What a difference a one-day strike makes

0:01NPR.

0:11So Waylon, let's say the indicator goes on strike. How long do you think you could last? Steven Basaha, I know where this is going. Last time you asked me when we had a full episode about a strike that went more than 600 days. And I can tell you right now, no way I could last on strike for almost two years. Okay, I should have known better than to try to get something past you, but it's totally fair. How about, you know, a much shorter strike? Like, let's say just one month. I mean, maybe. That's a long time still, but I think I could do a month easier than a year or more. How about just one day?

0:51Oh, one day? Yeah, that's easy. See you on the picket line. Yeah, well, Waylon, you're in luck. One-day strikes have been a growing trend over the last decade. This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Waylon Wong. And I'm Stephen Basaha from the Gulf States Newsroom. On today's show, what do short strikes say about union power in the U.S.? And what can you accomplish with only 24 hours on the picket line?

1:41businesses run better, and your customers happier. That's the Zendesk AI effect. Find out more at Zendesk.com. Strikes can be long, grueling wars of attrition. To see who blinks first, the workers or the company. Or sometimes strikes can be a party. Thank y 'all for having me. Shout out to all the nurses out there. Hell yeah, hell yeah. You're like, is this a holiday party or is this the strike? It was definitely a strike, and the nurses getting that shout-out are from the University Medical Center, New Orleans. They went on strike in October with the kind of picket line you'd expect from that city.

2:22I feel like it's multiple holidays rolled up in one. Mardi Gras Christmas. This is what people should be doing to celebrate Labor Day. Yes. Anyway, that is Terri Mogillis. She is a nurse at the hospital's trauma orthopedic clinic. Now, Terri and these other nurses unionized about a year ago. They wanted a union so they could try negotiating a safer workplace, get a pay bump and push the hospital to hire more nurses. Because right now they say they are overworked and overwhelmed. Unions that our demands are really demands for the health care and safety of our patients. So like you said, Waylon, it's been a year since they unionized and the nurses are still negotiating.

3:03So to show that they're serious, nurses told the hospital in October, get ready for a strike. We feel that this is the right way to go. And I'm here for the long haul. Well, maybe the long haul when it comes to the negotiations, not the long haul on the picket line. The strike itself was only scheduled to last 24 hours. Yes, and they're not the only workers keeping it brief. Cornell University has a strike tracker. And according to that, the majority of strikes last year lasted less than five days. Most of those are just one day or less. So yet these kind of short strikes have become super common.

3:39It's really taken off in the past 10, 15 years. John Logan runs the Labor and Employment Studies Department at San Francisco State University. And I'm actually curious, have you ever been on strike? Yes, California Faculty Association, my union. We've engaged in a number of one-day and three-day strikes over the past decade. Oh, three-day strikes. Now you're playing a real hardball. Yeah, we had planned to go out on a five-day strike last semester, but the union called it off after one day. John says these kinds of strikes with these set time limits were not always the norm. It used to be unions would call a strike and it would be an all-out, indefinite, all-out strike.

4:24Now, those types of strikes decreased very dramatically from like, you know, the late 70s to the late 90s. Thing is, unions used to be way more powerful in the U.S., but they started to lose that power in the 70s and 80s. That was a time of big economic changes that left unions weakened. Globalization, deregulation, entry of major new non-union competitors. the environment became more challenging for unionized companies. So companies started to demand huge concessions in their contracts. John says unions tried fighting back against those concessions with strikes, but the companies just started getting rid of those striking workers.

5:13You cannot be fired for participating in a lawful economic strike, but you can be replaced permanently. That kind of sounds like a firing to me. I know. You're not firing, but there's someone sitting in your desk. That's right. You know, to the worker who's being permanently replaced, it essentially makes no difference. John says strikes did eventually start coming back, especially in the 2010s. But the power dynamics between unions and companies had shifted. So the unions had to change tactics. And that's what led them to the one-day strike. Now, there are two types of workers that go on one-day strikes and for two different reasons.

5:49First up are low-wage workers. The reason they go on one-day strikes is because long ones just aren't realistic for someone already struggling to make it on a low wage. If you're working at Starbucks, if you're working at McDonald's, if you're working at Walmart, they're just not going to be able to afford to go out on an open-ended, you know, long strike. The employer could easily replace them. When do we want it? 15! One-day strikes were a way to get around both those problems. 15! When do we want it? Now! That was from a one-day strike back in 2015 put on by McDonald's workers. Recently, it's been unionized Starbucks workers leading the short strike trend.

6:29The big advantage here is that workers don't have to give up much pay. Certainly a lot less than if they were going out on strike for weeks or months. John says it's also a way to win a battle in the war for public opinion. Maybe better to say avoid losing one. If they were to go out an indefinite strike, they might sort of threaten a lot of support they have in the community. They might get the blame instead of the employer in that scenario. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. Well, the examples you gave, Starbucks, Walmart, in many ways, these weren't exactly successful. Sure, Starbucks is a bunch of unionized workplaces, but they don't have a first contract at this point.

7:06Walmart doesn't have a union. Are one-day strikes, do they have a bad track record ultimately? Well, no, I think you're right to question how successful they are. If the company was absolutely resistant, they could go out on one-day strikes until the cows come home. I don't think it would inflict enough economic damage on the company to make any difference. It's not going to alter the company's behavior. But one-day strikes can be more effective with the second kind of worker that relies on them. Here we're talking about workers with leverage. Think airport workers or those New Orleans nurses.

7:44Just one day without nurses, that's a huge deal. The hospital had to drop a lot of cash to hire expensive replacement nurses to keep things running. You have that type of enormous leverage that you inflict huge economic pain or huge amount of disruption. By going out on a one-day strike, they are still very effective. Still, even for nurses, a short strike just doesn't bring the same amount of leverage as one without an end date. But there is another advantage to short strikes, keeping workers engaged. Engaged definitely describes the New Orleans nurses during their strike. They also timed it to happen the same day as a Taylor Swift concert.

8:25Dina Judkins is a nurse at the hospital, and it's actually kind of tough to hear her over the sound of passing Swifties honking their support. You know, we've had a good turnout the entire time we've been here, really. I'm really proud of everyone for showing up, spreading the word as the streetcar goes by. You know, hoping that some Swifties see us and maybe post it to their story and, you know, make it more nationwide, more nationwide news. And that's often the other important goal of a one-day strike. get the kind of media attention that comes from a long one without the same kind of pain.

9:06This episode was produced by Angel Carreras with production help from Drew Hawkins. It was engineered by Jimmy Keely and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Kicking Cannon edits the show, and The Indicator is a production of NPR.