Within the last few months the United States has seen new worker struggles erupt. They are largely fueled by the conflict of workers facing lower absolute wages due to inflation on the background of high corporate profits for the year. This is a slight intensification of the class struggle, not quite comparable to the “labor summer” of 2023 or the type of strikes that we are seeing in other nations where general strikes have even been seen recently, but it is an increase in the temperature of labor conflict.

Municipal Worker Strike in Philadelphia

On July 1, members of AFSCME District Council 33 comprising roughly 9,000 municipal employees, including sanitation crews, 911 dispatchers and Water Department staff walked off the job after the negotiations between the union and the city government broke down, forcing the hand of the union. This strike is the city’s largest work stoppage since the last time AFSCME went on strike there in 1986. The central issue was the fact that the wage increase that the city was trying to offer the workers simply isn’t sufficient to allow them to afford living in Philadelphia. AFSCME DC 33 initially sought a 5 percent raise each year over a three-year contract, which Boulware, the union president later raised to 8%, both of which are entirely too low for workers that are struggling to afford even basic city services let alone for the working class to actually use its power for real militant demands. The city countered this low ball offer with an even lower offer, a fiscally responsible “deal” featuring 2.75 percent in the first year and 3 percent in subsequent 2 years.

Trash collection was suspended city wide as were all public libraries while city services like maintenance of parks, water infrastructure repairs, and 911 dispatchers continued to operate but with large wait times. With trash collection suspended citywide, bags of refuse within neighborhoods quickly exceeded overflowing dumpsters despite the temporary drop off sites that were established by the city. Refuse piled up in front of homes and businesses, with rats running on the streets, in some cases even blocking sidewalks. Within a week the piles of garbage were visible almost everywhere in the city and were widely publicized in bourgeois media across the entire nation, which was enough leverage to put pressure on the city to make an offer. Scabs were illegally dumping trash including medical waste and rotten food oil at drop-off points, which led to some arrests of some of them. Workers supported the strike by refusing to cross picket lines and hauling their trash directly to City Hall. The strike only lasted 8 days but the tentative agreement ended the strike with only a 0.25% increase in the city’s offer over their previous one for the first year with a $1,500 sign on bonus for the first year, meaning 3% raises every year over three years, which applied to 80% of workers, so it was not a universal increase for all workers. Regular waste collection resumed the next week.

Ultimately the city workers continue to have to live on a non-living wage in Philadelphia. Without the willingness to have a much more prolonged strike and willingness to demand truly combative wage increases, without coordinated strikes with other unions and workers in the same city, without generalizing the strike. Otherwise, the union and workers risk being painted as not caring about the public while also being ineffective at hurting the profits of the companies and the budgets of the local bourgeois politicians. Without ditching these sellout union officials and abandoning all collaboration with the bosses and succumbing to weak negotiations, workers will continue to have to accept pitiful scraps to ensure higher profits or “fiscal responsibility” and for the preservation of the “negotiation services” that regime union leadership offer.

Teamsters’ Waste Management Strikes: Planned and Ongoing Actions

Republic Services is the second-largest sanitation company in North America with more than 1,000 locations in the USA. Its total revenue was $16 billion in 2024 and its gross profit for the same year was $6.682 billion, which is a 11% increase from the previous year. About 7,000 to 8,000 workers unionized under the Teamsters work at Republic.

On July 1st, 450 teamsters from local 25 in Boston walked out after their contract expired. Republic Services admitted that the wages they were offering were a few dollars less per hour than what their competitors offer and refused to submit to demands to match the wages and benefits that workers make at competitor waste management companies. The Teamster’s leadership’s demands so far have simply been wage parity with the competitor companies along with more comprehensive and accessible healthcare mirroring the Teamsters Plan enjoyed elsewhere. Soon after, Teamsters from other Republic locations launched strikes of their own, so far in 5 states outside of Massachusetts: Georgia, California, Washington, Illinois and Ohio. By aligning each others’ strikes and other Teamsters workers honoring pickets they hurt Republic’s profits more and have more leverage.

As is typical of the NLRB regulations that cripple how unions are organized in the US, the workers are covered in separate local contracts. But what is notable is that coordinated strike action was taken anyway on a national level and increased in size as many locals voted to strike in sympathy. Sympathy strikes were made effectively illegal in 1947 by the Taft-Hartley, which gave the bosses the right to sue unions for “contract violations.” The locals that are striking in sympathy are doing so without risk of this litigation by using the fact that the Massachusetts strike is a ULP (unfair labor practices) strike, which particular type of strike has a carveout in the law that makes it not a contract violation. Having to do it this way means that currently less than half the workers are on strike but at its peak around 4,000 workers or close to half of the workers were on strike.

So far, to the best of our knowledge, only the Manteca, California local stopped their strike and reached a tentative agreement and the rest of the locals are still going strong. Locals that are no longer striking and honoring localized agreements diminish the strike power of all the affected workers as a whole and make it harder to extract maximum leverage for all the workers. The local that reached the agreement had a massive impact as stopping work meant stopping garbage collection for more than a million people in Northern California. Details of the tentative agreement are not yet out. The company has been heavily relying on scabs to try to resume service while not showing up to negotiations. Other grievances that surfaced as a result of the strike were demands for safer working conditions, resistance to disciplinary measures like camera installations, and demands that the company stop using strike-breakers in Georgia. The company also has a history of litigation and uses union buster lawyers to do its dirty work and has already filed a federal lawsuit, where the company is trying to force the union into wasting money on legal defenses with accusations of illegal activity by union members and officials claiming vandalism, trapping of vehicles, slashing of tires of scabs and other such trifles. The strike is an ongoing battle and negotiations will potentially resume at a later date.

QSL Port Workers Strike In Illinois

Port workers are still striking against QSL America, a logistics operator, at three of its sites in Illinois. The strike by IUOE(International Union of Operating Engineers) Local 150 against QSL America, Inc. was ignited by six ULP charges and has been escalating since May 2025. The local includes more than 24,000 members in Indiana, Illinois and Iowa. They are demanding safer working conditions, overtime pay, and additional protections for workers. The main grievances outside the unpaid overtime and unsafe working conditions are issues such as retaliation, the company using out-of-state replacement workers and excessive electronic surveillance and intimidation tactics, as well as the disappearance of a dockworker, Darius Clement. The union has been able to disrupt operations at Chicago’s Iroquois Landing, where rail service is drastically curtailed and cargo faces significant delays. Workers from CN Railroad and UPS have shown support by refusing to cross picket lines, forcing management to step in and operate trains manually. This has led to the stoppage of the CN Railroad service which is now limited to just two days per week, alongside international shipments accruing up to four-day delays, which leads to supply chain shocks and and potential contract forfeitures for QSL’s customers. One of the cranes is also non-operational. The strike has been going strong for 8 weeks and it is likely costing the company millions of dollars but QSL is owned by CDPQ and iCON investment groups, finance capitalists that have billions of dollars in holdings and manage hundreds of billions of their customers’ money. With such deep pockets it’s likely that the strike will turn into a battle of attrition. The lack of serious economic demands by the union is disheartening and not indicative of a strong combative union. Without such combativity and without a further escalation of the strike and demands it is not likely that the company will budge even on these largely non-economic demands even if it continues indefinitely, though they are certainly hemorrhaging profits.

Grocery Workers in Colorado

On July 4, a strike ended at multiple Safeway and Albertsons stores in Colorado. The grocery store workers represented by United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 7 walked off the job on June 16. The new contract includes health care benefits, fully funded pensions and pay increases.

Student Workers in Washington

On June 6, a strike by some 1,200 student workers at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash. ended. The strike began on May 28. The union won layoff protections, expanded leave, mental health support and wage adjustments. However, the workers did not receive union recognition by the university. The group voted to unionize in December 2023 as Western Academic Workers United.