Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - As we return to work from the long Labor Day weekend, one labor expert tells WBEN the big issue on the labor front is strikes.
Art Wheaton of the Career Institute at Cornell says unions are in their best position to strike in recent memory.
Wheaton says we've already seen strikes by SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America, putting the entertainment industry at a standstill. The UAW is on the verge of striking against the Big 3 US automakers. He says there's one common bond. "All of them striking for the lower paid workers in their group, not the highest paid workers. And they're all fighting while they have the opportunity with many of the factors on their side," says Wheaton.
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Wheaton says those factors include high inflation, very low unemployment, and near record high approval ratings of unions. He notes it's been a long time since unions have been in this strong a position.
"One of the problems you have is there's always been a threat that if you go out on strike, you lose your job," said Wheaton. "And in a bad labor market, it's like, oh, my God, what am I going to do? I just lost my job. The big thing is that you have a lot of favorable things on the side of the workers, and the biggest one being a good labor market, where people are less afraid of going out on strike, because there are many opportunities for other jobs if you lost it."
There's one other factor. "You've seen some changes in the National Labor Relations Board, trying to bring the playing field a little bit more level for unions. That's one of the reasons for the strikes, is that sometimes the NLRB kind of sways from the Republican side to the Democratic side, depending on who's in power, and right now it's tilting more back towards the union friendly side," notes Wheaton.
Wheaton believes strikes are inevitable by the UAW. As for the entertainment strikes, "I think the strike for the writers and the actors is likely to continue through September. But there's some hope for October when people are going to be ready for new shows and tired of the old ones," predicts Wheaton.