Marion McKeone: Bumper year for unions gives US workers plenty to be thankful for

Despite the country’s ongoing culture wars making Thanksgiving awkward for many, union members and families had quite a lot to celebrate

MARION MCKEONE

Striking United Auto Workers in Ontario earlier this year. Picture: Getty Images


Over the past four days, some 56 million Americans took to the roads, train stations and airports to be with friends and family for the annual Thanksgiving holiday. Tradition dictates that they celebrate what they’re grateful for, as opposed to moaning about what they haven’t got.

Right now, it seems as though the entire United States is in a prolonged funk – not especially inclined towards feeling or expressing gratitude for anything much at all.

Much of this ennui has to do with the cultural wars that have festered and escalated in recent years to the point where navigating a family gathering can feel like a sprint through alien territory strewn with landmines.

Conversational booby traps lie in wait, ready to detonate at the mere mention of Trump or the 2024 election.

A just published USA Today/Blueprint survey reveals 45 per cent of those surveyed feigned illness while 40 per cent went on holidays to avoid spending Thanksgiving and/or Christmas with family.

Anecdotally, the number of friends who eschew family Thanksgiving gatherings for ‘Friendsgiving’ celebrations, where they gather with like-minded friends rather going ten rounds with Uncle Bill over transgender rights or Trump’s innocence of all charges, seems to increase every year.

But it’s not all gloom and trepidation. America’s union leaders and members had plenty to celebrate this Thanksgiving weekend, having enjoyed a banner year in 2023.

Almost a million union members and their families are considerably better off than they were last year. They secured double-digit pay increases and a slew of concessions related to working conditions as a result of threatened or actual strikes.

For the 370,000 UPS drivers, 160,000 actors, 11,500 writers, 77,000 pilots, 75,000 healthcare workers,150,000 auto workers and 35,000 Las Vegas hotel workers, as well as 32,000 Disney workers and 35,000 California schoolteachers, there’s plenty to be grateful for this Thanksgiving.

Everything they sought

Last weekend, two-thirds of the UAW (Union of Auto Workers) members employed by the ‘Big Three’ US auto manufacturers voted in favour of accepting a settlement that didn’t give them everything they sought but came pretty darned close: a 150 per cent increase in pay for temporary workers with a permanent contract after three years instead of eight.

For permanent workers there are more generous retirement provisions, a 25 per cent base rate increase and cost of living adjustments that guarantee a top rate of $42 an hour.

Earlier in the year, the pilots’ union secured a 40 per cent pay increase, while the Teamsters victory means UPS drivers can now make up to $172,000 a year – and have air conditioning in their vans, no small concession when much of America now experiences sustained periods of intense heat during the summer months.

Part-time UPS workers also shared the spoils: their wages increased by $21 an hour – a hike of around 40 per cent.

America’s 11,500 writers for screen and TV will divvy up an additional $233 million a year between them as well as securing hikes in residuals and minimum staffing guarantees, while actors can celebrate a $1 billion dollar deal with the studios that translates into a 15.3 per cent pay hike for jobbing actors, significant concessions on residuals and AI protections.

Health workers secured double-digit pay increases and more importantly, guarantees that vacant positions would be filled. And on Tuesday, Las Vegas hotel workers, among the lowest paid in the hospitality sector, voted to ratify an a 32 per cent pay hike over five years – including an immediate 10 per cent increase.

This string of successes was achieved against a backdrop of historically low unemployment rates, an estimated 10 million job openings, and the most pro-union US President since Franklin D Roosevelt.

Convergence of elements

It’s arguable that but for the convergence of these three elements, America’s unions wouldn’t be celebrating their most significant winning streak in 70 years.

The most recent Bureau of Labour Statistics data, which was compiled and released ahead of major concessions won by unions over the past six months, suggests that being in a union is good for your wallet.

In 2022, non-union workers’ median weekly earnings were $1,029, compared with $1,216 for union workers. And that was before the multi-billion dollar gains secured by 2023’s summer of strikes.

Still, just over 10 per cent of American workers belong to unions compared with 20 per cent in 1983 and close to 40 per cent in the 1950s and 1960s.

Union membership is heavily skewed towards federal workers rather than private sector employees. Thirty-three per cent of federal employees belong to a union compared with just 6 per cent of private workers.

Will the gains of the past year encourage some of the 94 per cent of non-union private sector workers to sign up to their local Teamsters or Unite chapter? It’s certainly what union bosses are hoping.

Shortly after the UAW ratified the agreement on Monday, non-US car manufacturers with assembly plants in Georgia and Alabama announced big pay increases for their workers.

Hyundai, Nissan and Toyota, long determined to prevent their US workers from unionising, have added a carrot to the anti-union stick, announcing they intend to increase wages for their workers by between 9 and 25 per cent.

"We call that the UAW bump, and that stands for 'U Are Welcome,' UAW boss Shawn Fain quipped in response.

The decision to voluntarily increase pay in non-union plants is widely seen as a pre-emptive strike against planned union expansion by Fain, who has notched up the UAW’s biggest victory in decades during his first eight months in the job and has signalled his determination to expand the UAW’s membership to non-US manufacturing plants in the southern states. Fain also has Tesla in his crosshairs; Elon Musk is an avatar of union resistance.

If the UAW victory is a rising tide that has lifted the non-union auto workers’ ships, President Joe Biden must be hoping that it will have a similar effect on his dismal poll ratings.

A champion of union and worker rights throughout his political career, he was the first US President to join a picket line, when he stood alongside UAW workers in September.

Double-digit increases for a million workers in a period of six months goes a long way towards fulfilling his pledge of building America from the “bottom up and the middle out”. It’s a manifestation of Bidenomics at a visceral level.

The UAW has more than a million active and retired members in the US and some 380,000 of its members live in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

It was this trifecta of states that handed Trump his victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Biden won all three in 2020 and they’re essential to his bid for a second term. If they repay his support in kind, Biden may have a lot more to be grateful for next Thanksgiving.