Todd Vachon, a labor expert at Rutgers University, says American workers are “flexing their muscles” this month. The John Deere strike is the latest example—and probably not the last.

More than 10,000 John Deere workers are on strike after the company and the United Auto Workers (UAW) union failed to reach a new contract agreement by midnight. It’s the largest private-sector strike in the United States since UAW members walked off the job at General Motors two years ago, and it’s the latest in a series of strikes sweeping across the country this month.

Todd Vachon, director of the Labor Education Action Research Network (LEARN) in the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, is available for phone and Zoom interviews about the John Deere strike and the bigger picture of labor unrest in the U.S.

Vachon said, “Striketober is giving American workers and their unions more leverage than they've seen in decades. That provides a great opportunity to make long overdue corrections to wages and benefits and to readjust the generally lopsided balance of power that has existed between workers and employers for generations.

"From entertainment workers represented by IATSE (International Association of Theatrical and Stage Employees) to BCTGM (Bakery Confectionery Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers) members employed by Nabisco and Kellogg’s, and now UAW members at John Deere, this is a dramatic moment. American workers are flexing their muscles, rejecting two-tier pension schemes, and pushing back against a lopsided compensation system that has seen the vast majority of all economic growth go to the top 1%. 

"The real strength of a union is in its solidarity, the ability to speak in one unified voice. The strike is the ultimate exercise of that solidarity, but under U.S. labor law it can be risky because of the ability of employers to bring in replacement workers. However, the ongoing mass rejection of low-quality jobs by American workers right now restores the power of the strike to what it was when employers were not allowed to hire replacement workers, prior to 1947."

 

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