Yeah welcome back to cheddar. Workers across various industries
around the country have been seen going on strike and
in the coming weeks the U. S. Could
see more labor unrest. Many of these workers say
they are demanding for their rights to higher wages,
better working conditions and benefits as we know, labor
shortages have had a huge impact on many industries.
So joining us now to discuss more is senior research
fellow at the Mercatus Center, Michael Farren, Michael
, thank you so much for being here. As
we noted just a moment ago, we are seeing
this strike wave. What does this sort of movement
tell us about the labor market? Well, it
tells us exactly the same thing that we've been seeing
with non union workers is that they feel emboldened by
the labour scarcity. I won't call it a labor
shortage because of technical economic terms. But the this
labor scarcity is giving workers additional bargaining power. They're
using it to go ahead and and demand higher wages
to demand better benefits uh demand demand better benefits like
flexible work schedules. And we're seeing that in the
white collar workers were seeing that more in the service
sector workers and we're now we're seeing unions using that
that same strategy and using that same power to go
ahead and to demand better working conditions as well.
You kind of touched on my next question there there
, do you think that this is putting power back
into the hands of the working class people. It
absolutely is and the number one uh is a guest
signal of workers power is when you start seeing wages
increase and we've seen wages increase a lot over this
past year, and some of that is due to
inflation, some of that is driven by inflation,
but we're seeing a a severe scarcity of workers,
businesses are pretty desperate to find the right person,
but that's part of it as well. They are
desperate to find the right person. There are a
lot of people who are spending a lot of time
looking for jobs and not able to find the right
one for themselves as well. So there's there's a
match on both sides, it has to be satisfied
there, but arguably on the whole, workers have
the upper hand in the current economy, you know
, in terms of the employee side and what they're
wanting aside from better pay and safety conditions, what
are some of the other kind of actions that employees
are demanding from their employers. So what we've seen
in some of these uh union negotiations and and demands
uh preparation for a strike, which is what's happening
right now, there's there's not many workers out on
strike right at this moment, but there's tens of
thousands of workers and and most importantly, healthcare workers
that are getting ready to authorize their union to go
on strike. And so we could be seeing a
lot more uh striking workers in the news in the
coming month as a result, but they're they're asking
for the typical things that that workers want first and
foremost, higher pay, uh, second, better
working conditions, greater control over their schedules in particular
, and uh better retirement. Um, but also
part of that better working conditions, a lot of
workers are demanding more flexibility to their schedules. So
I know we're focused on union workers right now,
but a lot of workers are feeling emboldened just broadly
, more office workers and they are saying, I
want to stay remote, and if you don't allow
me to stay remote, I'm going to look for
work elsewhere. And there are other places that are
willing to hire me as a result. So workers
have greater bargaining power all across the board. I
wonder if you can talk a little bit about what
sort of impact these strikes could have on, on
several businesses I think of production. Right. And
we talk about supply chain issues so often we and
some of our more business centric shows, and just
the kind of, that being a big issue for
so many businesses, you know, what are the
impacts here? These strikes essentially continue, or more
of them started to happen. And if we don't
get employees to get back to work. So I
guess the one thing to consider is that these strikes
and and these uh, likely strikes coming again,
we're not talking about actual strikes, the workers haven't
gone ahead and voted to strike yet, they're in
the process of doing so in these situations, some
of them are manufacturing employees or or production employees and
the kind of the food industry, the Nabisco and
the frito lay strikes that we've seen already this summer
and uh coming potential strike by john Deere employees,
but a lot of the workers are actually in service
sector jobs in particular in health care, uh nurses
in the Kaiser permanente days unions uh in different west
coast states are, are getting ready to uh potentially
go on strike again, they're going through the authorization
process and uh so it's some of it, is
this productive, some of this production, some of
is gonna feed into the supply chain issues. We
aren't seeing massive rolling strikes, I think at this
point that are going to substantially affect supply chain issues
, but uh in the case of workers might go
, might want to go in that direction. Uh
, these production companies, I'm sure are paying close
attention, I'm sure many businesses and many of these
companies are hoping to avoid the strikes that you're mentioning
, potentially being voted on? Um I want to
get your thoughts here last night on, you know
, what, what do you think employers should do
in terms of working with their employees to to prevent
that from happening to make sure they get the resources
, the support they need. Um, and is
there a win win situation potentially here, I alluded
to this earlier in one of our earlier shows that
, you know, maybe raising higher wages and some
of these better pension plans or retirement plans leads to
keeping workers longer and avoiding churning. Could that be
a smart business decision as well. Absolutely. The
, so in terms of avoiding turn when you already
have a union, uh it's not that you don't
have lots of turnover in the union sector jobs but
you have less turnover and union sector jobs than you
would uh in other places. So I don't see
as much of a value for that as a as
for paying workers more say and and retail jobs that
are non union. But in terms of what workers
can do and maybe a silver employers can do is
silver lining. Yes it is absolutely true that workers
who feel more valued are more productive. Uh workers
unlike a steel I beam can choose their level of
effort once they know how much they're being paid and
and how much they feel valued and so uh employers
should definitely keep that in mind as to uh things
moving better in the future. I'm a little bit
skeptical about the the U. S. S.
Union system and the regulations that undergird it. Uh
it's set up to be and to create animosity between
unions and employers and employees. And I think we
just need to revisit the entire system actually that's a
really fair point. I appreciate your insight in your
time here, seeing research fellow at the Mercatus center
? Michael Farren