A tale of two strikes

What do symphony musicians and longshoremen have in common? At first blush you might say “not much.” But if you said that this fall, you would have been wrong. After months of negotiations, musicians of Washington D.C.’s National Symphony Orchestra (NSO), represented by Local 161-710 of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), and longshoremen working the Eastern and Gulf ports, represented by the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), went on strike for better wages and to protect the integrity of the jobs they care so deeply about. Before these strikes, the last ILA port strike and AFM NSO strike were in 1977 and 1978 respectively.

The ILA strike got overwhelming national attention and had potential to affect the world’s economy. The AFM strike got a little local attention and had potential to affect very little beyond an opening night gala. But in some very significant ways, the two strikes were identical. In the pandemic years preceding the ILA negotiations, longshoremen were subject to a contract with annual wage increases averaging less than 2% while the shipping companies enjoyed record profits. Over the same period, the musicians took immediate 35% wage cuts and additional wage freezes to assist the NSO when there were no live performances on account of COVID precautions. And while the NSO did not make record profits (it is a nonprofit entity), it – and its “parent,” the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts – saw its ratio of revenue to expenses hold steady. 

Nevertheless, when this recent round of bargaining began, neither the United States Maritime Alliance – the multi-employer association of container carriers, port operators, and port associations serving the East and Gulf Coasts of the U.S – nor the NSO offered wage increases the unions and their members believed were adequate under the circumstances. 

At that point, the longshoremen and the musicians had three choices. They could individually resign and look for work elsewhere, begrudgingly accept offers they believed were inadequate or exercise their protected right to withhold their services and peacefully strike. In both unions, the workers chose to strike and, in both cases – after very short strikes (about two hours for the musicians and three days for the longshoremen) – the disputes ended with the workers getting wage increases larger than their employers’ last offers at the bargaining table.

This is exactly the way free collective bargaining is supposed to work. The right to strike is the cornerstone of the right to bargain collectively – a right embedded in the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, which the Office of Labor-Management Standards enforces. And while most collective bargaining agreements are settled without workers having to strike, the fact that workers have that right and that they sometimes exercise it is central to the collective bargaining system. That’s because it empowers workers to demonstrate the worth of their work by withholding their labor and incentivizes employers to come to the table to negotiate. 

While ideally employers would offer unions and the workers they represent fair contracts before a strike deadline, the right to strike and the occasional exercise of that right is an essential part of ensuring that collective bargaining really works. Striking workers are a real-world reminder to employers that workers’ voices deserve their attention.    

Jeffrey Freund is the director of the Department of Labor’s Office of Labor-Management Standards.