Inflation's Impact: Rising Labor Strikes Across Industries

The major stories of the past week are the planned labor strikes popping up across the world. I will report on two of them, but remember the shipping industry in the US suffered recent union battles at both Yellow and UPS. The trend of striking workers demanding higher pay is starting to become obvious, and it stems from inflation having whittled employee purchasing power so far that people simply cannot make ends meet anymore.

The first story comes from Australia, where Chevron LNG workers have threatened to strike starting September 14th overpay and working conditions. The announcement from the union is particularly brutal as it threatens to cause billions in losses to the company, per their Facebook post [emphasis mine].

“The Offshore Alliance is escalating protected industrial action to demonstrate that our bargaining negotiations are far from ‘intractable,'” Offshore Alliance wrote in a Facebook post.

The union continued, “Offshore Alliance members are yet to exercise their lawful workplace rights to take Protected Industrial Action and our bargaining claims will look more and more reasonable as Chevron’s Gorgon and Wheatstone LNG exports dry up.”

“The Offshore Alliance Log Of Claims will ultimately claim which Chevron will agree to, but not before they lose a few $Billion – judging by the form guide,” it said.”

That union isn’t messing around! And not to be outdone by the shipping unions, the northeastern rail union plans to strike in 2024 over wage demands. The walkouts and strikes threaten to ‘derail’ [pun intended] for thousands of people in the New York, Philadelphia, and New Jersey areas. Among the complaints, rail workers noted their efforts during the pandemic by keeping the trains running during a major health crisis without ever seeing a wage increase for their efforts. Per the Politico story [emphasis mine]:

“There has not been a substantial enough recognition of what happened during Covid,” said John?Samuelsen, the international president of Transportation Workers of America, which represents 140,000 transportation workers.”

These new strikes come on the heels of a summer of strikes including Hollywood actors and writers, nurses and doctors, and professors in the same northeast region, along with new threats from New York City school bus drivers. When so many groups are threatening strikes at the same time, it is easy to see how the inability of wages to keep up with the last round of inflation has affected many people across the country.

Mark my words, ladies and gentlemen; we are at the beginning of what will be a nasty and protracted period of inflation stemming from the massive amount of money printing that occurred in 2020 due to the pandemic. This is far from over.