Labor Unrest in 2024 Poised to Leverage Union Contract Gains

After a year of record-breaking strikes, expiring contracts in 2024 signal another significant but likely smaller potential wave of labor unrest.

More than 1.1 million workers are covered by large union contracts that are due to end this year, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis of filings with the federal mediation service. But two of the largest groups, involving 200,000 US postal workers and 115,000 rail workers, are in sectors where strikes are severely restricted or banned altogether, limiting the possibility of large-scale walkouts.

And yet a combined 55,000 workers in two of the largest public school districts, Los Angeles and Chicago, may walk off the job, as could 30,000 aircraft machinists at Boeing Co.

Labor scholars say the high-profile nature of the wave of strikes in 2023—as well as the gains made under those contract fights—could invigorate workers facing bargaining negotiations in the coming year. It could also galvanize organizing in areas where unions have had a hard time breaking through, such as Silicon Valley and the industrial South.

“The very successful series of strikes that occurred through 2023 will embolden and encourage workers,” said Kate Andrias, a professor at Columbia Law School.

“It’s also possible that employers will be more willing to bargain in good faith and more willing to reach good settlements in order to avoid the possibility of a strike—knowing that workers may be more likely to strike,” she said.

Rebecca Rainey

At least 172 contracts, each covering more than 1,000 workers, will expire in 2024. Those figures are based on information available in mid-December, and are likely to rise as more contract expiration notices are filed with the federal mediation service.

At this time last year, data showed 150 large contracts covering 1.6 million workers expiring in 2023.

The same group of rail unions that nearly shut down the economy in 2022 are representing the latest batch of employees with expiring agreements.

On top of that, 40,000 backstage and behind the scenes workers for major films and TV in Los Angeles have a contract that will expire in July.

And another 25,000 unionized teachers and support workers for Chicago Public Schools are facing a contract expiration date in June—a group that has gone on strike in 2016, 2019, and 2022.

2023 Effect

Strikes involving hundreds of thousands of workers at Detroit automakers, actors at Hollywood film studios, and other industries cost the companies millions in 2023, and caught the attention of the media, Wall Street, and, more importantly, workers.

“It’s a shot in the arm to all unions that you could take on these companies and win,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor and research at the Cornell University School of Labor and Industrial Relations. “If the UAW could do it, why aren’t they doing it?”

Unionized healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente secured a 21% wage bump and other protections in their contract after 75,000 members went on a three-day strike in October.

After a multi-week strike against the Big Three, UAW workers walked away with a 25% raise, the restoration of cost-of-living increases, and agreements to unionize electric vehicle battery workers.

And Hollywood screenwriters for studios like Netflix Inc. and Walt Disney Co. were able to win pay increases and artificial intelligence protections, among other demands in their latest contract, after going on strike for five months last year.

After seeing how the other unions capitalized on their contracts expiring in 2023, “labor negotiators will likely try to follow suit when their turn comes up in 2024,” said Bloomberg Law legal analyst Robert Combs.

He noted that not every union has had its chance to flex the new leverage brought on by the pandemic, which could also factor into how tough negotiations may be between workers and their employers in the new year.

“The last time that the vast majority of these large contracts were negotiated was either before the Covid-19 pandemic began or during the economic downturn that accompanied it,” Combs said. “So this will be these unions’ first chance to turn their workers’ concerns from the past three or four years into tangible gains at the bargaining table.”

Bargaining isn’t the only measure of labor strength. Recent wins at the bargaining table are already inspiring new organizing, including a UAW campaign to unionize foreign-owned plants in the hard-to-reach South, Andrias noted.

“If you look historically it has been the case that when there are series of successful strikes, it galvanizes additional collective action by workers,” Andrias said. But given the difficulty it takes to unionize a workplace, Andrias said it’s more difficult to predict how strikes may influence organizing as a whole.

Smaller Wave

The largest workforces with contracts set to expire this year—200,000 US Postal Service workers and 115,000 rail workers— won’t be striking anytime soon, however.

While Congress gave postal workers collective bargaining rights in 1970 after an unauthorized walkout caused a nationwide mail stoppage, they are not allowed to strike.

Rail workers also are governed by a 1926 law that makes striking all but impossible, requiring them to surmount a series of legal and bureaucratic hurdles before walking off the job. Even then, Congress and the president have the power to impose a contract on the workers, as they did in 2022.

That leaves roughly 828,000 workers on large collective bargaining agreements that are due to expire this year.

While that figure doesn’t include contracts with fewer than 1,000 workers, it’s half the total number of workers covered by expiring contracts in 2023, suggesting that walkouts on a large scale may not occur as frequently as they did this year. Many of the large contracts due to expire this year cover between 10,000 and 30,000 workers.

By comparison, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters agreement with United Parcel Service Inc.—which faced a strike threat in 2023—covered about 340,000 workers.