America’s Union Leaders Have a Message for Capital
There was more strike action in America in the past year than we’ve seen in more than two decades. From auto workers to actors, baristas to healthcare workers, the number of US workers protesting tripled from the preceding year. There was “Hot Labor Summer” and “Striketober”. When Joe Biden walked the picket line with the auto workers’ union last September, he became the first sitting president ever to do so. This year promises more, with major organizing action aimed at Starbucks, Delta, Amazon and Tesla.
All of it represents a generational turning point. If the Reagan revolution was about crushing union power, the pendulum seems to be shifting in favor of labor. Unions are changing too. They are fighting not just for better pay and benefits, but for more financial power in companies and control over the use of new technologies such as AI.
Financial Times reporter Rana Foroohar sat down with four of America’s top union leaders — Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO (the federation of US unions); Claude Cummings, president of the Communications Workers of America; Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers; and Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, to talk about what’s happened and where they go from here.