By Larry Barber, DA SMA Executive Board Member

Picture in your mind 22,000 striking workers. Remember strikes and picket lines, food kitchens and fund raisers? Around the United States there is now bubbling and boiling what used to be called “labor unrest.” Low pay and pauper raises, backbreaking work schedules, stolen overtime wages, pensions in jeopardy (if they exist at all), health care cuts, no time for a private life with friends and family. Some companies are now trying to loosen child labor laws; agriculture is still exempt from these laws and kids currently work in the fields, exposed to toxic chemicals. So, yeah—labor unrest.

“They don’t care about our home life,” said a striking worker on the John Deere picket line. “They care about our work life. We’re as replaceable as a light bulb.”

Twenty-two thousand U.S. union members are currently out on strike. Ten thousand at John Deere in Iowa, three thousand at Columbia University, two thousand at Buffalo’s Mercy Hospital, 1.4 thousand at Kellogg’s, 1.1 thousand Alabama miners for 8 months now, 1 thousand West Virginia hospital workers, 800 Pennsylvania educators, 700 Massachusetts nurses, 700 Kaiser engineers (with the strike threat of 37,000 Kaiser health care workers in Oregon, California, and Hawaii), 500 Ohio steelworkers, 450 West Virginia steelworkers, 300 New York machinists. 

The list grows: Amazon workers battling Bezos for a union, New York cab drivers on a hunger strike, a one-day walk-off of two thousand telecommunications workers in California, 200 bus drivers strike in Nevada, 400 whiskey makers in Kentucky, two thousand carpenters in Washington, 600 Frito-Lay workers in Kansas, one thousand Nabisco workers at five plants around the country (they often work 30 days in a row on 12-hour shifts). In my own (former) industry, because more than 60,000 film and television workers voted to strike, their threatened work stoppage helped them negotiate a favorable contract. 

Younger folks are quitting their jobs at an unprecedented rate. In April the number of workers who left in a single month broke an all-time U.S. record. In May, even more people quit. In June, even more. In August, again even more. 

Many front line workers who risked their lives during the pandemic feel they deserve fair raises. “Essential workers” deserve essential pay. 

Workers are taking back their power as agents of change by bringing the fight to employers. For Democrats Abroad, this is an encouraging time. The Democratic Party is once again the Party of the working woman and man. It lost its way in the late-20th century, but under President Biden the Democrats have once again taken up the banner of Labor. Biden has put unions at the center of his policy. He sees them as a way to rebuild middle-class jobs and families and to combat climate change, and racial and gender inequity. 

“It’s not labor—it’s union,” Biden said last month during an event at a Ford factory in Michigan. “Because what you allow people to do is hold their heads up, make a decent living, and have pride in what they do — pride in what you build, pride in what you give this nation.” 

For Democrats Abroad in Mexico, we can take pride in this pro-labor, pro-family stance from our President. That’s why it’s increasingly important for us to do whatever we can to help elect Democrats in the states where we vote and around the country. The Get-Out-The-Vote drive for the 2022 elections will be coming up and we all can contribute in one form or another. Please consider becoming a phone banker, joining one of our caucuses, or contacting your local chapter chair to become a Get Out the Vote volunteer. There is always work to do!