Striketober
In the wake of a pandemic that disproportionately affected low-wage workers who did not have the luxury of staying at home, there has been a rise in worker strikes and work stoppages. According to research done by Cornell’s ILR school, there have been 185 strikes this year at 255 locations across the country, with 40 in the month of October alone; the most recent spike in strikes has led researchers and policymakers to refer to October as “Striketober.” The rise in strikes have a lot to do with the personal and financial toll that the pandemic had on many low-wage workers. After being lauded as essential workers during the pandemic and having to go to work while many of their employers could afford to work from home, many workers are looking for higher wages, more safety measures, and better worker protections.
“Striketober” is a real-world example of the threshold model and coordination towards collective action. One way to increase adoption of a behavior that has not been adopted yet (in this case, striking) is to lower the threshold needed to adopt the behavior by increasing the appeal of the new behavior. In this case, the economic impact of the pandemic served as a way to increase the appeal of striking, since workers collectively realized that they deserved more returns on their labor. Thus, the threshold to strike was lowered, allowing the movement to gain traction across the country.
Furthermore, “Striketober” demonstrates the concept of coordination towards collective action. When one group of workers knew that another group of workers were more likely to strike, they would subsequently be more likely to strike. In the larger labor network, when workers express sentiments to other workers about wanting to or thinking about striking, it makes their network more likely to strike. This can happen on a smaller scale, within a company, or on a larger scale, between companies. The coordination towards collective action needs to happen within a company so that enough workers go on strike to make an impact. Additionally, for a cascade of strikes to occur across the country like what has occurred over the last few months, there needs to be larger-scale coordination between companies, so that each company knows that other companies’ thresholds are decreasing. Through this network of coordination towards collective action, workers were able to collectively strike for more protection and better returns on their labor.
Resource: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/striketober-workers-seize-power-pandemic-wanes/story?id=80640190