Strikes Were Up Significantly Last Year
New numbers show that the number of strikes and the number of workers on strike both went up last year. Labor is still incredibly weak, but more workers walking off the job is a very good thing.
Subcontracted YouTube Music workers employed by Alphabet outsourcing partner Cognizant strike outside Google’s office in Austin, Texas, on February 3, 2023. (Photo by Suzanne Cordeiro / AFP via Getty Images)
The 2022 numbers are in: last year saw a 52 percent increase in the number of work stoppages from the previous year, with 60 percent more workers participating in such stoppages. The exact numbers: 272 work stoppages in 2021 grew to 424 in 2022; that number consists of 417 strikes and seven lockouts. While around 140,000 workers took part in a work stoppage in 2021, 224,000 workers did the same last year.
These numbers come from Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) Labor Tracker annual report. The ILR Labor Tracker has the advantage of including work stoppages by fewer than one thousand workers; thanks to funding cuts during the Reagan administration, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) only tracks major strikes of one thousand or more workers.
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