Unions Are the Strongest in Decades. Nearly a Million Americans Got Double-Digit Raises as a Result
Nearly 900,000 Americans 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.
Some of the deals arrived at the end of high-profile strikes, such as the United Auto Workers union strike against General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, which lasted more than six weeks, or one by 75,000 health care workers at Kaiser Permanente, who waged the largest US health care strike ever over just three days in October.
“The economy is very strong right now. There’s a huge amount of profits. It’s true with auto industry, true with airlines, true with railroads,” Greg Regan, president of the transportation trades department of the AFL-CIO, said. “A lot of times the profits soared because of reduced headcounts. In many ways this is a way to reset the labor market.”