 Welcome to the State of Working America podcast where we seek to lift workers' voices to make sure they're hurting the economic policy debate in Washington and beyond. I'm your host, Pedro Dacosta, and I'm here with my colleague, Rami Jackson. And we're going to talk about some really exciting stuff today, especially youthful organizing and interest in unions among millennials and all kinds of good stuff. So Rami, take it from there. Yeah, that's right, Swap Squad. Let me tell you, you're in for a treat today. We have the coolest thing to come out of Wisconsin since sliced cheese. And that's Caleb Blado, president of the NPEU and director of media relations here at EPI. We also have our cool good friend, Katie. She's going to be talking with us from the democracy collaborative and she's a part of their bargaining committee, another wonderful member of our growing union. So I was really excited about this particular episode because as I mentioned before we came on the air, I've been talking to a lot of folks who are my age and older. And yet there's so much energy in youthful organizing, shall we say. And it's really exciting for me to see. It's been really exciting for me to, you know, within EPI to watch the work that you do, Kayla. But I'd love to get started by asking how you became interested in union activism generally. And also what you see as the biggest challenges for you as union president. Well, thank you for having us. So as Rami mentioned, I'm from Wisconsin. I'm a fifth generation Wisconsinite. And I know there's a really deep labor history in Wisconsin, but I never really grew up knowing much about it. But I went to the University of Wisconsin during when Governor Scott Walker signed Act 10, which stripped collective bargaining rights from public sector employees. And so I'd always considered myself kind of a liberal leftist, but I didn't really know a lot about labor. And so when Scott Walker signed Act 10, there was a huge uprising in Wisconsin. I learned a lot about public sector workers and public sector bargaining. Wisconsin was actually the first state to allow public sector collective bargaining. And, you know, Governor Walker was vilifying teachers and saying that they were part of the problem. And I knew from my experience at a public high school in Wisconsin that my teachers were probably the main reason that I was even at the University of Wisconsin and was able to have this great experience in college. And the teachers worked extremely hard and I knew they were underpaid. And so I kind of was thrust into the labor movement that way, protesting for bargaining rights for public sector workers. And then after college I started working for Workers Independent News, which was a labor, a national labor radio program where I produced radio there. And then after that I worked at Wisconsin Public Radio and felt what it was like actually to be a public sector employee in Wisconsin without collective bargaining rights. And then after that I worked in labor for a year as doing communications and then started at EPI about four years ago and have been a union member of the nonprofit professional employees union since then. And so I've kind of felt what it's like to work in a variety of offices, whether or not they're unionized and I've kind of held on to my labor values throughout that. And you've recently become the president. So tell us a little bit about that transition from being an activist to actually managing something larger and what's it like? Well, so I was bargaining unit president at EPI for about a year. And then since April I've been the president of the whole local, which I think currently we have 16 different units. We have several hundred members, primarily in D.C., but we're growing across the country. Rami and Katie are both union members, so it's great to have a variety of people. Pins included. Exactly, we always represent. Yeah, it's been wonderful being local president of NPEU. I've learned so much in the past eight months. I've gotten to speak with all members all across the country about their concerns about what they see as the future of the labor movement. We've done a lot of really cool initiatives and helped a lot of members. And we're seeing such a surge in energy of nonprofit workers that want to organize with us. And so I really think that 2020 is going to be a great year for us and we're going to see a lot of growth. So Katie, could you start by telling us a little bit about the democracy collaborative and about your work there, and also about some of the bargaining victories that I hear you've had this past year? Sure thing. So the democracy collaborative is a think and do tank based in D.C. and Cleveland, Ohio. And we focus on building a more democratic economy, so focusing on strategies that expand control and looking at ways to kind of transform our political economic system. We unionized around, I think a year and a half ago or close to two years is when we started and we just ratified our first contract in November, which is very exciting. And I think, you know, as members of the union, we're really excited to try and build the type of workplace that we write about in our everyday work as we're thinking about building more democratic and equitable workplaces. What does that look like within a nonprofit structure? And so our contracts, we are able to secure some really exciting things. We have one of the things I'm most excited about is a labor management committee that will focus on advancing a better workplace. So we've set that the labor management committee can have goals related to equity, not just related to hiring, but also retention and really supporting everyone at the collaborative, and particularly people of color and success at the workplace. We've secured clear salary bands and opportunities for advancement within the organization. We've secured cost of living increases for unit members of 2.5 to 2% throughout the contract. And something really cool is an additional one percentage point for people making under $57,000 to try and address wage disparities within the unit. So I think we have a really cool combination of both material wins and the wonderful things that come with the union contract, like having just cause and having a robust discipline procedure, but also some really kind of exciting things that we think move the needle in terms of building a more functional and democratic workplace. Definitely, because, you know, as they say, fascism starts in the workplace and then spreads from the rest of society. Seriously, when you're oppressed at your job, it's easy for some politician to oppress you everywhere else because you're just used to it. Where do we spend most of our day? We used to talk at EPI about how we accept the lack of workplace democracy. The workplace is one of the spaces in which we accept the most democratic, sort of top-down leadership period. I want to talk a little bit about, like, actually reorganizing labor relations as opposed to just unions just fighting for crumbs of, like, the pie and, you know, ever tinier crumbs, but I want to bring that up later, but yeah. No, but, like, seriously, where do you all see the MPU going within the next year? Like, what are your big strategies and plans? Like, especially not only just on the, like, you know, for TCD, but, like, I mean TDC, but also for just, like, the unit, I mean the organization in general. Yeah, I'm really, really excited about the future of MPU. We've just gotten some great wins. So we're bargaining first contracts in a lot of locals. So Food and Water Watch just received voluntary recognition. The Center on Budget is bargaining their first contract. Action Squared just got recognition as well. They're bargaining their first contract. The Washington Center for Actable Growth is bargaining their first contract. So I think this year is going to be a lot about really digging in and trying to get these people their first contract as well as bargaining subsequent contracts for a lot of our units that have been around for longer. And besides that, I think that we're, I mean, we're growing and we want to raise standards for nonprofit workers across the board. And I think that's the ultimate goal so that in D.C. and beyond, when people move jobs, the standards are high no matter where you go. And, you know, we're fortunate enough to work at a unionized nonprofits. And, you know, we've worked really hard to get there. I mean, Rami and I are lucky because EPI organized 21 years ago when we were the first unit in MPU. But that's a rarity among, like, so-called liberal think tanks and institutions, right? Yeah, I mean, so we've gotten a few more think tanks cap joined a few years ago. But people have worked really hard because they care about these organizations and they want to invest in them and improve them. And so I think that this year we're going to see a lot of that, a lot of people coming up with really innovative ways to do that at their own organizations. One thing that's great about MPU is that every unit has individual contracts. We don't have a blanket contract and people can bargain for the things that most apply to them. And so TDC's contract has some similarities to EPI's but has a lot of differences too and has a lot of cool new stuff in it. And so we're hoping to see some of those new things push new policies this year. So one of the reasons I was excited to do this episode, Katie, is that first of all, we don't think of kind of professional employment as highly unionized. We think of unions as belonging maybe in factories and maybe in retail workplaces but not so much in professional so-called white-collar jobs. And can you talk a little bit about what you think the differences are and how your sector in particular benefits from organizing as opposed to somebody that produces cars, for instance? Yeah, I think that that kind of narrative is something that poses a challenge while organizing the kind of like, well I support unions but are nonprofit workers really in need of unions or kind of a nonprofit exceptionalism when you're at a mission-based organization like you should want to do this and there's kind of value ascribed to that. But I think that can be a really dangerous mindset because it can really erase a lot of experiences people have in the workplace where they are facing barriers. And I think for people who might need to have second jobs in order to be able to afford living in D.C., people who have child care, people dealing with medical expenses, the kind of narrative that like, oh, nonprofit workers are a different type of worker and we don't need unions really plays into, if you look at a lot of the leadership at nonprofits or the staff demographics, it's not often reflective of the communities that they're hoping to work with. And I think if we're being serious about shifting organizations, we need to think about how we can create workplace policies that actually support people. And I think also just thinking about unions as like a liability like, well, we don't need that and sometimes that's paired with there's too much red tape or there'll be too much conflict. I think the truth is unions bring so much to organizations like the process of sitting down with my coworkers and like on a giant Google Doc screen projected in someone's apartment being like, what do we want in our first contract? It was like really cool and kind of the most engaged I've felt in the workplace in a long time and I think makes all of us. Maybe even civically period, right? I mean sometimes union engagement is actually the place where you become most engaged. Going back to the issue of democracy and the democratization of the workplace, that can be also a vehicle for just like operating democratically in society generally and feeling like you have some kind of a say and like, oh, like if we all get together it works kind of thing. For sure. And I think, you know, sometimes that's really like unglamorous. It's like debating like itty gritty nuances of contract language. But sometimes it can be really important and I think it's brought all of us closer together and also kind of put forward just a real sense of solidarity. It sounds cheesy but it's a really powerful feeling to build something like that with your coworkers. Absolutely. So my little bit of my background as a reporter, I joined the workplace basically as a news assistant at Reuters in 2001 and strongly unionized workplace like close shop in the sense that as soon as you join you're in the guild and I was just like, oh, this is kind of quaint. I'm in a union. I'm 24. Quaint. I was just kind of like all these white collar people hanging out. All right. And then I found all these benefits that I didn't expect. And they were like, especially in journalism because in journalism, like the ability to talk back to your bosses, the ability to like have strong responses is crucial and having that is. And the other thing is like having a lack of internal competition and having cooperation in order to like work on stories together and break news together creates a totally different environment than if you work in a place where like you're being graded versus your colleague, which creates this weird environment. So I was totally convinced of the white collar union thing from early on. Agreed. It's like really fascinating because I used to work in development and other organizations and the topic of just unionization never came up for the reasons that you said. It's like, oh, well, we're all part of this mission and we're like, we're all a family, you know, like we're all a family as long as they get to be the parents. You know what I mean? So like it's kind of that dynamic going on. And that's a very duplicitous nonprofit thing that I've come to discover about like, oh, yeah, just do it for the love. No, actually, the first thing that I learned as a union organizer and rep was that like, you're actually getting a pay cut for every free minute that you give your employer. And that's how you think about your paycheck. And so, you know, you should value your time if you want them to value it. I do want to just point out, though, that I think it's really great that there's just three young people. And Pedro, I mean, like, he's also young at this table. You know, it's just like because unions are becoming more popular amongst like millennials and also just Gen Z and like general. And if like we're going to want to make this like structural change that we need to make, you know, it's going to have to go into these places where in spaces where people don't see themselves as being part of a union or need a union. So I just think it's really cool that like people like you all are just fighting for this on like every level and like y'all are like under 30. It's like so cool. And then, you know, it ranges to, you know, the gamut in the sense that you have Google workers organizing you have Uber drivers or you have a lot of non union workers organizing to which is kind of exciting. But I'd love to ask both of you what you find like what movements you find inspiration because there's so much cool work happening from education to, you know, to, you know, all kinds of sectors that are suddenly vibrant. Yes, you're the protest. Yeah, well, I mean, I think that you've touched on so many great topics here that we talk about every day at NPU. I would like to point out that millennials make up 35% of the workforce right now. And so we're the largest generation actually in the workforce. And so all these ideas that we talk about being on the fringe are now being brought into the mainstream because we're the ones in the workforce implementing them. And I think millennials have a really strong view of unions. And so bringing that in has caused there to be a lot more organizing. And I'm excited about our nonprofits for one, obviously, but also besides that there have been a lot of really cool movements in digital journalism lately and outlets that, you know, you thought both both new outlets and old outlets, like the LA Times just bargained one of their their first contract in like 130 years or something like that. Like they used to have it and then they did it and then they bargained. And like Hearst, for example, is organizing right now and management is putting up a really strong anti-union campaign against them. But then there's a lot of really cool, you know, digital outlets online that are organizing, you know, vice, refinery 29. Yeah, I mean, you name it, a lot of them are organizing. And for me, I think that's really cool. I do media relations at EPI. And so I feel like there is a little bit higher class consciousness or union consciousness among journalists, especially in ones that are organizing. And so it's been a little bit easier to talk to them about labor issues and try to get our research highlighted when people are already dealing with this in their own workplaces. That makes a huge difference, definitely. What about you? I think I've been really inspired by the teacher's strikes and my mom's a public school teacher. And so I grew up with her on, you know, every Friday wearing her union t-shirt. So I was kind of aware of unions, but never really like quite understood the stake. And I think, you know, a lot of messaging, I feel like I was passively receiving growing up was kind of like unions are good, but they're kind of antiquated. Like they're on a decline. So like why invest in that? And like in terms of like what I was hearing from politicians growing up in things. And I think like for me, you know, the financial crisis and everything that happened after that was kind of this moment of like, okay, there's this narrative that unions aren't going to be the agent of change. And yet at the same time we see so many powerful moments where it's labor that's really calling in to question the important things. And so I think the like visible teacher strikes and the fact that they're including things in their bargaining fights that go beyond kind of what you'd think of in a contract. Like the Chicago teachers talking about rent or LA teachers talking about nursing within schools and kind of how people across sectors are fighting for really standards that will impact people outside of the union as well. Yeah. I wanted to ask based off of just this like, you know, just this change in like, I guess the focus of unions and how like they're expanding their views and like really just bring more intersectional like strategies and policies across like sectors. I was just wondering though, how do you feel that MPU is different in terms of its organizing tactics and strategies compared to like say larger more top down organizations such as the AFL CIO. Well, so MPU is technically part of the AFL CIO. Most unions are because it's a large federation. But, but yeah, I mean, I think that we're not, you know, we're not your grandfather's union or whatever in some ways, but in some ways we are. I mean, in some ways workers have always wanted the same things. We've always wanted equality. We've wanted places, good jobs, good pay benefits, having a good life, having a job that allows you to access a pretty good life. And I think that an erosion of all of these other factors and other institutions has caused labor to be one of the last remaining remnants of ways people can practice democracy and create this change in their life. And so for us, I think it's we want people to have the freedom to bargain for what they want. And, and however, you know, we want the same outcome, but however they can get it, I think is fair game. If people if, you know, if one organization gets wage ladders and another one gets pay bands or pay transparency, you know, it's incremental change across different organizations, but it is allowing us to raise standards as a whole. And I know that, you know, larger, larger unions will be a little bit more top down and say we want to be able to get x, y and z in every contract. And we do have some of those things. We want people to be able to have off for union time, for example. We want people to get just cause, which allows them to not be fired for arbitrary reasons. So we have we have things that we want every contract to have just because that makes a strong contract. But the mechanism is not as important as long as the outcome is a more fair and just workplace. Your thoughts, Katie? Yeah, I mean, I think that there's something interesting about. I'm just thinking about how the conversation unfolds at the bargaining table and how when when people are pro labor, kind of the differences in versus like I know some of the media unions really have to face management that is like not even trying to be pro union like they're very They use every tactic possible to like including at one point Reuters started no longer withdrawing is like a really low blow tactic no longer withdrawing automatically withdrawing union dues so that people had to turn in their dues by check or credit cards. Come back. Yeah. Yeah. We had 99%. That's good. By and though everybody paid in because everybody knew, you know, buttered their bread. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that, you know, in some ways bargaining unfolds in a different manner, but there can be like really insidious things about just like, again, this idea of unions as inherently adversarial and that being bad. I think is something that like I'd really love to see shift in mindsets and for management to really like think of unions as assets for their organizations because it's their workers. So I think, you know, I think we face different challenges at the bargaining table and the argumentation can be a lot different. But as Kayla mentioned, fighting for the same things. So I also grew up with the same, although a bit earlier I also grew up with the same notion of unions as being antiquated and a thing of the past. That's important because of just numerically they have been crushed in the US and membership is down from like 30 something percent to what 11% we're talking about. But I think you mentioned the Great Recession and I think that had a huge impact because my generation kind of took employment for granted because the 90s were a boom time. Right. So employer like it was kind of taken for granted that you get a job and you'd be okay in some place. And that was suddenly not the case after the Great Recession and suddenly wage levels were much lower and debt levels were much higher. So there's a lot of forces that seem to be working together to change that. I wonder how that how that's more an urban phenomenon and how much it permeates the south and the places that are right to work and harder to reach. What do you guys think? How like our millennials, you know, are we thinking about just the millennials that we know? Are we or is it a phenomenon that's kind of nationwide and do you see activism in areas that you might not expect? Southern Poverty Law Center just unionized and I think a unit from Texas just joined NPU. Yeah, we're working with people across the country. Yeah, I would say the Southern Poverty Law Center one is interesting because they're, you know, an ostensibly pro labor organization, but their management waged a really strong anti union campaign. But they're based in the south and they're they have a ton of workers who see unions as an advantage. I mean, yeah, the southern states have been like, you know, black workers have been historically disadvantaged. They're disenfranchised. And so they've making it making it way harder for people to organize, especially in the south. But but it's happening across the country. I mean, there is right to work states all across the country. And I think kind of on a federal level, you know, the Trump administration has made it way harder for workers to organize. But I think in spite of that, we're still seeing workers across the country rising up and deciding that they want a union and that they that this is the way to get it. I mean, we're working with groups all across the country every day, every week, we get dozens of inquiries about people who want to organize and they realize that this is the way to do it. And so no matter what their lawmakers say, what their boss says, they want a union in their workplace. Can I ask you what what's the first thing you tell them? What's the because it's funny until I joined EPI, even though it's not a union member, I never actually thought about what it takes to form a union. I was in one and a couple of different employers. But, you know, unless you're in the formation of one, you don't generally think about it. So what is the advice that you give people starting fresh and what are the basics of joining and creating a union? Well, I mean, first of all, it's not an overnight fix. I mean, people will reach out when they have workplace drama that happens everywhere and they want to form a union, which is great. But it's not going to be an overnight fix. I mean, Katie mentioned that it took them about a year and a half of organizing and bargaining in order to get their first contract, which is now going into effect. And so during that period, I mean, anything can happen. A lot of workers can leave. You can get a new boss, a new executive director, laws can change. So you have to be willing to put the time and effort into it. And then, you know, after that, you have to kind of assess what the interest is among their colleagues. So if it's usually it's not just one person. If one person has decided to reach out, there's probably systemic issues that are happening. And so we'll talk to the unit about what they hope to address through a union. We'll have those discussions about what the likelihood is of getting voluntarily recognized by management versus having to go to the National Labor Relations Board for an election. And then we'll kind of walk them through the process of what forming a union is. And Katie has actually just done this. So maybe she could talk a little bit about the specifics of what they did at the Democracy Collaborative to form a union. Yes, please. Yeah, I mean, it followed the trajectory that Kayla just talked about. So it started with colleagues kind of talking about what we wanted to see shift in the workplace. We explored a couple different unions within DC. And I think the most powerful thing was reading other units contracts and just understanding, excuse me, what is possible with a contract and reading things and getting really excited. And so once you kind of are in conversation with your colleagues about, hey, I think we should do this. And then it becomes a little bit of a numbers game of figuring out when you have a majority of the people that you think should be part of the unit on board. And a lot of that is just deep listening with your friends and coworkers and really trying to figure out what a union could do to help them succeed in the workplace. And then as Kayla mentioned, there's kind of two paths. When you go to management, they can either opt to voluntarily recognize the union or you go to a vote. We went the path of voluntary recognition. And then it was just a matter of figuring out which positions are included in the unit, which actually ends up being a little bit of a stickier question than you'd think because labor laws are written for factory floors. And so kind of the mid-level management and project managers and some of the specific roles that we occupy at nonprofits aren't reflected in labor law. And so it can be a bit of a conversation with management around what makes sense. And so that for us took actually a number of months before we bargained our contract was actually just talking about who would be in the unit. But once we figured that out, we counted cards, had a majority, and then we started bargaining. That's really cool. And what's the threshold again of what percentage of the unit you need to have to... To get recognized. You need to have a majority of cards, so you need to have over 50% of the cards from the unit. But to win an election, I think you need... Well, so also you can have a unit as small as two people. If you are at a small workplace and you and your coworker want to form a union, you can. I think to get a vote at the NLRB you might have to have three people. But that means that you can have a union of any size. So you can have hundreds of workers like you had at Reuters or you can have a few people. And they all work the same to bargain for the things you want at your workplace. Can I ask a question to all three of you guys? It's something I think about and it's open-ended. There are no easy answers, really. So when I was an organizer and a steward and eventually a unit chair at Reuters, I thought I went to a couple of union trainings and how to do this and that. And we always felt like each contract we were getting just a little bit less and fighting for just to keep our heads above water, especially in a private sector context where we're facing a lot of animosity. And I thought about why we weren't doing more to sort of do, to have worker run shops that are more democratic and where management and workers incentives are aligned so that the relationship might be less adversarial. I don't know if you guys have any random thoughts on how to build a workplace like that. Or even exam, do you know what you work? Actually, you hear about worker run cooperatives. I heard that term and I Google it all the time and I never really find a cool example of anything happening other than random factories in Argentina that were taken over. So that's actually where putting on my democracy collaborative hat. That's a lot of what we focus on is the growth in worker ownership. And there is a really robust worker cooperative sector in the United States. Oh, really? Great. Yeah. Well, by really robust, I mean, I wish it was a lot larger, but I think a lot of what we try and do at the democracy collaborative is to surface the work that's already happening around creating a more democratic economy. And so there is a lot of worker owned co-ops, especially in sectors like cleaning services and instead of having a traditional model of one owner and workers like the profits are shared as well as the decision making. An example we hold up a lot is this organization called the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, Ohio, and it's a network of worker owned cooperatives. There's a laundry, there's a greenhouse, there's a construction firm, and the overarching nonprofit Evergreen Cooperatives works to incubate new cooperatives and also has a community governance structure. So I encourage everyone to look that up, but I think in terms of how that fits in a union context, that was kind of a challenge because there are also models. There's worker directed nonprofits is another model and we opted to unionize instead, mostly because the contracts we found spoke exactly to the needs that we wanted to address, but I think it's very dependent on your workplace and kind of what you're trying to accomplish. But I think worker ownership is another critical area where we can democratize the economy and unions are another. I would just have, I mean, Katie's probably the relative expert on this at the table, but I would also just add that through our contracts at NPEU, some nonprofit workers want to have more input on the board of their organization. It depends on the nonprofit because sometimes the board doesn't really have a lot of influence and sometimes the board is essentially running the nonprofit, but that has been an area in which workers really want to have a little bit more say. They want to have more diverse boards. They want to have boards that represent their ideologies a little bit more, and some of our contracts actually allow workers from the union to have a seat on the board as well. So that's one way in which they're democratizing the leadership a little bit more. Yeah, that was one thing that I'm really excited about and interested in. I'm seeing a lot more plans from just not only just presidential candidates and nominees, but just in general of opening up these leadership roles and boards towards having workers on them so that they can have a say. I know that's all the rage in Europe and Germany, especially. So that's one thing that we should import from over there. Totally. Yeah, German works councils are huge. They allow workers to be on the board. And I think you're right. Several of the presidential candidates have proposed that. Yeah, and that would do more, in my opinion, than anything. So just break down this antagonistic barrier that's really one-sided on the part of just the capital class towards unions. And in contrast to have a labor voice in reining in executive compensation, et cetera. Because right now it's just a cabal of people who kind of pay each other high salaries. And that's what happens with corporate boards. I mean, you could say the same thing about the nonprofit space. There's a lot of examples of that. If you look at an organization's 990, it's like, hmm, why is the executive director making like $600,000 and only have a budget of $800,000? What's going on here, gang? Right. And one of our contracts has a really cool ratio provision because often nonprofits will say, oh, we don't have enough money to raise the pay of people at the bottom. Well, OK, why don't you cut your own pay a little bit then? Or at least tie them together so that the person who's leading the organization can't make more than four times what the lowest paid employee is making. Things like that that are kind of creative ways to compress the wage distribution. And we actually have that in our contract. And it was informed in large part because there's the Mondragon cooperatives, which are a network of worker owned cooperatives, have that pay ratio. And since it's an example that we hold up a lot, we were able to put it in our contract. So the highest paid worker can't make X times the lowest paid worker. At Reuters, I believe at the time that we were bargaining, the managing editor, not even like the corporate person, like the person who was still supposed to be an editor, was making $2.7 million. I believe it. And a senior correspondent makes 100, and a junior correspondent made 50. So that was the range, basically. So I was like, 27 senior correspondent. It's kind of an easier, you know, the gap is so drastic that it's an easier argument to make even. No, yeah, like I have a friend in journalism who's telling me like the pay scale in journalism doesn't make absolutely any sense. Like wherever he goes, it's like insane. And like a lot of it he was telling me isn't even based on like just like, I guess your ability to do your job, but like seniority and just like who you know, pretty much. Yeah, more like who you know than seniority. I can speak. I can say that from experience because my seniority ain't counting for very much these days. Dang. But this has been a wonderful chat. We're running out of time, but I really appreciate you guys taking the time. That was Katie Parker. She's a senior research associate at the democracy collaborative and bargaining chair there as well. And Caleb Lado media had a media relations at the Economic Policy Institute. And she's also the president of the nonprofit employees union and Romney Jackson, who's development associate at API. And I'm your host Pedro Dacosta. Thank you so much for listening. You can check us out at epi.org slash podcast. You can watch us on YouTube, download us on iTunes, Stitcher, wherever you get your podcast. Thank you so much.