California workers threaten strikes from health care to Hollywood. Will their power last?
Thousands of lecturers at the University of California. Tens of thousands of nurses and health care workers at Kaiser Permanente. Tens of thousands of workers in Hollywood.
They are a few of the groups who are threatening to go on strike in California.
With a historically tight labor market coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic and spiking costs of living, more employees in the state are pushing to improve their pay and working conditions.
For some, that means going on strikes, or at least threatening a work stoppage. For others, it means quitting their jobs. More than 400,000 California workers quit their jobs in August, higher than at any point in the last two decades, according to researchers at the Public Policy Institute of California.
“What a lot of workers want is control... a measure of control over their lives,” said Toby Higbie, a professor of history and labor studies at UCLA.
The activism comes as union membership among private sector workers remains low in California, at less than 10% as of 2020.
Now Gallup polls show support for unions at a historic high and labor advocates the demands for better pay and condition might revitalize their organizations.
Democratic state lawmakers also see an opportunity, such as further increasing the minimum wage past $15 an hour or using the state’s budget to pressure institutions such as the UC to give their employees better pay and working conditions, said Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, a longtime labor advocate.
“You need labor unions. You need infrastructure to sustain long-term changes,” Gonzalez said. “You need all the excitement and the infrastructure. The question is what to do in the coming years.”
Still, some labor experts are skeptical about whether the leverage workers gained in the last few months will last, absent changes to workplace laws.
“The odds are so stacked in favor of employers wherever there’s a unionization effort,” said Ruth Milkman, a sociologist of labor at the City University of New York and a former director of UCLA’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. “There are little flares of hope for people who support labor, but the big picture is still bleak.”
Why workers are pushing for more power
With a giant inflatable rat “Scabby” in tow, dozens of workers gathered last week outside of Kaiser Permanente Sacramento Medical Center, showing support for the company’s 700 Northern California engineers who have been striking since September.
The company has said it’s offering wage increases and bonuses with an average of $3,600 per employee each year. But workers said those raises don’t go far enough, as living costs continue to skyrocket in the region.
“You go out to eat. Has anything gone up by 2%?” said John Southworth, a biomedical technician working for Kaiser in Roseville. “Cost of living goes up 7, 10, and you get 2. It’s really a pay cut. That’s what they want to do: Pay cut.”
For Brian Nitta, a senior physical therapist at Kaiser’s Clovis facility, it’s about preventing cuts to his and other workers’ retirement benefits.
“Our company is doing quite well, and we’re not interested in entertaining a proposal to decrease and mortgage the future of our profession by decreasing benefits and compensations for reasons we can’t really understand,” said Nitta, a member of a bargaining team for the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals’ chapter that represents more than 1,400 therapists across Northern California. The chapter in late October voted to authorize a strike.
Mia McIver, who represents thousands of University of California lecturers, wants to fight against the exhaustion and burnout many of her members suffered during the pandemic, when faculty had to quickly transition to remote teaching.
McIver’s union, University Council-American Federation of Teachers, authorized a strike in late May. The union is asking raises that match cost of living increases, as well as a clear definition of their workload.
“There’s a lot of rage out there,” she said.
How big is the ‘Great resignation’?
When workers see others go on strike, that can have a snowball effect, said Ken Jacobs, chairman of the UC Berkeley Labor Center.
“Unions have been in the media in ways that we haven’t seen in many, many years,” he said. “Workers seeing others going on strike or talking about going on strike, that gets people inspiration, hope, the ability to see new possibilities and validates the sense that they’re not being treated justly and if they act, they can win.”
All the talks of “Striketober,” however, come with a caveat. The number of workers on strike is not as high as big waves in the 1970s, or even the teachers’ walkout a couple of years ago, Jacobs said.
Bohn, a researcher at PPIC, also noted that the number of workers quitting their jobs was at very low levels during the pandemic’s peak.
“We’re making up from the quits we haven’t seen in the last year and a half,” she said. “There’s a lot that remains to be seen as to will the trend continue or whether we will get back to a normal rate of transition.”
Will the movement last?
Despite the momentum some labor advocates feel, a federal bill to make it easier for workers to organize has stalled. A Democratic spending bill includes a provision spiking the amount of penalties levied on employers for unfair labor practices, but Milkman said she’s skeptical of whether it will have teeth.
“Do you think Amazon cares? Those penalties are so rarely imposed that it’s so hard to prove things,” she said.
More workers will come back to the labor market as the pandemic wanes and there are fewer disruptions in schools, Jacobs said.
However, Higbie said the pandemic could have a long-term impact on how workers view their power.
“The idea we’re all going to be millionaires,... most people don’t believe that anymore, and it has become more ludicrous through the course of the pandemic,” Higbie said. “That may lead people to look upon organizing more favorably as long as they think they won’t lose their jobs.”
This story was originally published November 9, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "California workers threaten strikes from health care to Hollywood. Will their power last?."
