ABC News’ Terry Moran was positively exuberant in his live reporting from the John Deere picket line. Strike fever has even infected mainstream media reporters covering the labor battles across the country. Some striking workers have referred to the endless workdays as “suicide shifts.” From the Hunts Point Terminal strike in January to the Nabisco strike in July through the John Deere strike in October-workers who’ve suffered and struggled through a year and a half of pandemic-inspired speedup-have voted overwhelmingly against concessionary contracts and hit the picket lines. The most obvious takeaway from this year’s wave of strikes is that large swaths of the working class are sick and tired of concessions, unsafe workplaces, and being worked to death. May saw his salary grow by 160 percent during the pandemic. John Deere’s profits have risen by 61 percent over the last few years, and its CEO John C. Ten thousand UAW members walked off the job in the early morning hours of October 15 demanding higher pay increases and no further concessions to the corporation. The largest of last month’s strikes was at John Deere, after workers rejected a tentative agreement between their union, the United Auto Workers (UAW), and the giant manufacturer of agricultural and heavy-duty construction vehicles. Remember the past, a memento from the last generation of labor battles with John Deere. It is also important that the strikes have returned to the industrial core of the economy. Compared to the historic low point in strike actions last year as the pandemic crushed the economy this is a refreshing and exciting change. Tens of thousands of workers from a variety of industries hit the picket line last month. The summertime uptick in strikes has turned into a wave of strikes across the country this autumn. The AFL-CIO declared October-“Striketober” with good reason.
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