Unions Made 2023 the Year of the Strike
Greg Iwinski, a late-night TV writer, walked off the job this year amid a dramatic surge of workers going out on strike -- and he says the trend made its presence felt at the bargaining table.
"The ammunition that a company has, whether it's an automaker or a TV studio, is telling you that a strike won't work -- your collective action won't help," Iwinski, who helped broker an agreement that delivered significant pay increases for 11,000 Hollywood writers, told ABC News.
Iwinski was among more than 500,000 workers who went out on strike nationwide in 2023, nearly tripling the figure recorded over the same period a year earlier, according to data through the end of October from Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations shared.
The sharp escalation in worker protests arose from widespread dissatisfaction with sluggish wage gains, which in many cases had failed to keep up with rapid price hikes.
Over a four-decade period beginning in the late-1970s, wages largely flattened, increasing 0.2% per year on an inflation-adjusted basis for a typical worker, a Harvard Business Review analysis found.
The cumulative effects of sluggish wage growth collided with sky-high inflation in recent years, leaving workers frustrated over diminished spending power, Johnnie Kallas, project director of Cornell University's Labor Action Tracker, told ABC News.
"The root cause is the pent up pressure of long-term wage stagnation," Kallas said. "That has really come home to roost."