Prior to 1982, the Bureau for Labor Statistics (BLS) reported on all work stoppages that involved at least six workers and lasted for a full shift or longer. Reagan-era budget cuts changed its methodology, and for the past four decades, the institution has only reported on work stoppages it considers “major” — those involving at least 1,000 workers.
An enormous amount of annual labor activity is left out of federal reporting as a result.
According to other BLS data, 60% of private sector employees in the U.S. Work for companies with fewer than 1,000 employees, so the strike data that is available only reflects a minority of American workers.
To remedy that disparity, Cornell’s School for Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) published its first Labor Action Tracker Annual Report this week, which chronicled all strike activity across the country last year. The project is in part modeled on a similar project based in Hong Kong called the China Labour Bulletin, which has published its own map of work stoppages since 2011.
According to the report, there were 225 total work stoppages in 2021, with 24 involving 1,000 or more workers.
The Labor Action Tracker also collects information on more variables than the BLS does, including union membership, region, and the workplace issue(s) at stake. Common reasons for striking in 2021 included issues related to pay, health-care benefits, health and safety protocols, contract negotiations, and racial justice, among others.
There’s also information about additional labor activism that’s more difficult to quantify, like protests and marches.
“A strike has to be a collective, worker-led initiative to withhold labor in order to advance some sort of grievance,” explains Eli Friedman, associate professor of international and comparative labor at Cornell and the project’s faculty advisor. “If we see a couple of photos of people and they’re out there chanting and holding signs, we’ll count that as a protest. But for a strike, we really do need clear evidence that people were not working when they were supposed to be working.”
The report notes that its 2021 data reflects an overall decades-long downward trend in labor activism. The number of workers involved in work stoppages in 2021 is “considerably less” than the number of workers who went on strike in the 1970s — the last time comprehensive BLS data was available.
According to the report, 140,000 workers were involved in strike activity in 2021 — a number below what the BLS reported in 2018 and 2019. Friedman notes that large strikes, including the 2018 and 2019 education workers’ strikes in states like West Virginia and California, can greatly influence the total number of workers striking in a given year.
In its own report released this week, the BLS identified only 16 major strikes in 2021.
Based on the BLS guidelines, some high profile moments in the new labor movement would not be included in its data. Last summer, some Black TikTok creators went on strike to call attention to their issues with the platform where they are often not credited (or paid) for their work. And Uber and Lyft drivers who went on strike last summer weren’t counted because they’re considered contract employees and don’t fit within the BLS rubric.
Gig workers and creators in particular pose a challenge to Friedman’s team, who want to include as much labor activity in their report as possible: “What does it mean to be on strike when your employer is not expecting you to be there at a particular time?” He asks.
After deliberation, the group decided to include the Uber strike in its report, but not the creators on TikTok because — similarly to BLS — their activism did not fit easily into the Cornell’s criteria for what constitutes a strike.
Still, Friedman sees it as essential to the larger conversation around what labor organizing means today. “I think these marginal cases are conceptually really important in terms of thinking about the economy and work,” he says.
