September 2, 2022: Global News Roundup
As Labor Day approaches in the US, workers of the world fight for higher wages and better conditions
The Global News Roundup collects news stories from entirely international (non-US) media sources on variety of pressing global political and economic issues and events.
As US President Joe Biden gears up for the midterms with planned stops on Labor Day in key swing states (Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), workers around the world continue to fight for better wages and conditions while governments and employers struggle to keep up. I’m going to start the discussion below with North America and work my way roughly eastward around the globe.
In the US, Biden’s and the Democrats’ bid to court American labor in the run-up to the midterms comes on the back of several years of broad labor unrest since the pandemic began in 2020 (e.g., see here and here for international coverage). The pandemic—with its associated on-the-job health risks (especially for essential workers), lockdowns, vaccine mandates, business closures, labor shortages, fiscal stimulus, and general reevaluation of life priorities among working people—has combined with more recent supply chain disruptions, and food and fuel price inflation to empower workers to demand better wages and conditions and, at the same time, immiserate them as inflation erodes real wages. Now, with the US federal reserve raising interest rates since the spring to combat inflation, the situation for labor remains uncertain and highly volatile. Reuters reports that central bankers are unclear about “whether the combination of a tight job market and high inflation is a coincidence of the pandemic or a sign that labor and the economy have changed in fundamental ways that mean efforts to control inflation may require higher unemployment than before.”
In Canada, seasonal Jamaican farm workers are taking action against their employers, publicly complaining of conditions they say resemble “systematic slavery”. “We feel betrayed, like the world doesn’t make sense. Since our letter came out and got media attention, our bosses have been telling us to keep quiet or else they will shut down the farm and we will all lose our jobs,” said workers quoted by Al Jazeera.
Across the pond, in the wake of a dockworkers strike in Felixstowe during which protesting workers were surfing and doing the conga as ships piled up waiting to unload, British barristers appointed by the state to defend indigent clients are preparing to go on strike next week after years of attempts to negotiate for better pay: “There’s such a narrative of fat-cat barristers, but you look at people who just do [legal aid-funded cases], the average earnings for the first three years of their career is 12,200 pounds [$14,400 a year]”, stated one of the barristers who is planning to join the strike. Railway workers in the Netherlands are also on strike this week, demanding higher wages as national rail lines shut down. And in Germany, a one-day strike by Lufthansa pilots resulted in 800 cancelled flights, on the heels of airline strikes in Spain and Switzerland over the past month.
(Striking dockworker surfs at Felixstowe port, from the Daily Mail, here.)
Teachers at Nigerian universities are entering their seventh month of an “indefinite” strike, an attempt to “save the Nigerian public universities from complete collapse” connected to “neglect by successive Nigerian governments”. The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) said on Monday that “it was compelled to carry out the action because it has "experienced a lot of deceit of the highest level in the last five and half years" from the federal government”, reports AllAfrica.com.
In Bangladesh, 200,000 tea plantation workers went on strike earlier this month, demanding a 150% increase in their paltry wages: “Most tea workers in the overwhelmingly Muslim country are low-caste Hindus, the descendants of labourers brought to the plantations by colonial-era British planters.” RYT9 (out of Thailand) notes that the Great Resignation in Asia is “set to continue”, citing a recent survey of 18,000 workers across the Asia-Pacific region: “Only 57% of employees across the region are satisfied with their job. In the next 12 months, around one-third of employees surveyed plan to ask for a raise and the same proportion say they are likely to ask for a promotion. One in five intend to switch to a new employer.”
In Taiwan, labor shortages are affecting the semiconductor industry and slowing production along an already compromised supply chain. Some Japanese companies are raising wages to try to manage labor shortages, while others are turning to digitalization and foreign workers to fill workforce gaps. Likewise, government officials have approved a record intake of migrant workers to Australia this year, with some 200,000 foreign workers to be permitted entry in an attempt to mitigate labor shortages (China, India, Vietnam, the Philippines, Nepal and the US are major sources of migrant workers to Australia).
Last, moving east back into the Western Hemisphere, workers at a Volkswagen plant in Mexico rejected a deal for a 9% pay hike: “The union for workers at the plant in Puebla, in central Mexico, had initially sought a raise of more than 15% to account for soaring inflation, from salaries that range from $15 to $48 per day.” In Peru, where workers have been demanding better wages and conditions for months, President Pedro Castillo stated that a "government of the people must respond to the (demands of the) people”.
Things I’m keeping an eye on:
1. Solomon Islands (see this post for my previous note about this simmering issue): After denying entry to a US naval vessel, the government of the Solomon Islands this week suspended all foreign naval visits.
2. US dollar and commodities trading: Continuing from previous posts, I keep seeing evidence that leads me to believe that it may not be too long now before the rest of the world decides that futures prices set on US exchanges are not useful benchmarks, with potentially serious knock-on effects for the dollar, among other consequences. Saudi Arabia just commented on this recently in an important but overlooked exchange with US commodities traders (quite the power move). Oil prices jumped shortly thereafter, basically confirming the concerns of Saudi officials and providing a real time demonstration of how seriously unreliable futures prices are at the moment.
3. Natural gas: It’s been quite a week for natural gas politics. Russia turned off the Nordstream 1 pipeline for maintenance this week, some German companies are slowing and ceasing production owing to energy price constraints (there’s quiet talk of German “deindustrialization” these days), and German officials are trying to hammer out natgas deals with Canada and the Netherlands to compensate for lost Russian supplies.
4. Lithium: As the US and EU try to expedite their move into green energy, lithium politics are heating up (lithium is required to make the batteries we use in electric vehicles, among other applications). Mexico just created a state-run lithium company, while the US is facing resistance to its lithium mining plans in Nevada.