This past week, the School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) at Cornell University once again released the annual report of its Labor Action Tracker (LAT), which records all strikes and lockouts in the United States. Over the past three years, the LAT has documented noticeable increases in strike activity south of the border. As this year’s release makes clear, strike activity remained elevated in 2024, though less so than in the two preceding years.
In 2024, the LAT recorded 359 work stoppages, all but three of which were strikes. These job actions involved approximately 293,500 workers and resulted in more than 5.3 million days lost to strikes.
With new organizing continuing and a friendlier National Labor Relations Board under the Biden administration, American workers continued to flex their strike muscles last year. At the same time, although the number of work stoppages remained above those recorded in 2021, it did not reach the levels seen in 2022 and 2023.
As in the past, the ILR report also contains revisions to the previous year’s data. However, just one missed strike was added to the 2023 count, bringing the total in that year to 471. This means that in 2024 the number of work stoppages fell by 23.8 per cent compared to 2023, and the approximate number of workers on strike decreased by 45.5 per cent.
These relative declines in strike indicators shouldn’t cause too much despair, however. Waning U.S. strike activity in 2024 was overwhelmingly the result of a fall in the number of one-day stoppages relative to the previous year. In 2023, strikes led by Starbucks Workers United accounted for a significant share of these small, limited-duration job actions. For example, Starbucks workers registered 82 per cent of strikes in the food and accommodation sector that year. With Starbucks Workers United’s organizing slowing down and the union entering national contract talks, store-level militancy has diminished.
Nevertheless, last year the duration of most U.S. strikes remained short. Roughly 60 per cent of stoppages lasted five or fewer days in 2024. On the other hand, nearly 18 per cent of workers were on the picket line for a month or more. The latter seems to continue a trend also seen in Canada of employers and unions digging in their heels, resulting in longer strikes and more time elapsing before the ratification of new collective agreements.
As in 2023, small workplaces continued to account for a notable share of work stoppages. In 2024, more than a third of strikes involved 50 or fewer workers. At the same time, the vast majority of the 293,489 strikers who walked a picket line last year did so during work stoppages involving 1,000 or more workers.
In this sense, the data tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)–the government body tasked with reporting official work stoppage figures involving 1,000 or more workers–remains quite representative. According to the BLS count, there were 31 “major work stoppages” in 2024, down slightly from the previous year but still higher than any year in more than two decades.
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration cut funding to the BLS and limited its data tracking capabilities, leaving the agency only able to record large work stoppages. The LAT was started to fill the gap created by the BLS’ data limitations. Yet, while the LAT does a considerable service by documenting the range and scope of labour action in the U.S., the general picture offered by the BLS figures continues to be largely representative.
In 2024, the five largest strikes involved union members at Boeing’s manufacturing facilities in Washington state, the California State University, the University of California, the University of California Health and the United States Maritime Alliance. These strikes accounted for a little more than half of all the workers on strike last year.
As the LAT report notes, some consistent trends are emerging across the past few years. Last year, for example, the top three demands made by striking workers remained: better pay, improved health and safety, and more staffing, as was the case in the previous two years. Clearly, the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, poor health and safety standards, and understaffing continue to be pressing issues for workers across industries. Of course, these are familiar struggles for workers in Canada as well.
Like in 2023, the accommodation and food service industry accounted for the largest share (23.6 per cent) of American work stoppages last year. This was the case despite the relative calm among Starbucks workers in 2024. This industry’s share of strikes was down from 2023 and 2022, but it remained a significant site of labour action.
In large part, the above is the result of non-union workers having the right to strike and enjoying relatively better protections than unorganized workers in Canada. Indeed, 24.8 per cent of U.S. strikes in 2024 were undertaken by non-union workers, a larger share than in 2023.
At the same time, strikes by non-union workers are of a specific type: very short, involving few workers and typically limited to a specific demand. When it comes to the total number of workers involved in strikes and days lost to strikes, union members still dominate. In other words, while non-union workers having the right to strike does allow a greater share of workers to engage in collective action to press their demands, the security offered by union membership is necessary to sustain a strike.
Unlike previous years, the largest share of workers walking off the job (32.7 per cent) came from the education sector, owing in large part to strikes across the California university system. Higher education has emerged as a focal point of union strength, in both the U.S. and Canada. As some labour scholars have argued, inter-union organizing has the potential to build labour coalitions across occupational categories and skill levels, in the process transforming universities into local sites of union power.
Interestingly, the manufacturing industry registered the largest number of person days lost to strikes in 2024, at 40 per cent of the total. Recall that the much-discussed United Auto Workers’ “stand-up strikes” occurred, not last year, but in 2023. During those strikes, many hoped that the militancy of American auto workers and the confrontational public relations strategy of the UAW leadership would have a demonstration effect, raise workers’ expectations, and encourage other unions to fight for more. Perhaps this uptick in manufacturing strike activity is evidence of this hope coming to fruition.
By comparison, Canada still recorded considerably more strikes than the U.S. last year. Because the Quebec Common Front strikes spilled over into early 2024, Canada registered 842 strikes involving 493,623 workers last year. In other words, Canada witnessed more than double the number of work stoppages and more than 200,000 more workers on strike, despite having a population roughly 12 per cent the size of the U.S.
As always, the ILR’s report is vital reading for American and Canadian labour advocates. Although U.S. strike activity was down somewhat in 2024, the LAT’s data nevertheless confirm that there remains considerable militancy among American workers. The labour movement should interpret this as further evidence of opportunity, for new organizing, for winning material gains, and for building the power of the working class. Rather than continuing to build a “finance unionism,” now is the time for American unions to mobilize their considerable resources and invest in new organizing.
With Trump in power, the U.S. needs a strong labour movement more than ever.