Things are heating up in Los Angeles’ labor movement. Hollywood writers and actors are both on strike for the first time in six decades. Hotel workers are walking off the job. UPS workers might be the next to join them.
What’s the driving force behind this summer’s latest trend? Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center, told KNX In Depth it’s been years in the making.
“What we have seen is a dramatic increase in labor organizing and in labor activity, not only here in Los Angeles, but across the country,” Wong said.
He said public opinion surveys show that the attitude toward unions has reached an “all-time high” for the past half-century. And it isn’t limited to big cities like L.A. – the trend is national, with workers at companies like Starbucks, Uber and Lyft organizing even in deep red states.
Wong says it’s partly caused by the increase in economic insecurity among workers during the pandemic – and the soaring profits corporate bosses saw during the same period.
“There is a strong view that corporate greed is out of control,” Wong said. “When you have people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk spending billions for a few-minute joyride in outer space while their workers are struggling to survive, a lot of people are raising questions about what is wrong with this picture.”
Corporate greed has been the buzzword recently on L.A.’s picket lines. Disney CEO Bob Iger walked into the firing line last week by calling striking writers and actors’ demands for modest pay bumps “not realistic.” The day before he made that comment, his own annual salary was increased from $27 million to $31 million.
“CEO salaries are rarely pegged to success. We’ve had many instances where companies have gone belly-up, and yet the CEOs continue to make massive profits,” Wong said. “We’ve seen billions in federal bailouts to maintain worker retention in the hotel industry, and yet we learned that two-thirds of the money were actually pocketed by shareholders and corporate executives.”
Despite making it through the pandemic personally unscathed, the head honchos at studios and hotels have so far refused to budge on demands from their struggling workers. And the longer these strikes drag on without a resolution, the more Southern Californians will feel the hit – even those who aren’t union members.
If the Hollywood strike is affecting your life in Southern California, we want to hear about it. Give us a call at 844-KNX-NEWS and share your story.
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