Axios - The number of labor strikes in the U.S. in 2023 was as high as it's been in more than a decade. The strong labor market of the past few years emboldened workers and union organizers to take a harder line, pushing more folks to the picket line. Strikes took place across a range of industries, but the vast majority happened in the service sector — think education and health care, two industries suffering from work shortages and post-pandemic burnout.

Economic Policy Institute - RTW laws—and the phrase “right to work” itself—are intended to deceive and confuse. The misleadingly named policy is designed to make it more difficult for workers to form and sustain unions and negotiate collectively for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. As Martin Luther King, Jr. pointed out in 1961, “right to work” is a “false slogan” since RTW laws provide neither rights nor work and are in fact designed “to rob us of our civil rights and job rights [and] to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone.” Decades later, research bears out King’s contention that “wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower.”

  • Data show that states with so-called “right-to-work” laws have lower unionization rates, wages, and benefits compared with non-RTW states.
  • On average, workers in RTW states are paid 3.2% less than workers with similar characteristics in non-RTW states, which translates to $1,670 less per year for a full-time worker.
  • Claims that weakening unions will lead to state job growth have proven inaccurate. There are no measurable employment advantages between RTW and non-RTW states. 

Washington Post - The Teamsters’ political committee has given $45,000 to the Republican National Committee, according to federal records, a significant departure for a powerful organized labor group that has more recently supported Democrats, such as President Biden, who have championed workers’ rights. The union sent out the contribution — the maximum allowed from the union’s political action committee — to the RNC the same day former president Donald Trump met with Teamsters’ leadership for the second time in January.  The Teamsters also sent $135,000 to the Democratic National Committee last December plus a $15,000 donation in March.Neither the Teamsters nor the RNC immediately responded to a request for comment.

CNN -  There were 33 major strikes in the US last year, or a jump of 43%, according to new data from the Labor Department. It was the biggest number of large work stoppages in America in more than 20 years, with around 462,000 workers who were on strike at some point in 2023. There were also more than 16 million days of work lost when the number of strikers and the length of the strikes are taken into account. The greatest number of lost days of work was because of the strike by SAG-AFTRA, which represents 160,000 actors and was on strike for about four months. Industry analysts anticipate several possible work stoppages could make headlines this year, including thousands of union members at breweries, Hollywood studios and airlines.