COVID-19 pandemic a significant plot twist for workers' rights, say Hollywood writers on strike

NEW YORK: Unions in the United States are finding their voice and making themselves heard, as the COVID-19 pandemic reshapes the global labour market. 

Some union members said they have grown more emboldened over the past few years.

Recent high profile unionisation movements and strikes in the country have brought the issue of workers’ rights sharply into focus. 

Hollywood writers and actors, for instance, have been on the picket line for months demanding concessions from their studios. 

FIGHTING FOR HIGHER WAGES, BETTER WORK CONDITIONS

Writer Orlando Joubert said: “We’re the ones who helped create everything in the movie industry, in the TV industry, and they want us to just go away and not do anything and just be okay with what they give us.”

Writers have been on strike since May, calling for better pay and greater protections in an evolving industry. They said the pandemic has been a significant plot twist for workers’ rights.

Design assistant Cassandra Briskman said: “The pandemic definitely brought people together to a common issue and it’s made us more empathetic towards each other.”

Development executive Jose Acevedo added: “That was an inciting incident for people to realise that we deserve more as employees of large megacorporations.”

The COVID-19 pandemic sparked what has been dubbed the "Great Resignation”.  

In the US, more than 50 million people quit their jobs in 2022, breaking a record set the previous year. 

Rising wages, increased job prospects and labour shortages as the economy slowly reopens have put workers in a greater position of power, said economists.

Dr Maurice Cayer, a human resources lecturer at the University of New Haven, said: “There’s a rebirth (and) reigniting of union organising, as well as calls for renegotiating contracts with management.”

UNION MOBILISATION

Supply chain company United Parcel Service (UPS) and the Teamsters Union, for instance, have been locked in contract negotiations over recent weeks to avoid strike action. 

Since late 2021, more than 8,000 Starbucks employees at over 300 stores have organised into their union. 

While polls suggest labour union approval has risen by more than 20 per cent over the past decade, union membership has been on the wane. 

Roughly 10 per cent of workers are represented by a union, compared to about 20 per cent in the early 1980s.

But with US President Joe Biden staking his claim to be the most pro-union president in US history, analysts expect to see an increase in memberships going forward. 

Dr Cayer said: “It will drift up higher, especially as the US regains its momentum in terms of manufacturing. I know Southeast Asia has been the beneficiary of offshoring over the past decades from the US, but some of that is now going to be restored.”

But it is not just the big corporations such as Starbucks and Amazon that are contending with union mobilisation. 

Neapolitan-style pizza restaurant Barboncino, for example, has become the first unionised pizzeria in New York City.

“We just want to ensure that this particular job sector of food service and hospitality is taken seriously as well as its workers, and that they are granted the same rights as they would at other jobs,” said Barboncino busser Andre Bolourian.

Meanwhile, recent data has suggested the jobs market is cooling and becoming less favourable for employees.

However, union supporters are hoping to build on the recent momentum and help more workers secure their rights.