The year 2021 was marked by an ongoing pandemic, an election, and a rightwing insurrection. 2021 will also be remembered as a moment when workers collectively stood up by walking out. While people have quit their jobs at such high rates that the trend is being called the Great Resignation, as of late October, at least 100,000 workers have also taken part in 178 strikes across the country.
Some workers, such as those with the United Mine Workers of America, have been on the picket line—in Alabama and elsewhere—since April; others, including union members at Kellogg’s and John Deere, started more recently and continue to stand strong, demanding fair contracts.
Health care workers, too, are taking to the streets, as when more than 30,000 Kaiser Permanente employees voted to go on strike against the medical provider. At the same time, nonunion workers have staged labor actions at chain restaurants and cafés. Starbucks workers in Buffalo, New York, forced the coffee giant to approve a union vote, while McDonald’s workers in twelve cities walked out to protest the company’s mishandling of sexual harassment claims.
Though the uprisings’ causes are many, the workers in all of them are tied together by a refusal, above all else, to settle for anything less than what they deserve.
Robert Hopkins, a Kellogg’s worker and member of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, on strike in Memphis, Tennessee. (photo by Jason Kerzinski)
Alabama miners protesting in front of investment firm BlackRock’s headquarters in New York City. BlackRock holds a $167 million stake in Warrior Met Coal, the company that the miners have been picketing for the past eight months. (photo by Luigi W. Morris)
Chipotle workers in New York City walked out on October 27 to protest cut hours and poor working conditions. (photo by Lev Radin)
The Harvard Graduate Students Union, affiliated with the United Auto Workers, went on strike for higher pay and better protections against discrimination and harassment. Harvard University, which has a $53 billion endowment, pays student workers a sub-living wage. (photo by Morgan Sperry)
“If we had a union, workers would be able to speak up about what’s really going on without fear of losing our jobs,” said Taiwanna Milligan, who has worked at McDonald’s for seven years and makes $8.75 an hour. Milligan was among dozens of McDonald’s employees who walked out in October in Charleston, South Carolina. (photo courtesy of Fight for $15 and a Union)
A member of UNITE HERE! Local 5 pickets in front of the Kaiser Permanente Moanalua Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, after workers there approved a strike authorization vote. (photo by Leia Rabe)
In September, United Farm Workers members marched in Farmersville, California, to demand labor law reform that would allow farmworkers to vote by absentee ballot in union elections. (photo by David Bacon)