What do Kaiser healthcare employees, Kellogg’s cereal plant workers, Hollywood film crews, and millions of other Americans have in common? If you answered that they’re all the latest to take part in a growing labor movement sweeping the United States, you would be right. Currently, U.S. workers from many industries are pushing for reforms like safer conditions, livable wages, better benefits, and cuts to long hours. Although 2021 is shaping up to be one of the biggest years for labor movements in decades, the issue has still received little to no large-scale coverage.

It’s important to understand the history behind labor movements in the U.S. when talking about recent labor action. This history can be traced back to the late 1800s, which was known as America’s Gilded Age. The Gilded Age was characterized by a level of corporate consolidation and immense wealth gaps not unlike those in today’s economy. During this time, America’s newly industrialized economy provided virtually no protections for the laborers on which it was built upon. Workplace casualties, long term injuries, criminally low pay, and now-illegal treatment of workers was rampant. Attempts by laborers to organize and demand a better life consistently fell apart until 1886 with the founding of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which later joined the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO, established in 1938) to become what is still the strongest group of U.S. labor unions: the AFL-CIO. Unfortunately, due to changes in the market in the 1970s and the anti-union policies of the Reagan administration in the 1980s, union membership, labor protests, and strikes steadily declined over the following decades. In 2019, unionized workers reached a record low of only 10% of the workforce according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, this downward trend is showing signs of change for the first time in decades due to this year’s increase of labor action following the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the recently launched Labor Action Tracker from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, there have been 255 strikes between the beginning of 2021 and the middle of October, when this article was written. 43 of those have occurred in the month of October alone. For comparison, the Labor Action Tracker found just 54 strikes in all of 2020. A strike occurs when workers, typically organized through collective bargaining groups called unions, refuse to work until their employers listen to certain demands such as livable pay or safer work environments.

This year, strikes are gaining force. Some notable examples include the over 10,000 John Deere workers striking for livable wages, the 1,400 Kellogg’s workers striking against the company’s policy of giving unequal wages and benefits to “lower tier” employees, and the over 2,000 Cook County employees who went on strike for better pay and benefits. That’s not to mention the 35,000 healthcare workers for Kaiser Permanente who recently authorized a strike following proposed pay cuts for some employees, or the 60,000 unionized film and TV crew members whose threat of a strike was very narrowly avoided with a last-minute deal. Put together, these numbers represent over 100,000 workers this year who have used or are using collective bargaining to demand changes in their workplace. 

The multitude of union workers using collective action to gain leverage in their labor disputes aren’t the only ones dissatisfied with current work conditions. The United States is currently in the midst of a massive labor shortage spanning almost all industries. In August (the most recent month recorded), a record 4.3 million workers quit their jobs according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This number is up a massive 1.3 million workers from the same month last year. This is not just isolated to August. With more workers resigning than ever before and employers having more and more trouble finding replacements, the past few months have been dubbed “The Great Resignation” by the media and economists.

The growing number of union strikes and the soaring resignations of workers are connected in more ways than one. It’s not just that people are fed up and dissatisfied with predatory pre-pandemic work standards being forced on them in a mid-pandemic world. It’s that the strikes and resigning workers can build on each other to give workers leverage over the labor market in a way that they haven’t experienced in a while. Union strikes are already designed to provide workers with collective leverage over their conditions, and the current state of the economy is only adding to the growing power of these workers. With millions resigning and many of them not immediately seeking new employment, employers face a choice. They can either be more receptive to the needs of their employees or lose even more labor to strikes and resignations in an already tight market. 

This process of worker empowerment works the other way around too. The overall trend of employers struggling to find workers means that for once, even non-unionized people have more control over their wages, benefits, safety, and treatment, because they don’t have to settle for an exploitative workplace out of fear that it’s the only chance at employment they will find. The more workers that take advantage of this through striking or resigning, the more leverage they collectively attain by making employers increasingly more likely to listen so that they can fix their labor shortages.

This reckoning over labor practices isn’t limited to the workers who are participating in recent labor movements. Outside of strikes, the Cornell Labor Action Tracker has also identified 560 “labor protests” this year. A labor protest occurs when people (sometimes workers, other times people in solidarity with the cause) use collective action to make demands without people having to stop work. Beyond these protests, the “Fight for $15” movement to raise the stagnant minimum wage has gained national traction to the point that over 60% of Americans now support raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour, according to a Pew Research Center poll. Public support for labor unions has even reached 65% for the first time in two decades, according to a Gallup poll. Clearly, growing support for these types of labor movements is reaching beyond the people directly participating in them.

It’s not hard to see why this collective push for a more bearable work life is happening at the time that it is. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed and exacerbated huge issues with the way the American workforce is treated. The U.S. labor system overworks, undervalues, and takes advantage of workers; all the while workers are not even paid a livable wage. This is clearly unsustainable. The pandemic brought this to light in a couple ways. First, people who were sent to either work from home or find other jobs got a taste of a life where, without long commutes and grueling hours of in-person work, their social and personal lives no longer had to be put on hold to make a living. Now, the pandemic rages on, but these people are being asked to go back in-person to the way it was before the pandemic. Employees are justifiably angry over this. Second, those who were forced to stay at work during the pandemic are simply fed up. Large employers can no longer ask them to put in longer hours for less and less real pay (inflation is outpacing any raises to most working-class salaries) while ignoring their physical and mental health by keeping them working through a pandemic. For the first time in decades, American workers are realizing that they can achieve more fulfilling lives, less harmful work environments, and all around better labor alternatives than what they currently have. With the labor movement growing and employers having to either accommodate employees’ demands or risk not having enough workers, people finally have the opportunity to act on what became obvious during the beginning of the pandemic: There are significantly better alternatives to the abusive system workers are currently trapped under.

Some look past the demands of workers who are striking or leaving their jobs and blame the labor shortage on increased pandemic-era unemployment benefits that in some cases gave workers a better deal than what they had in their previous employment. These new unemployment benefits ended nationally in early September (and even earlier in 25 states according to CBS), yet the “Great Resignation” rages on. Even if it were the case that unemployment benefits alone incentivized millions to quit, then the solution should not be to end these benefits which are helping unemployed people stay afloat during the pandemic. It should instead be for employers to make work life more bearable with competitive wages, benefits, and better treatment of their workers.

Whatever the reason, the methods, or the results, it is undeniable that America is currently facing a new labor reckoning fueled by effects of the pandemic and long standing workplace practices. While we can’t predict what, if any, long term advancements will come out of this movement, we can easily say that millions of laborers are tired of the current way things are being done. In a year filled with so much upheaval, it’s not hard to see why many workers are ready for their side of things to change as well.