a when it comes to the other worker strike in the us, there are many things the general public just doesn't know, this was about a broken promise and about sacrifice by the workers and the governments, but the workers got the cold end of the stick from the manufacturers, then the... contagion where there are strikes of many different s now in the us. all of that is coming up. first let's take a look at some of the highlights that we'll be covering for you. first the us autoworker strike. it's a strike over pay, strike over benefit. ceo pay at the big 3 has increased by 40%. that's one of the reasons why these auto workers are angry. and of course they have every reason to be because overall another one of the highlights we'll be looking at are the us wages. now in terms of the increase there. the top 1%, 145%, the

bottom 90%, only 16%. that's a great recipe for inequality for a country. and finally, us strikes. these strikes are not just about the auto workers. uh, there are sectors like hospitality, dining and healthcare that are also experiencing a strikes, which puts into in question the health of the us economy. the us is facing multiple strikes and industrial actions, it's a backdrop of an uncertain economic time. thousands of workers have gone a strike in different industies in recent months to demand higher pay and of improved benefits and working conditions, the autoworkers are taking aim at ceos at ford, general motors and stalant. for received the

40% wage increase. workers also believe they have more bargaining power due to a tight labor market. when it comes to the hollywood strike, the tentative deal was reached with studio bosses to end a strike that lasted nearly five months. riders began the strike on may 2nd asking for increased royalties, mandatory staffing of tv riding rooms and safegards to the jobs from the use of artificial intelligence. no matter how advanced ai is, they cannot replicate human emotions, they'll never be able to replicate human connection, and that's the reason why we have the passion for telling stories and why we make movies, so i am hoping that everyone will come on board with us and stand against this, because there's nothing that can replace, technology can never replace true artistry, approval of labor unions is also its highest point since the year 1965,

majority of the public, 71% of americans see of unions as key in improving pay and working conditions, the number of workers involved in major work stoppages has hit the highest levels in decades, the number of workers went a strike grew by 50% in 2022. further more, between 1979 and 2022, the inflation adjusted annual wages of the top 1% of workers rose by 145%, while the average annual wages the bottom 90% rose by only 16%. time to take a look at some of the online posts on this. first up uh what was posted on x, as it's called now, it said the deal was uaw members take some short-term cuts for the long-term survival of ford gm and chrysler. that's the promise we made and that's the promise that was broken. all right, that shows obviously of uh how they were. out of what was supposed to

be coming to them, next up a website we refer to where it said more big strikes loom with thousands of healthcare and casino workers set to walk off the job, well guess what, when we had this entry, that already has happened, this entry said there is a feeling that the system is fundamentally unfair to the workforce that is doing all the hard work, went out to say, what is driving the protest? declining real wages, a tight lamur market, and robust corporate profits only bolsters the case. for for workers uh next the website where it talked about the largest of healthcare strike in us history, the coalition of kaiser permanenta unions to have accused kaiser of negotiating in bad faith and committing unfair labor practices. uh, then a tweet on this on x, solidarity forever of with the 7500 workers at keisa permanente, when you win this fight, the entire working class will win as well, again the kaizer

permanenta took us by surprise because that's the that's the largest uh this kind in uh us uh hopefully we can uh maybe do a program on that well uh let's let me introduce our guests for our first q&a we have daryl. mitchell joining us, now daryl mitchell uh is retired autoworker, he worked at chrysler motors, he's a former union representative and he's an activist in the socialist movements for 50 years, rather long a resume, former editor at southern advocate, he's a founding member at the league of revolutionary black workers of detroit, and also former executive board member at detroit's coalition of black trade unionist. daril michel, welcome to the program. all right, so uh, let's start off by asking you about. this uh strike, so in one respects, it's about the pay, we know that, but there are things that have really angered these uh strikers, for example the ceo compensation uh that these the big three automakers and their ceos are making, which has grown by the way 40% over the last four years and they're

using that to press for their wage increases, are the workers justified to use that channel in order to get a pay increase for themselves? i think you posing it incorrectly. the union has made it clear that one of his key demands is to end the two-tier system. they made this clear at every junction. yes, pay is important, yes it is important to contrast compensation of all the workers with compensations with ceo. there's nothing rational about paying ceos billions of dollars for a company being successful, but suppressing. wages of workers, that's my first point, the second point is that all the workers are fighting a battle for their existence. for instance, currently stalantis has roughly 58,000 employees in the us, that's, when i was hired in, it was 120,000

union members, over the next 10 years we are looking at the elimination of roughly 50 to 70% of the... workforce by digital process and advanced robotics, in my view, this is last ditch fight of the autoworkers union. well, that's a great point that he makes there, um, which is something that's uh, probably at the forefront, the auto sector overall, when it become when it became automated. diane, feeley, let me introduce her, uh, she's a retired autoworker and member of the uaw local 22, who joins us diane, feeling. welcome to economic divide. um, the general trend in the us uh based on wages, is that uh we're looking a inflation adjusted annual uh increase, the top 1%, 145%, uh, the bottom 90%, only 16%, which is about a 10th as fast. uh, why is that

happening? why, why is such unfairness and uh, basically inequality as a result of this that uh these un uneven wage wages uh create. yes, i would say so, and it's a combination the corporations and the government laws that allow them to uh restructure uh on the backs of workers, right now, for example, um, the companies are building new battery plants and the government has given them millions of dollars, probably about $100 million, $140 million. um, but there are no guarantees in what is being given or loaned by the government to these factories and to the corporations of these factories to insist that there be adequate working conditions for

the workforce there, so the restructuring that occurred in the 1979-81 period was sort the beginning of the restructuring, but since then there have been probably three waves of restructuring and workers are always expected to give back when in fact we had nothing to do with the corporate decisions that were made uh not only paying the corporate a ceo's huge salaries and benefits but also uh buying uh buying back stock uh so that that would elevate uh what their their their uh company was worth, the thought occurred to me one day, the idea

that someone should be eternal enemy because they happen to be born 200 yards away from you or born on the other side of a street for is absolutely absurd, it's absord. but that's a situation that we find herself in here, so i thought of that, and again, occasionally you see these little um inspirational quotes, which may or may not be true, there's one supposed to from martin luther king said that um hating someone is like um drinking poison and hoping they'll die, i could hit michelle all i want, you're not probably not even gonna, but it's not going to affect your life, but it'll affect mine and um is it going to make me any happier, no, will it bring anyone back? no, is it going to make the future any better for people of their children? i are unborn, no.

into the section of the program, the us autoworker strike, which is still ongoing as of now, at least up to now, is reflective of not just payback time, but also of wall street greed, that's right, the manufacturers were bailed out by us taxpayers money are not willing to give those very same tax payers the wages that they deserve, while the ceos were raking in tens of millions. dollars in their salaries. all right, we're going to get into that, but this first section is all about what we're going to cover in the section, because there's a lot of them. the first uh thing we're going to cover is about the strikes themselves, uh, what uh, it has entailed, then we're going to talk about the progress that they have made, or maybe lack of it based on uh what you're going to hear a matter of minutes. then the number of workers that are involved and we're going to put that in a comparative uh study for you. next up the the big three profits big. th being the auto manufacturers, okay, we have to find out how much money they are making. then we move to uh profits and uh losses.

profits and losses based on uh when the strikes happened, how much the manufacturers have made or lost. the wage growth, that's very important because of the comparison we're going to make to for example the ceos and we're going to take a look at the salaries that some of the ceos of these manufactors are making, and finally car sales in the scope of how much the gross uh uh amount of sales these manufacturers have uh in their market, which is very important, so let's get going. all right, the first category that we have for you are the strikes themselves, so let's see what's uh going on here with the strike uh and entales walkouts so far, gm and stalantis, those two manufacturers, you have five assembly plants that have gone a strike, they're not operational, you have 38 parts depots also um accumulatively speaking that are not a functional uh, this shows that this strike has the potential for it to actually expand.

okay, next uh, taking a look at the progress that's happening, well, it's pretty simple, the union demand is 40%, that's the increase they want for their pay, but the carboners are only willing to go up to 20%. the latest has indicated that this figure has gone down to 36%, but we're not sure because it's not confirmed in canada, they gave up a whole lot more than that. let's move to the next category in terms of uh what we have here, the number of workers, this is important, in the year 2021, you had 36,600 that went a strike, look at the year 2023, 362,000 have gone a strike, now if you're going to add the number of auto workers which combined, there's 150,000 auto workers all together for potential strikers, you could see that figure top there, the 362,000 is going to jump by quite a bit, next up what do we have here, big three profits, need i say more for gm. salantis, 92% the profits have increased, we took a range of 20, the years 2013 to 2022,

250 billion dollars, okay, so that shows the amount of money that they are making, that's quite a lot. all right, uh, let's take a look now at the the us wage growth, that's very important in terms of what we have for you, the top 1%, as you can see over here, look how much increase they've had on their wages, 145%. that's a lot when you compare the bottom 90% 90%, which is had 16. percent only for the wage growth, the years uh that we looked at 1979 through the year 2022. what do we have coming up next uh ceo salaries? all right, that's the big one, that's one of the things that uh is up for discussion in a major way, the big three ceo salaries, you have fort ceo, jim 40 21 million per year, the atlanta carlos tavarez 25 million, and the one that comes in number one, mary bara 29 million, the gm a ceo, all right, now this is what hurts for the workers, the ceo profits were made $1.7 millions off each worker, which came into the picture in terms

the way that these uh um ceos made their profits, not in their salary, but in the time sharing that they did had with the profits, that's what it amount to. next up, what do we have uh, car sales as a whole, how big a market is it, vehicles and parts, $1.53 trillion dollars for the year 2022, okay, tell me there's not a lot of money in car manufacturing, um, if there was to be... an impact on that, the that it contributes to the us gdp is 3%, so that's why this car strike is such a big deal, still waiting sea game to see if the... come up with any type of uh, i guess agreements on this. all right, uh, i guess it's time to get some into the picture, don't you think? well, maybe not, we have one more to go here, too many numbers for you, maybe gm profits quarterly, this is as of the latest, the latest quarter, 3.2 billion dollars they made, okay, and they still want won't uh negotiate, the auto losses, however, 3.95 billion, you're looking

at over a month, a month and maybe a couple weeks now, how much money has been lost because of the strike, but that figure over there, that's a big figure there. i know, enough numbers. let's go to our guests and see what they think about all of this. uh, let's bring back daryl mitchell, he's a retired autoworker. uh, he uh, worked at chrysler motors and also a former union representative who rejoins us. darel mil, welcome back economic divide. uh, i'd like to find out from you, why it is that it's not just autoworkers that are striking, we're looking at other sectors that have uh joined now these strikes, it seems like the autoworkers kind of set it off, i think it's because of the large numbers that are involved and how major um piece of the economy the us in the us it plays, um, and this all points to stagnant wages and pay, basically, why has it spread to other sectors, you think? is that we going through a fundamental changing economy, that is on

the scale of the industrial revolution of the 18th cent. we are going through a fundamental change in our society just probably equal to the discovery of five. i don't say that joking me, right now i'm residing in a uh san josef. san jose california is like the home the new technology, the last century detroit and auto industry was the home of technological innovation. "my point is that we're going through a revolution and a technological complex a scale that ushered in industrial capitals, so we talking about the destruction workforce as it existed for the last 150, 200 years, we're going through a profound change in our society and nothing can stop it or halt it. yeah, you know, he's

got a point there, and i think he pointed out in the last uh time that we brought him on, uh, the automation that took place in the car industry uh, which is one of the uh first to have gone that route pointing to the um artificial intelligence that is going to be incorporated and we're seeing obviously that uh to be applied in many industies uh let's bring in our uh guest diane freely retired autoworker and member of uaw local 22 see what she thinks dialy um i'd like to ask you the question i asked our previous guest and that's about how we're seeing these strikes basically spread to other industries uh that we didn't expect, one of the most recent ones being kaizer permanente, which involves uh quite a number of employees, i think if you put it all together about 80,000, but hospitality, tech industries and even courier services, why is that happening, mean uh, you talk about only 3% inflation in the us, as is reported, but yet people uh don't don't make enough money to pay their bills and to buy

and basically to consume, what's happening? well, it's pretty wide spread and the minimum wage is. very very low, both the federal minimum wage and in michigan, it's slightly higher, uh, the federal minimum wage is about $7.50, the uh wage in in uh michigan is a little higher at $10 an hour, but even $15 an hour is not an adequate wage, so one factor is the low wages of uh, of many of the workers, the fact that inequality means that the profits are going uh much more towards the points that i raised before of ceos of uh outsourcing of um uh combining uh um so you have uh corporations that uh not only are

active as um in one industrial. but uh are conglomerates. according to poles, more than 40% of us voters for backed joe biden in the 2020 presidential election, say they think that the economies is more soft than it was then. rising gas prices and high interest rates have contributed to greater economic uncertainty and has dampened consumer confidence. the conference board's consumer confidence index fell for second consecutive month, dropping to 103 in september, from an upwardly revised 108.7 the month before. the decline in consumer confidence was evidence across. all age groups and notably among consumers with household incomes of $50,000 or more. the share of consumers surveyed who

believe a recession is somewhat likely, or very likely, rose in september after dropping in august. consumer spending serves as a critical driver for us economic growth, the us bureau's most recent household pulse survey for the two weeks ending september 4 showed that 80% of respondents were still somewhat or very concerned about future inflation. annual consumer inflation dropped to 4% in may and 3% in june of this year, but came in at 3.2% in july and climbed to 3.7% in august. i still worry very much uh that that we could have a hard landing whether you know probably not until next year, the hiking uh cycle that the fed's been going through, it takes 12 months. to 18 months for it to really have an impact on the economy, and same thing with the yield curve, the yield curve did invert to year ago, and it usually takes about year for it really to have that kind of impact. hello and welcome to the

quick take section on mati aposan. when it comes to the us strikes, auto workers are not the only ones that are going a strike, there are work. from other sectors like dining and hospitality, technology and health services. besides auto workers, hundreds of thousands of us workers have walked off their jobs this year in industries of all types. this includes hollywood, screenwriters, starbucks, amazon workers and frontline workers like nurses, hotel staff and pilots. this day is very expensive, i love grown from, i love my community, i love to be a part of this community, however, the going rate of a one barroom is $2,200. the u.s. president joe biden, however, has a stated that the us economy is doing well, more or less, under

the banner of bydynamics, that americans are just beginning to reap the rewards, and have more confidence in the us economy. in one survey, it's indicated that 44% of voters said they're worse off financially on their biden, the most for any president. since ronald reagan in 1986. let's look at some economic factors that go against joe biden's claims, for many americans, job security is a big deal, and it should be since us businesses are not doing that well. us business bankrupties have reached a 13-year high. more than 450 corporations have claimed bankruptcy protection, surpassing annual totals for the past two years, the federal reserves interest rate hikes and economic uncertainty are cited as the reasons. meanwhile, poverty in the us has also seen a rise, especially in metropolitan cities like los angeles and new york city, which goes

against us announcements of economy that is doing well. in 2022, there was 12.4%, increase of 4.6 percentage points from 2021. more alarmingly, the child poverty rate more than doubled from 5.2% in 2021. to 12.4% in 2022. since we are looking at us poverty, let's look at food poverty and us as a snap program, short for supplemental nutrition assistance program. this is a government program that helps people who need assistance with food, and here is where the depth of america's weak economic conditions shows itself. 41.2 million people, that's 12.5% of the total us population have received monthly snap benefit. in the 2022 fiscal year, and finally, on the note of government assistance, what things the us government spends its money on has been overlooked, which ironically should be the focus. first,

we need to look at the us government income. the us makes around 6.3 trillion dollars in income, and believe it or not, spends half of that amount on entitlement programs like food assistance and benefits. that's the end of this episode's quick take, thank you. thank you for watching, don't forget to send us your comments and questions, i'm mattiasian and i'll see you next week. greed has no bounds or limits, that is what has driven the ceos of these car manufacturers on the back their workers and the money that they've made, the us president joted bitenomics that's so successful and that the economy is doing well for so many months in a row now. then why are there so many americans that are going a strike? i'm sure they have better things to do with their time than to go a strike. but of course uh that's up to the

u.s. president to realize that that. these people don't have enough money to get by with their everyday expenses. that does it for this edition of economic divide. thank you so much for being with us, we uh do enjoy making the program for you, but it's uh more successful for us to know how we are doing, if you give us feedback, contact information is uh behind me, from the team, it's good to buy until the next economic divide.

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your pressed to be headlines, at least 500 palestinians are killed in an israeli air strike in a hospital in gaza city. grand's leader calls for trial of israeli officials warning that if regime's crimes against palestinians continue, no one consult muslims and the resistance forces. and to israeli soldiers are recordedly killed and several more injured and latest retaliatory attacked by hisbul. fighters.