well 2023 appears to be the year of Labor strikes for both New Jersey and U.S workers from massive work stoppages across all three campuses at Rutgers University to the writer's Guild and registered nurses workers are fed up they're requesting better pay to keep up with inflation and more job protections after getting through the pandemic data show July was one of the busiest months for strikes in roughly three decades with about 650 thousand workers expected to walk off the job across the country many labor experts say it's a reflection of the growing public support for unions and an increase in employee leverage for more I'm joined by Todd Vachon assistant professor of Labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University well thanks for joining me is it out of the ordinary Todd to see this many strikes particularly this summer yeah no the number of strikes is definitely up this year over last year and and last year was up over the previous year so we are seeing a Resurgence of Labor militancy lately definitely yeah I mean what's causing it what are the driving factors to so many work stoppages well I mean there are a lot of industry-specific issues that you know particular occupations are facing so nurses on strike and New Brunswick and elsewhere are striking over safe Staffing levels um box Factory workers in Dayton are striking over Rising health care costs out of their pockets um and you know health and safety issues and other workplaces and of course always wages and working conditions but really the underlying thread across all of these is just there's been decades and decades in which workers have been producing more and more for their employers so employers are you know generating greater and greater profits and and the employees haven't really been sharing in those gains over the years and we're right now in a moment with a strong labor market and we just came out of the coveted crisis and had a high period of inflation following it so workers are a little bit frustrated but also empowered right now because of the state of the economy to kind of make those demands to to increase their their wages and improve their working conditions well you mentioned inflation and I'm wondering how that has caused some of this momentum as you said said we're seeing a strong labor market but people still can't afford to buy groceries or you know basic items because of the high costs we're faced with that's right yeah and historically we we when we you know those of us in in the academy this study study labor unions can see historically during periods of high inflation that um the unionization level goes up there's new organizing activity um there's more demands and more strikes um it really does correlate I I looked at some of the labor data July was a very busy month for work stoppages when was the last time uh the last year decade that we saw action at this level um I'm gonna say it was probably not since the 90s um but really there was there was a lot more labor militancy in the 60s and 70s and then some uh government rules on reporting were changed around 1980 so it's it's hard to compare the number of work stoppages historically before and after 1980 but it's definitely been a couple decades since we've had this kind of level of uh of strike in work stoppages and what do we know about what happens when we collectively see these workers coming together uh hitting the picket lines well I mean as we've seen from you know John Deere workers to Kellogg workers to the railroad workers to the teamsters is that when workers do stand together and make strong demands and show their solidarity they are able to actually you know win some of their demands and bring back more wages in their paycheck and better health benefits for their families yeah and at the same time uh we actually have less workers represented by unions than ever so should we anticipate that this is going to sort of be the norm from here on out as as things stand I think we're going to continue to see a lot of these work stoppages as long as the economy is going strong and the labor market is tight Todd Vachon is an assistant professor at Rutgers University Todd thanks so much thanks Brianna