Washington DC: Exhausted after working long hours during the Coronavirus pandemic and resentful that their bosses are not sharing sometimes huge profits, tens of thousands of nurses, laborers and entertainment workers are going on strike across the United States.
If they fail to reach agreement with the Hollywood studios on a new collective bargaining contract, 60,000 members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees plan to strike on Monday. The IATSE includes cinematographers, hairdressers, makeup artists and sound editors.
Some 31,000 employees of the Kaiser Permanente healthcare group in the western states of California and Oregon are also poised to strike soon.
Since Thursday, 10,000 employees of the John Deere farm equipment company have been on strike; while 1,400 workers walked off the job at the Kellogg's cereal company on October 5, and more than 2,000 employees of Mercy Hospital in Buffalo, New York, began striking on October 1.
The sudden rash of strikes this month has even led some to coin the word "Striketober," a neologism since embraced on social media even by prominent progressive Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
- Pandemic sacrifices -
During the pandemic, workers say, they often had to bear extra burdens to make up for others who were staying home.
"We've sacrificed our time with our families, we missed ballgames with our kids and dinners and weddings, in order to keep boxes of cereal on the shelves," said Dan Osborn, a mechanic at Kellogg's for 18 years.
"And this is how we're getting repaid," he continued, "by asking us to take concessions at a time when the CEO and executives have taken increases in their compensation."
Osborn, the president of a local chapter of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union (BCTGM), said workers object to a two-tier pay system that leaves some newer employees making far less than older workers.