% on average. The answer is that CPI data is designed to underreport inflation.

Yeah there’s so much wrong here that it’s difficult to know where to start. I guess maybe let’s start with, inflation isn’t determined by how many raw dollars are printed, and population rises aren’t being taken into effect, both of which will heavily change his end result.

novibe,

Mfs still subscribe to inflation theory from 200 years ago smh…

Money is printed in accordance to inflation, among other things, but it’s not the cause. Ffs. The US printed trillions during and after the 2008 crash and there was barely any inflation then.

frezik,

Glad to see this here. The way some leftists are repeating libertarian talking points about inflation these days is disturbing.

avidamoeba,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

It’s intuitive because it follows from personal experiences with money. Having read and seen information on this, perhaps what gave me the clearest intuition was Randall Wray’s intro to MMT lectures. Perhaps throwing one of the simplest ones at leftists spouting this stuff would work for them too.

avidamoeba,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

Seriously someone thinks that inflation is equal to increase in money supply? 🤦‍♂️🤦🤦‍♀️

SCB,

I mean it’s /r/wallstreetbets lol

SCB,

I can’t find the article I’m thinking of where someone used a bunch of privately sourced data to peg the average annual inflation at 7%

This is definitely not accurate. 7% compounding inflation every year is significantly more purchasing power lost than anything we’ve seen.

optissima,

Only takes 12 years for cost to double like that, right?

SCB,

By the “rule of 72” it’s doubling a little over every 10 years.

optissima,

That’s what I’m thinking of, ty

alvvayson,

Wages have kept up with inflation though, often exceeding it.

Here a link for the minimum wage.

statista.com/…/real-nominal-value-minimum-wage-us…

The real problem is that wages have not tracked productivity growth. But unions will not be able to solve that, since a lot of workers haven’t actually gotten more productive.

Most productivity improvements are capital intensive investments in technology. You won’t be able to capture much of those gains through labour bargaining.

To really improve the economic standing of workers, we must distribute non-housing capital more equally among the whole population.

Start taxing large capitals and put things like IRA’s and 401K’s on steroids to grow the capital of normal people.

dangblingus,

Actually, the graph you linked to shows a negative relationship between inflation and wages every single year since 1970. The minimum wage has effectively gone down due to inflation.

alvvayson,

It does not.

2000 and 2010 directly contradict your statement.

be_excellent_to_each_other,
be_excellent_to_each_other avatar

From the caption of that graph.

theodewere,
theodewere avatar

Unions are getting paid because corporations have gigantic piles of cash lying around right now (because of record profits), and they were hoping to just keep it for themselves somehow

NOT_RICK,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

They thought the words “economic headwinds” would really just make the workers go “ah ok, sure. Keep hoarding away”

theodewere,
theodewere avatar

they owe a big chunk of it to the Trump Tax Cuts.. every penny of that went into the boardroom..

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