Many workers are on strike in the United States

Many workers in the United States have had enough - they are on strike. In Iowa, the workforce of the agricultural machinery manufacturer John Deere has brought operations to a standstill. In Battle Creek, there are pickets in front of the Kellogg's cereal factory. More than 25,000 film industry employees in Los Angeles have spoken out in favor of a strike. Admittedly, it could only be prevented by an agreement. But nobody knows which employees could also stop working. The individual movements have so far been viewed as largely unorganized and little networked with one another. Nevertheless, with the strikes and the preliminary climax at the beginning of this month, a new word has already been added to the American vocabulary: strikeotober. The development is not entirely new. There have been labor disputes in the USA since 2019 - but the most recent strikes have reached completely new dimensions. Some even speak of a general strike that could just break out. In the UK's Guardian newspaper, Robert Reich, Minister of Labor in the first Clinton administration, wrote that the pandemic had shifted many people's priorities. Anyone who is exposed to "misery, disease and death" can no longer be fobbed off with crumbs. Jacob Kirkegaard, Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Fund, has a similar view. "Anyone who is exposed to the risk of Covid infection wants more," he says. Especially people in the health sector and in the catering industry no longer want to expose themselves to the risk of infection without being properly paid for it. That is hardly surprising. What is astonishing, however, is that this time they seem to have the momentum on their side. The number of vacancies is at a record high and the number of those looking for work is at a record low. Many people quit their jobs during the pandemic. 4.3 million in August alone. That is the highest rate since 2000. At the same time, many are retiring. There are currently around ten million unfilled jobs in the United States. There are around eight million job seekers. Many companies, especially the large ones, have therefore raised their wages above the minimum wage on their own initiative in order to find workers at all. E-commerce giant Amazon plans to hire around 125,000 people. That could be difficult in view of the current labor market situation. The giants in the country have also raised their wages several times this year. Walmart at $ 16.40, Starbucks at $ 15. In the past year, the average wage has increased by more than a dollar.