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When some 33,000 Boeing machinists walked out of their airplane assembly factories in Seattle in September 2024, it was one of the largest strikes of the year. But it was also just one labor action that contributed to more than 5 million strike days across the country. Though the labor movements wave of landmark strikes ebbed slightly compared to 2023, there was still a surge of action in 2024 that resulted in 359 work stoppages, involving more than 290,000 workers. Thoe numbers come from the ILR-LER Labor Action Tracker, a joint project involving labor researchers at both Cornell University and the University of Illinois. That project began tracking strikes in late 2020 and into 2021, cataloging how the labor movement has gained traction since the pandemic. Last year, the trackers report on 2023 highlighted a significant boom: 539,000 workers who went on strike that yeara 141% increase compared to 2022and were involved in 470 work stoppages, totaling a whopping 24,874,522 days of strikes. [Image: courtesy Cornell University/University of Illinois] That high was buoyed by landmark actions like the United Auto Workers Stand up strikes, the Hollywood writers and actors strikes, and multiple strikes by Starbucks workers. The number of strikes, workers involved in strikes, and total strike days did drop in 2024 compared to 2023but are still higher than in 2021, the year that kicked off a resurgence in labor action. The main reason for that decline, researchers say, is the drop in the number of strikes by Starbucks Workers United, which held multiple actions across hundreds of stores in both 2022 and 2023. There also werent as many large unions with contracts expiring in 2024 as in 2023, noted Johnnie Kallas, a labor professor who first launched the tracker. When a unions contract expires and it bargains its next contract, thats often when workers strike to win improvements like better pay and benefits. [Image: courtesy Cornell University/University of Illinois] But workers are still striking to improve their wages and working conditions, Kallas notes. In 2024, the top three demands from workers on strike were better pay, improved health and safety, and increased staffing. Thats held true over the last two years, per the report. But new in 2024 was the fact that the majority of striking workers, 32.7%, were from the education sectorthanks to large strikes by union members at California State University, University of California, and University of California Health. The manufacturing sector was responsible for the highest number of strike days, claiming 40%. How the labor movement will keep up momentum under President Trump is unclear. The Trump administration has already threatened workers rights by gutting the National Labor Relations Boardhobbling its ability to decide any cases. (This move also makes it harder for unionized workers to get a first contract.) It also outlined how it plans to roll back Biden-era protections, like by reversing the NLRBs decision to ban captive audience meetings, which allow an employer to force workers to listen to arguments against joining a union. [Image: courtesy Cornell University/University of Illinois] Though Trumps pick to head the Labor Department, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, has some union support, its not clear if shell be able to uphold her reputation in an administration that has fired thousands of federal workers, closely aligned itself with anti-union Elon Musk, and is already planning to roll back worker protections. But Kallas says workers may not give in so easily. It is certainly difficult to predict what the impact of the Trump administration will be with regards to strike rates, he says, but workers may increasingly resort to taking action into their own hands due to the further erosion of the NLRB and other legal institutions.
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E-Commerce
Walmart shares fell early trading on Thursday after it posted its fourth-quarter earnings results. Despite an increase in sales, the retail giant said it expected profit growth to slow during this fiscal year. E-commerce sales increased 20% in the United States while revenue for the fourth quarter was up around 4%, according to Walmart’s earnings release. Growth in store pickups and speed of home deliveriesas well as share gains primarily from upper-income householdsdrove sales growth for the quarter, Walmart said. But Walmart stock (NYSE: WMT) still decreased on Thursday after it reported 2026 fiscal-year revenue and profit targets that were below analysts expectations. The retailer projected adjusted earnings per share of $2.50 to $2.60, which is south of the $2.76 share analysts had predicted, according to a consensus estimate cited by CNBC. Walmart noted that it expects net sales to increase in the range of 3% to 4%. Operating income is set to grow 3.5% to 5.5%, including headwinds of 150 basis points from its acquisition of smart-TV maker Vizio and an extra day in 2024 from Leap Year. As of midday Thursday, Walmart stock was down over 6%. Low Prices and Convenience During an investors call on Thursday, John David Rainey, chief financial officer, said that faster, more frequent deliveries and low costs have helped Walmarts e-commerce business grow over the years. Our prices are low and we are becoming more convenient, CEO Doug McMillon added on the call. Customers and members are going to be looking for value. Theyre going to be looking for convenience. Uncertainty in the global environment, including shifting trade policies and tariffs, has led to concerns about rising costs for businesses and consumers alike. Walmart plans to navigate these challenges by finding ways to maintain affordability for their customers. A Walmart spokesperson told Fast Company that the retailer has operated in a tariff environment for the past eight years and is well prepared to continue doing so. The spokesperson emphasized that Walmart will work hard to keep prices as low as they have been. Walmart continues to remain confident in its ability to provide value to customers despite the economic uncertainties.
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E-Commerce
Before he lost his job in a mass firing by the Trump administration last Friday, Nate Vince was the only locksmith for the hundreds of buildings and millions of visitors at Yosemite National Park. “Imagine a city-size place with one locksmith to all those people,” Vince says. “When there’s a car accident and an emergency medical person can’t get into a vehicle, or can’t get into their supplies they need, they would call me.” Now, with the nearest cities hours away, there’s no one who can easily do the same work. He says a coworker who was also fired was the park’s only HVAC technician, handling heating and cooling for every building in the park. At a nearby national monument, he says a friend who was a park ranger was fired despite the fact that he was that park’s only EMTa first responder who has saved lives. This is flat-out reckless, the park ranger, Alex Wild, wrote on Instagram after the elimination of his job. Wild had always had good performance reviews. But like other workers who were fired, he got a form email saying that he had failed to demonstrate fitness or qualifications for continued employment. A National Park Service employee is seen as photographers flock to take photos of Firefall at Horsetail Fall in Yosemite National Park, California, United States on February 19, 2025. [Photo: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu/Getty Images] Rethink your vacation plans In Southern California, a worker at a national forest who was fired said that part of their job involved preventing wildfires. “My crew is responsible for so much prevention and post-wildfire cleanup, and at this point its almost a guarantee that this forest will have some sort of major wildfire, as it has for the last few years,” the former employee said off the record. Across the country, around 1,000 National Park Service employees were fired on February 14, from staff who run ticket booths to janitors. Another 3,400 workers were fired from the Forest Service. Hundreds of other employees chose to accept the government’s (likely illegal, and unfunded) offer to resign from their job and still get paid for months. The net effect: If youre planning a vacation to a national park or public lands this spring or summer, the experience might be very different than it was in the past. Bathrooms might be closed or overflowing with trash because there arent enough workers to clean them. Trails might fall into disrepair. Some smaller parks may have to shut down entirely. And ecosystems are likely to suffer. Visitors are already seeing changes now. Last weekend, if you tried to go Franklin Falls, part of a national forest in Washington, you would have seen a barricade on the road and a sign saying that the trailhead was closed due to the large-scale termination of Forest Service employees. If you tried to visit the Grand Canyon, you would have waited twice as long as usual at the entrance. Cuts on top of cuts The cuts compound challenges that parks had after years of inadequate funding. Our parks were already stretched thin, says John Gardner, senior director on budget and appropriations at the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association. Since 2010, he says, staffing in national parks has dropped by 20%, while the number of visitors grew by an average of 16%. (The situation is worse in some parks, like Zion, which has twice as many visitors no additional staff.) Now, Gardner says, there are positions across the boardfrom maintenance to resource care to interpretation that have been lost. And that threatens the protection of cultural and natural resources as well as the visiting experience. Work behind the scenes to manage forests and other ecosystems will suffer. Were not the people you see out on the trails leading walks, but were the reason that the resources are there for visitors to enjoy, says Angela Moxley, a botanist who was just fired from her job restoring habitats and studying endangered species at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia, and who says she is speaking on behalf of herself, not representing the of the park or the Park Service. One of the things I still cant wrap my head around is that I just had to walk away from all of these projects I was working on,” she says. “There was no time to make any sort of plans to hand over the work or discuss any of it. And there aren’t going to be enough people left anyway to take over the project, anyway.” In November and December, for example, she sowed seeds into wetlands, and had planned to go out next month to see which plants had germinated and determine the next steps to take. “Now I’ll never know,” she says. Like other workers who were fired on Valentine’s Day, she was in a probationary periodshe had been in her current role for just under a year, meaning that she didn’t have the same job protections as staff with more tenure. She also got the same email as others, blaming her performance for the firing, despite excellent performance reviews. When Trump took office in January, seasonal Park Service employees also had their job offers rescinded. After pressure, the Department of the Interior said last week that it would reinstate 5,000 of those employees. But Gardner says that its an open question how quickly those positions can be filled now; some workers have moved on, and others will question whether they really want the jobs. I think youre going to see a lot of people wary of applying, and theyre going to consider other opportunities, says Gerry Seavo James, a deputy campaign director at the Sierra Club. At some parks where the number of visitors peaks in the spring, onboarding for seasonal visitors typically would have started now. The delays mean that parks likely could be critically understaffed.
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E-Commerce
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