The company’s only unionized warehouse, on Staten Island, has held an impromtu strike this week, while employees at a big distribution hub in Joliet, Illinois have staged a walkout.
The Illinois Walkout
The most recent worker action took place in Illinois’s third-largest city, 35 miles southwest of Chicago. A number of day-shift employees walked off the job on Tuesday, in a protest aimed at calling attention to their need for improved workplace safety rules and higher pay.
Growing Interest in Labor Organizing
2022 is the biggest year yet in recent memory for unions: Around 71% of Americans approve of unions, a recent Gallup survey found, while requests to the National Labor Relations Board for union elections rose 58% across the first eight months of the year. It makes sense, as pipeline delays and corporate greed have boosted the cost of living sharply in recent years, with rising gas, grocery, and rent prices all squeezing individual workers who can’t effectively bargin for a reasonable share of the value their labor creates.
