There are two high-profile economic stories currently in the news that, on first observation, would seem to indicate completely contradictory realities. The first story is the continual championing of “Bidenomics” by President Joe Biden’s economic team, a catch-all term that is supposed to encapsulate the current success and vigor of the American economy. The second story is the continual occurrence of high-profile labor strikes this year, including UPS, the Writers and Actors Guilds and, perhaps most significantly, the United Auto Workers (UAW) Strike and Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers. This is certainly the most significant and wide-scale labor action in decades and directly flies in the face of many economic narratives presented by both Congress and the Presidency, no matter which party holds majority power at the time. One of the elephants in the room when talking about organized labor action is that, in America, there has been very little of it in the past 40+ years. The most common form of labor action that Americans are used to seeing is when professional sports leagues go on strike. When a high-profile league like MLB, the NBA or NFL goes on strike, the amount of money that individual participants in the fight make — much higher than the average American income — tends to skew the power dynamics for many people. When someone making $12 an hour sees a millionaire athlete fighting for increased pay, the tendency is to label the athlete as “spoiled” or “ungrateful.” But, that is an overly facile reading of the situation. Professional sports strikes are an extremely high-profile example of what labor can accomplish with leverage. Owners are forced to almost always give in because they realize the talent pool would continually weaken if there is a refusal to pay top-line labor its worth, thus creating a far inferior product and, ultimately, cutting into profit and harming the perception of the league. AND WHAT THEY REPRESENT IN THE ECONOMY By Mark Anderson, NMBA Legal and Legislative Assistant LABOR STRIKES 12
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