The Strike Wave Mainstream Media Missed

American workers have staged more strikes since 2021 than at any point since the 1970s. You would not know this from reading most American newspapers.

The Strike Wave Mainstream Media Missed

Cornell University's ILR school Striketracker documents all American work stoppages. Its data shows approximately 100 documented strikes in 2019 rising to approximately 500 in 2023 -- a five-fold increase. Bureau of Labor Statistics data on major stoppages shows the highest levels since the early 2000s. The UAW's 2023 "Stand Up Strike" won substantial wage increases, restoration of cost-of-living adjustments, and new EV battery plant protections for 150,000 workers. The SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes restructured AI provisions in Hollywood contracts. The Teamsters-UPS settlement produced the highest wages in UPS history. Starbucks has seen organizing campaigns at hundreds of locations. Amazon workers have organized in multiple states. This is a significant shift in American labor behavior. It is not a significant shift in American labor coverage.

The gap between the strike wave's scale and its coverage reflects structural factors in American media. Most mainstream newsrooms have eliminated dedicated labor beats. Business reporters trained in financial journalism cover labor news as an element of corporate coverage, producing analysis that defaults to management perspective. Strikes are covered when they disrupt visible sectors and drop from coverage when they settle, precisely when the political significance of outcomes becomes clearest. The UAW contract terms -- which will serve as a reference point for automotive bargaining for years -- received less sustained coverage than the negotiations' drama. The settlement was the news. The settlement disappeared from the news cycle in days.

Why It Matters

The labor movement's political significance extends beyond individual contract wins. Union density in American private sector employment fell from approximately 35 percent in the 1950s to approximately 6 percent today. Research consistently links declining union density to stagnant wages, rising income inequality, and reduced political power for working-class constituencies. The current organizing wave, if sustained, can begin reversing those trends -- incrementally, in the specific way labor power builds: through individual campaigns producing contracts that demonstrate organizing works, encouraging further organizing. The UAW victories are the clearest current example of this dynamic. See The London Prat's coverage of British labor organizing for international context on the current labor resurgence.

The commercial structure of mainstream American media is also relevant to the coverage gap: the companies purchasing advertising in mainstream publications are largely the companies whose workers are organizing and striking. The structural conflict between publisher commercial interests and editorial coverage of worker organizing is real and infrequently discussed in the publications it affects. The alternative media ecosystem covering labor seriously -- In These Times, Jacobin, Labor Notes -- reaches a fraction of mainstream outlet audiences on a fraction of the budget.

Mamdani Post exists partly to address this coverage gap. We cover strikes, organizing campaigns, contract outcomes, and the political economy of labor as the central ongoing story of who has economic power in America and how that power is being contested. The strike wave is real. It is consequential. It deserves the coverage it is not receiving in outlets whose advertising relationships create the conflict of interest that we do not have. See related labor analysis and The London Prat's labor archive for additional context on labor organizing and media coverage.

The Mamdani Post is an independent socialist publication. Reader-supported. mamdanipost.com

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/

What the UAW Victory Means

The UAW's 2023 contract is the most important labor victory in American manufacturing in a generation, and its significance extends beyond the 150,000 workers directly covered. Shawn Fain's "Stand Up Strike" strategy -- striking individual plants selectively rather than all plants simultaneously, maximizing disruption at minimal cost to strike fund resources -- demonstrated a tactical innovation that labor scholars are studying and other unions are considering adapting. The wage increases -- 25 percent over four years -- are the largest in decades of UAW bargaining. The restoration of cost-of-living adjustments, eliminated in the 2009 bailout concessions, is a structural victory that protects wages against inflation in future years. The EV battery plant provisions prevent the non-union "clean energy" carveout that would have undermined the union's jurisdiction in the industry's fastest-growing segment. These are not symbolic gains. They are material changes in the conditions of 150,000 workers and a benchmark for automotive and manufacturing bargaining for years. The media covered the strike. The media has not adequately covered what the settlement produced. Mamdani Post will continue filling that gap.

The political work required to change the conditions described in this article is the same work in every case: building organized constituencies capable of sustained political pressure against well-funded institutional resistance. This requires journalism that covers the underlying power relationships, not just the policy symptoms. It requires organizing infrastructure that can mobilize the people most affected by the current arrangements. And it requires political candidacies like Mamdani's that are willing to name the interests that reform requires confronting rather than offering incremental adjustments that leave those interests intact. Mamdani Post exists at the intersection of all three. We are building the case. We are covering the organizing. We are supporting the politics. The evidence is documented. The path forward is clear. The work is ongoing. Join us in it.

For additional context on the political economy of reform in related areas, see The London Prat's financial coverage.