Aircraft assembly workers at Boeing factories near Seattle and elsewhere voted to end a seven-week strike overnight.

Leaders of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers district in Seattle said 59% of members who cast ballots agreed to approve the company’s fourth formal offer and the third put to a vote.

Organized labor has made itself heard over the past couple of years, and the number of actions taken by unions has soared. There were 470 work stoppages (466 strikes and four lockouts) involving about 539,000 workers last year, according to Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. The nearly 500 work stoppages resulted in about 24,874,522 strike days.

While the number of work stoppages increased by only 9% between 2022 and 2023, the number of workers involved in those work stoppages skyrocketed 141% to well over a half million workers, according to Cornell.

Unions including the UAW, the Teamsters and, most recently, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, say they made the sacrifices asked of them by their companies during the pandemic and previous periods of distress for different economic sectors. Workers have stood firm on demands of late, however, saying that now is the time for companies, consistently posting billions of dollars in profits every year, to catch up and pay workers what they are owed.

Here’s a look at recent standoffs between corporate America and workers.

Automakers and UAW

Late last year the United Auto Workers union overwhelmingly ratified new contracts with Ford and Stellantis, along with a similar deal with General Motors, that would raise pay across the industry and force automakers to absorb higher costs.

The agreements, which run through April 2028, ended contentious talks that began in the summer of 2022 and led to six-week-long strikes at all three automakers.

The new contract agreements were widely seen as a victory for the UAW. The companies agreed to dramatically raise pay for top-scale assembly plant workers, with increases and cost-of-living adjustments that would translate into 33% wage gains.

Top assembly plant workers were to receive immediate 11% raises and would earn roughly $42 an hour when the contracts expire in April 2028.

Under the agreements, the automakers also ended many of the multiple tiers of wages they had used to pay different workers. They also agreed in principle to bring new electric-vehicle battery plants into the national union contract.

UPS and Teamsters

UPS workers that are members of the Teamsters union approved a tentative contract with the package delivery company last year. The run-up to the approval was acrimonious, with labor negotiations that threatened to disrupt package deliveries for millions of businesses and households nationwide.

After negotiations broke down in early July 2023, Atlanta-based UPS reached a contract agreement with the Teamsters just days before an Aug. 1 deadline.

At the time the agreement was struck, full- and part-time union workers were set to get $2.75 more per hour in 2023, and $7.50 more in total by the end of the five-year contract. Starting hourly pay for part-time employees also got bumped up to $21, but some workers said that fell short of their expectations.