 Hello and welcome to today's event. My name is Mary Alice McCarthy and I direct the Center on Education and Labor at New America. For those of you not familiar with New America, we are a public policy think tank dedicated to renewing the promise of America by continuing the quest to realize our nation's highest ideals. And one of those ideals is that every American worker have access to good family sustaining jobs that include health insurance, paid leave and a secure retirement. At the Center on Education and Labor we're focused on the policies and strategies that are necessary to build an economy with good jobs for all. So today, this afternoon, we're going to talk about the growing number of workers who are not satisfied with their jobs, and are actually willing to go on strike or threatened to go on strike with the goal of getting a better deal from their employers. In fact, according to Cornell University's Labor Action Tracker, there have been 268 strikes so far this year, including 56 in the month of October alone. And while most of those strikes are pretty small, the decision by more than 10,000 workers at John Deere company to go on strike in mid October really caught the nation's attention. So today we're going to talk about the Deere worker strike and also the palpable uptick in the number of labor actions from strikes to protest the people just saying enough is enough and quitting their jobs. What is the turning point in the relationship between American workers and their employers? Are these labor actions part of a broader trend that actually began before the pandemic and is now picking back up again? Or are these labor actions better understood as temporary byproducts of the pandemic that will pass once the economy fully reopens? Has anything really changed in the structural balance of power between American workers and employers? To sort through these questions, we're going to hear from three esteemed panelists today who have a long history of writing and researching about labor issues and workers. Specifically, we'll hear first from journalist Dr. Maximilian Alvarez, who is also the editor in chief of the Real News Network, a digital news platform that has a very active labor beat. Next, we'll hear from Professor of Communication Studies, Dr. Christopher Martin of the University of Northern Iowa, and author of No Longer Newsworthy, How the Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Class. And then we'll hear from Dr. Tony Gilpin, a labor historian and author of the recent book The Long Deep Grudge, a story of big capital, radical labor, and class war in the American heartland. And last, but certainly not least, we hope to hear from you and your questions for the panelists. So let's go ahead and get started and we'll kick it off with you, Max. Let's start by talking about the Deer Strike. On October 14th, John Deere workers represented by nine union locals across 14 plants, voted overwhelmingly 99% to go on strike. And before they did that, they voted again overwhelmingly to reject the six year contract that their union, the United Auto Workers, had negotiated with the company. I think it seems fair to say that this strike caught both John Deere and the UAW a bit by surprise. So can you just talk to us and you've written about the strike, what happened and how did the UAW agree to a contract that 90% of its workers rejected? That's the right question. I mean, I think, you know, I just wanted to kind of say upfront that I'll try to stick to details that won't date this conversation too much but as we speak, UAW members with John Deere are currently voting on or maybe voting just finished. They're currently voting on ratifying the new contract that's been proposed. But as you mentioned, they overwhelmingly like over 90% of the people who voted voted it down in early October when they were presented with the initial contract. So that's really the important place to start with the question that you asked, right, is like, how could there be such a staggering divide between the rank and file, and John Deere and the UAW international leadership, because that was a pretty darn significant divine, right, and in retrospect it really shouldn't be all that surprising. I mean, I think one of the things that I always stress to people is that, you know, we can talk about this later. In the panel with everyone kind of involved but I mean there is, as we've been trying to track at the real news network, right, something happening right now. The labor movement has been knocked on its back for many decades. And so we obviously need to temper our expectations, right, I mean, even though we are excited about the strikes that have been cropping up the kind of increasing sense of labor militancy, not just within unions, but you know, it's really manifesting in things like historic numbers of American workers voluntarily quitting their jobs, and kind of being way more vocal and public about, you know, the what what kind of treatment they get at their jobs and what they're not going to put up with anymore. And so the fact that so many workers in the United States, but not exclusively are feeling a bit more emboldened to take this step I think is really significant. And it's also not, you know, unprecedented right this is something that tends to happen after periods of great sacrifice right I mean, a lot of people compared coven 19 to the Spanish flu a century ago. A century ago after the Spanish flu in 1918, you did see a lot of increased kind of labor militancy, not just because workers, you know, had made a lot of sacrifices during the Spanish flu but because they made a hell of a lot of sacrifices during wartime. It also made a lot of sacrifices to keep production going to not kind of assert, you know, like their demands in the workplace for the greater nationalist effort. There's a lot of history I'm paving over right where you know, including the AFL like really, you know, squashed its left wing to make the sort of bargain with the government that you know it would keep production going, yada yada yada The point being is that after that you did see a lot of workers say hey, we tightened our belts. We made you know the war effort possible we we kept this country afloat. We want restitution right like we want what we are owed, you are seeing a kind of similar generalized sense among the American workforce. Now that has not only been tightening its belt and keeping society afloat through the COVID-19 pandemic, including workers at John Deere who were deemed essential and who risked their lives for the past two years to keep, not only keep this company going, but to make it more profitable than it has ever been in its history. John Deere is slated to record between $5.7 and $5.9 billion in profits this year. That's almost double its most profitable year in the past. And yet, that first contract that was proposed was demanding more concessions from workers so that that's where I'm kind of getting with this right so after workers have sacrificed a lot after they've been told how essential they are and praised in the media for all the sacrifices that they're making. Something really isn't adding up here as we are quote unquote kind of eking our way out of the pandemic where you know workers are being told to give up more by bosses and companies that are raking in more than they ever have. I think that's really the elephant in the room here we we tend to feel like perhaps we did in the Great Recession that all of us are in the same boat that we're all just trying to survive. We're not in the same case. We're not in the same boat. A lot of us, primarily working people had to sacrifice a whole hell of a lot over the past two years, just like we sacrificed a whole hell of a lot in the wake of the recession. That is not the case for companies like John Deere. They didn't sacrifice crap, right like they are, they are raking in as I said record profits. And a lot of companies that have been experiencing strikes have been seeing record demand that includes Frito lay and their workers went on strike. Why? A lot of people are staying home in the pandemic. That means a lot of people are eating a lot more chips production has been ramping up, but Frito laid treated its workers so terribly that it couldn't retain a lot of people so it was forcing the staff that remained into a bunch of forced overtime. They were working, you know, like over 12 hours a day, seven days a week never seeing their family. And then again being told in contract negotiations that they had to give up more for a company that was seeing that sort of record demand same was true with Nabisco same was true with the Hill distillery workers a lot of people were drinking a lot more whiskey over the pandemic, and yet these workers are being told to accept more cuts so what you're seeing here is a real general, I think hazy sort of class struggle happening here where there are more rank and filers, whether they are attached to an organized labor movement or not are really sensing that sort of divide between the workers who have sacrificed a lot, and, you know, the people at the top who are just raking in record is paying huge dividends the John Deere CEO gave himself a huge raise, you know and paid a huge dividend so something's really not adding up and unfortunately the UAW international leadership, you know was was was is way more kind of aligned with management, and the fact that it did not kind of sense that the rank and file would overwhelmingly reject this initial contract is kind of a clear as day example of how that big that divide is. So let me let me ask a follow up question max you know you have been writing about a lot of labor actions you know taxi drivers in New York the Kaiser Permanente workers the miners in Alabama. And you know and hearing you talk to a quit you know one of the in one of the articles you you you talk about how the sort of contagion effective sort of successful labor activism. So I'm just wondering in the conversations that you're having with workers on the ground and sort of also with sort of other researchers next words. Are you getting a sense that that people are are are leaning in and hearing you know are being affected by what other workers are doing another another areas and we saw that a little bit with the with the red for 2018 and 2019. Is it is it are people are people sort of be feeling emboldened by what's happening or these kind of isolated events that that that you're seeing. I think it's a great question I think like one of the things that has genuinely excited me is that I am starting to hear more folks from the picket lines referencing these other struggles right I mean because that you know I think that those of us for a number of reasons who have like because we got to take I guess the long view here right I grew up very conservative in a very anti Union like family like we weren't militantly anti union but we had Fox News on all the time right I mean we were conservative, and we were just kind of drenched in all of that kind of anti labor propaganda that you know Chris can tell you about so well right. And so the very fact that labor struggles like a unionizing effort at the Bessemer Fulfillment Center in in Amazon Fulfillment Center in Alabama or, as you mentioned the 1100 coal miners at warrior met coal who have been on strike. I've been on strike since April, the 800 nurses at St Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts who have been on strike since March right the very fact that these would even be new stories is it has been kind of unthinkable for most of my lifetime. So it is genuinely exciting that more and more people are getting invested in these sorts of struggles and more and more people are identifying with these struggles I think that that's one of the kind of key things here right like after the recession the ruling class could not help themselves they've just tried to take more and more and as much as they possibly can and so more and more people have been pushed into that downward funnel of the what Bernie Sanders famously called the race to the bottom. Whether that be gig workers whether that be educators whether that be healthcare workers, workers have been getting ripped off in this country for a long time. And yet, the pandemic made it abundantly clear that as I said we're not all in the same boat the wealth of the 1% has exploded over the past two years to really unfathomable numbers. And that has had the profits and consumer demand for a lot of the businesses that are experiencing strikes right now, as I mentioned. And so again I think that the more people feel identified with that sort of labor strive the more invested they are getting in these kinds of stories, and that's exciting. I would really stress to folks kind of watching here that we there is a sort of ethical necessity for all of us who are invested in these struggles right we have to kind of approach this conscientiously. Right and I have a couple of kind of things to say about that is one, you know we can't just kind of project on to these struggles what we want to see we have to as I try to stress on my show working people where I interview workers themselves and have them really tell their stories about their struggles and their lives and try to go from there but also in the reporting that we do with the real news. Right you have to try to really understand what workers are telling you about their struggles. You have to really kind of know what is there and what isn't and be responsible with how you're sort of reporting this stuff, because workers are not stupid. People will know if you're misrepresenting their cause right and they will you know act accordingly. And so I've seen some people kind of jumping in talking about Oh this is the beginning of a general strike or this is a huge strike wave and like look I want that more than anyone to right but So we're as as Luis Feliz Leon and I wrote in in a piece recently for the real news like we're not quite there yet right the labor movement itself has a lot of work to do to increase rank and file democracy and its ranks we're seeing that play out in the John Deere strike right now, the UAW is currently the membership is currently voting on a historic referendum that would allow the membership and retirees to directly elect their international union leadership like the teamsters were able to do a couple of weeks ago, that would be hugely significant that would give the rank and file more say over the kind of bargaining that the leadership is doing in secret to present the kind of contracts that were overwhelmingly rejected by John Deere membership earlier last month. Here's here's what I'll say now shut up is that as far as like whether or not this is a strike wave. Right. And what we can make of this moment what I've been trying to kind of tell people is that there are a lot of institutional barriers to the organized labor movement growing at the rate that we want it to. There are a lot of internal problems with unions that that that need to be addressed in the kind of necessary rank and file struggle. There's a lot of legal barriers as we saw with Amazon that that empower bosses to smash organizing efforts. There are a lot of there's a long history of corporate media, either drowning out labor coverage or covering it very unsympathetically there's a long way to go until this can like really develop into a big unified thing, but what I think is exciting, right, is that, as you mentioned, Mary like, you know, a couple of the number of strikes happening at the same time is different from a strike wave. Right. What what is essential for a wave is that it is self referential that it recognizes itself as something collective that people are seeing other strikes and saying hey you know like they're doing it. We're getting screwed over maybe we should do it right. I am hearing more people talk about that I am hearing more people say, I saw my coworker quit and put out their resume on indeed calm and demand twice what they were getting out and they got it and I'm going to quit right I mean so people are taking notice, the kind of amount of support that labor struggles are getting online is playing some role in that and we in the media have a responsibility to put that out there and to be those connector who allow people to see one another and learn from one another, and their struggles. And so I do think that, you know, you're seeing a lot of great messages of solidarity with folks, you know, like on the Kellogg's picket line folks uf CW farm workers and kind of posting about solidarity with Kellogg's workers. You know people at John Deere and other picket lines kind of expressing solidarity with one another, people showing up to the taxi, the hunger strike that taxi workers in New York are still on. They're starving themselves because they've been screwed over by city hall and burdened by massive amounts of debt, and Mayor Bill de Blasio isn't doing anything to really address that but people are saying they're drawing those connections they are they are starting to be more vocal about what unites us. And I think that that is significant. Thank you Max and what a perfect segue now to you Chris. You're located at the University of Northern Iowa, which is just four miles from one of the plans that John Deere engine works in Waterloo that's on strike so can you give us a sense of what the mood is in your community and just how the broader community is responding to the strike and the strikers. It's actually been very supportive. The local community in the Waterloo Cedar Falls area which to people who are not from here has maybe 125,000 people in the area. The deer plant is the number one employer in these cities so so if you don't have someone in your family who works at one of the deer facilities and it's likely that you have friends or no no other people who know people. So it's very connected and and people have been very supportive and I. People have been bringing out food to the people on strike they've been walking the lines with dear workers, local businesses have also been donating food and other things they've been giving discounts to dear workers. So there's a sense that that you know these people and kind of a feeling that these people are part of our community and we need to support them. And, you know, John Deere's headquartered not too far away in the Quad Cities actually specifically Moline Illinois one of the Quad Cities on the Illinois side. But you know the money, the money that stays in this community is largely that the salaries of the people I mean the big profits that you know that Maximilian was talking about the nearly $6 billion this year that goes that goes back to Quad Cities at least some of it and it goes out to shareholders as well. And what the workers here saying is that we, you know, we want and deserve some of that money through, you know, that that we made for dear through our hard labor. And I think, you know, people here kind of get a sense I mean, it might be different, you know, like it wasn't in 1986 when the economy wasn't going well but the economy is going incredibly well, you know, for at least the company itself the corporation it's not going as well, and it's not that first offer from dear so, so people get have it, you know, understand that that sense of fairness, you know, that's something that not just popped up this year but it's been around this increasing sense of inequality, you know, going back to the 80s but especially since, you know, since the recession so it I mean corporations and Wall Street have done incredibly well, workers have not. And so I think people get that and they feel like you know this is the best opportunity to do that so you can't praise people as being essential workers and then say, but here's our really bad offer for you. So I think people get that. And in your book no longer newsworthy, you write about how the coverage of labor disputes has changed from what it was like in the 40s and 50s and how it changed a lot in the 80s and 90s. I was wondering if you can share with us a little bit about how that coverage changed, and then the question of whether that is, is the coverage change and you see any difference in the coverage today from what we've gotten so used to in the, in the last few years. Thanks, that's a good question. The, the, what we know as a labor beat, and a beat means that a reporter's assigned to cover that, you know, that topic emerged in, you know, for the most part in the 19 teens and 20s at least in kind of a formal sense at the New York Times and other places and by the middle of the 20th century, most newspapers and cities of any decent size had at least one labor reporter there's a certain point by mid century where the New York Times has at least four labor beat reporters. So it's just one example. So it, it started to change a little bit in the late 1960s early 70s as newspapers which are in still are the main source of, you know, generating news so oftentimes what we see on TV, and here on radio was first reported by by a newspaper, although that's changing a little bit and I'll get to that. But we started to see a shift as those newspapers consolidated became bigger businesses that were publicly traded on Wall Street. And, and the, the marketing and business people got an idea like hey, we should you know start targeting up more upscale people instead of going for a mass audience which includes the working class, we should go for a more upscale audience, and you start so you start to see that through the 70s and 80s and 90s through just about every medium you know newspapers TV cable radio. So, if you look at their, you know, who they're advertising look at their advertising or press kit it usually talk about how our, you know, our readers or viewers are, you know, over 100% above you know they, the typical, you know, media income in America and they're more educated and, you know, etc. They live in nice zip codes. And so that can be a profitable way for a news medium to work. But what you end up doing and is the subtitling book is abandoning the working class so. So no one's really kind of talking to them so we see the decline of the labor beat, we see the rise of what I call like the workplace or workplace lifestyles beat so, you know, a targeted at middle class people who work in offices rather than other places, and it's it's stories about, you know, office romances what do we're on casual Fridays and things like that. And we also see the rise of personal finance so magazines like Money Magazine, an increased focus on business at a number of newspapers, and the idea is like that. It appeals to people who you know have some extra money and are playing the stock market. Again, like there's this kind of it's for upscale audiences it's not for a master working class audience. Maybe those people abandoned I mean, I won't go too much into this but they end up at least the white working class gets picked up by a nascent conservative media who's appealing to them not on economic issues, but on cultural issues like you know the war against Christmas and things like that that you've probably heard about real big crises. What's interesting and to get to the second part of your question Mary Alice is that in this current wave of strikes. The mainstream legacy media have been kind of underprepared because they really don't have a lot of labor beat reporters, but we've seen a couple things happen one is that because there have been so many strikes and walkouts and other labor actions in the past few years you start to see just local newspapers like you know my local newspaper is the Waterloo Courier which is part of the Lee Enterprises one of the bigger chains in the country they don't have a labor beat reporter and that the whole. The whole staff has actually shrunk quite a bit in the past couple years but they've actually started putting general assignment reporters on labor first you know, if you remember during the early parts of the COVID crisis meat packing was a really hot spot in terms of getting COVID and a lot of people died including in this, this town and now it's john dear workers so again, there's a lot of things they're covering right in their backyard that they couldn't ignore because it's because workers are being much more outspoken and active. And so you can't ignore it so we've had legacy newspapers and legacy media covering labor where they hadn't done so before because they really committed to it. And then we have a set of digital organizations covering labor that that are new. And so I can talk a little bit more about that but you know max million would be you know one example of those people so we have people with. The real news of ice political Bloomberg Buzzfeed Center for public integrity payday report pro public covering labor, because they saw an opportunity that that the legacy media really wasn't doing a very good job of covering that so that's been a really interesting thing I think. And it does I will say it's been really encouraging to see all the new coverage and it is a different kind of coverage of these labor disputes and of the workers and how much worker voice to is getting into these new into these newer outlets that are doing a lot of interviewing in the ground interviews. One of the things that I always remember from your book was you discussing I think it was a strike against Nabisco maybe and that and then all the television reporting was about reporters sort of you know lamenting that there are hostess cupcakes would be harder to get or something and and that the new coverage lately again is someone who grew up in that in the 80s and 90s I do remember straight coverage focusing a lot on on the inconveniences that strikes caused to many consumers whether they were transportation strikes or the pat go strike or whatever. And interestingly, I have not yet read an account so far that really hones in on how inconvenient this strike is for everyday workers or consumers is. Am I imagining that or is it just not relevant this time around or what's changed. Yeah that's that's a really good point yeah I've talked about how you know, minus a labor beat the focus was more on people as consumers. And so yeah so if there's a strike it's like what we can't get but I've not, you're right I have not yet heard this story about saying. I can't get my john dear, you know green lawn mower, writing lawn mower, because of this strike it's messing me up. Stop it already. We haven't seen that and I think one of the things that's happened. And I argue that it goes but at least back to Occupy Wall Street 2011 is that we start to see the change of language and people criticize Occupy Wall Street a lot of pundits saying oh they don't know what they're doing and they're they're a bunch of hippies and they don't have a leader and they don't have a political agenda so this going to be completely inconsequential but it really changed the way we talk about economics so we had, you know, everyone knows what you mean when you're talking about the 99% the 1% effects maximum just use that term I think a little bit ago. It's ingrained in us now right I mean we didn't have that language before but now it's a common that common part of our lexicon is part of our politics to. And that's why we can talk about a $15 salary or wage and it's you know 10 years ago that was like, people would say oh my god that's crazy and now it's like no. That's maybe not even enough now so it really changed the way we think about things and I think. I think that really a lot of the digital media especially and news organizations that were looking and rethinking the, the labor beat we're bringing that in and people started thinking about it so it really did start from the ground up. And then the workers start, you know, talking differently about what's really happening and the news media really picked up on that I think so. So that's a really positive thing in terms of, in terms of the framing of, of talking about workers in the working class. And so Tony, let's let's go to you now. You're you're also located in the Midwest, and you are a labor historian, and you recently published a book in 2020 about the decades long struggles of farm equipment workers. That is workers who manufacture tractors and other types of agricultural equipment. So can you help us put today's strike into historical context some of these plants are that are striking right now are located in communities that have long histories of farm equipment workers and labor militancy. So yeah, and a lot of them have a pretty radical background, can you give us a little bit of that background. All right, my book focuses mostly on what was the long giant in the industry international harvester that also had plants in the Quad Cities, which as Chris knows the Quad Cities was the American is still the American Center of agricultural production. So, you know, you may not buy tractors or even John dear writing Mars but if you're putting, if you're buying bread, you know you are dependent on the workers in the Quad Cities for what farmers do and the food wheat so it's been a vital center of American manufacturing for for generations for centuries now this deer goes back all the way to the 1840s. That's how old and iconic a on American firm that it is. And I guess I'll speak to two different historical eras that I think we're sort of that are enmeshed in this particular strike and the first is the one that that you a w members right now are experiencing our part of whether they actually go all the way to this or not there. Their contract and the fight they're engaged in now is really part of this era of concessions bargaining that began, you know, in 1979 with the first Chrysler bailout when Chrysler and the US government demanded that the way W make all these concessions in order to keep Chrysler afloat, you know during the great recession concessions bargaining bargaining really accelerated and so even at john dear that's where you have the last time. And I said if you a W members that year went on strike was back in 1986 so it's been 35 years since they've had a major strike and that strike back in 86 was because dear was demanding all sorts of concessions from you a W members and at one difference between that and now is that at least dear could claim that it was in financial distress right now john dear is having the most profitable year of its of its history, and so really doesn't have any sort of excuse for saying you want to pay or give these workers less benefits but so that's right went on for five more than five months, and the UAW then managed to beat back most of the concessions that dear was asking for so they retained the pensions and the health benefits that you a W members successfully fought for, but they didn't get the kind of pay raises that they wanted. And you know the other important factor about dear, and the other egg companies is that unlike auto, they've always had incentive pay systems as opposed to straight hourly wages. These are complicated and incendiary pay systems that essentially mean that every worker or small groups of workers are paid differently incentivize differently. So, workers don't know from one to the next, what they should be making, you know these are very complicated systems and that's part of a gender what generates such unrest at dear. So you know you've got this era of concessions bargaining going from at least 86 on through to the present day. And one of the worst aspects of concessions bargaining that not just dear but so many workers and unions have had to deal with is the imposition of two tier contracts. The workers who had been working for some set amount of time, their pay their benefits are, you know, pretty good new hires or workers hired after after a, after another date are paid less often don't get the kind of health benefits. And this is sort of pension, and this is the reality that dear has been dealing with since 1997, when john dear imposed cuts to like their post 97 hires would get these kind of wages this pension this healthcare and folks that came after 97. We're going to get lower wages. They weren't going to have a pension health care, you know those kind of things were, I want to make sure I'm clear about that I think they get a lower pension. But, and yeah and have no post retirement health care. So there's this divide between workers at dear and it's so many other places that engenders, you know that undercut solidarity, you know it's a long standing Union tenant equal pay for equal work. And that's not in place at plants that have this kind of or any kind of workplace that has this kind of two tier system. So that's the era of concessions bargaining that workers right now are dealing with and one of the big demands that's at work and one of the things that's going to sink or float the contract that they're voting on today the temporary agreement that they're voting on today is this idea what's going to happen with the people that have been hired since 97 because they don't get any post retirement health care from the company. So that's one of the big issues and that's, and that is still will still be the case if this contract is ratified. So there's that and that's not a great era for workers to have to deal with that means that one of the realities of most of these strikes that we're having right now is that they are trying to undo the damage that's been done for decades to them so we're talking about strikes that are about undoing bad stuff, not getting new good stuff. And that wasn't always the case. The era that I study in my book or at least that my book goes back to is that first epic of unionization at dear and an international harvester in in not just in the Quad Cities but in Chicago places like Louisville, Kentucky, and the CIO the industrial unionism first arrived in the late 1930s, and then into the 40s and 50s, when workers and their when when the original union that organized in this area was not the United Auto Workers but the farm equipment workers, which was a radical left wing union affiliated with the Communist Party. And so not only were they interested in ensuring that workers get good benefits, good pay, but also greater control over the kind of work they did, the pace at which they had to work, the safety conditions under which they worked. So right now. So, and they achieved that by having contracts that ensured that workers had a high number of union stewards, for example, who could intervene when workers were unhappy about the pay rates they were getting, or the pace of production. All that has been eroded. And the farm equipment workers was one of those unions driven out of the industrial labor movement with the rise of the Cold War and McCarthyism and so it doesn't exist anymore and now all of those plants are you a w plants and the essential bargain was made that you know we're going to give you guys through the union we're going to give you guys good wages and benefits, but you know this notion of real shop floor control was kind of thrown out the window so what you've got what you had at least for a while was really good pay really good benefits and really punishing working conditions. So you've got the punishing working conditions, not such great pay, not such great benefits, and if you've been hired recently, it really sucks. So, so you know, so this is what workers are now trying to grapple with. You know, we have a lot of gratitude a lot we should we will owe these dear workers, because even in the two weeks they've been on strike, they got a much better offer, and they, for example, the current that they, they've saved pensions for two years just in this two weeks they were on strike that was one of the demands that dear made that anybody that would be hired right now would not have a pension. That is in this new agreement they're voting on today. So within two weeks, you know they've they've gotten a much better deal, whether these workers who are really as Max and Chris have talked about are immensely frustrated immensely about whether it's going to be good enough, whether it's going to put enough back onto onto the table that will be the question will be dealing with. Thank you for that Tony that was that was really helpful and I sparked a bunch of add on questions in my mind to around this, you know, the way, you know, again for so long, there's been this general acceptance of the idea that the deal with God in the 50s 60s and 70s. It was completely unaffordable for workers in the 80s 90s and later you know and that for for most of my life, it's just been about younger workers newer workers shouldn't even imagine things like pensions or imagines the kind of benefits that these other workers negotiate for themselves. And somehow I feel like we're getting to the end of that and that people are just not accepting that any longer and to your point. And the fact that these companies are, you know, are doing so well and yet still sticking to the idea of like we can't possibly afford a pension for for younger workers is just not, not tenable anymore but I loved for others to comment on that but but before we go back to the whole group I do want to ask you one more question, going back to your book which is, you know, the United Farm Worker Equipment Workers Union that you that you document yeah it was quite militant, very progressive, well ahead of its time in the 40s and 50s on the need to create solidarity among workers across racial and gender lines. The union had strong representation of black workers within its leadership, and it wasn't shy about calling out efforts to divide workers using racist appeals. What made the FE FE the Farm Workers Equipment is called the FE so ahead of its time on questions of race and gender. And what do you think today's labor leaders can learn from that. Well I think it was the part of it was their ideological conviction that you know this was a radical union connected to the Communist Party. So, unlike some of the other unions that came out of the World War two era convinced that there could be this partnership with management that could work for both workers and business owners. The Farm Equipment Workers the FE leadership never accepted that always believed that there had to be that there would be this class divide, and that unions a union's job was to to fearlessly fiercely advocate for all workers and to play the part of management by encouraging faster production, better production methods, that that was not the role of a union a union as a workers advocate only, but they also believed that that's in solidarity and that solidarity had to be absolute. And that had to encompass all of the workers in a plant all of the workers in a community all of the workers in an industry. And so that's part of the reason why this equal pay for equal work concept that has been decimated by by tiered contracts is injurious to unions I mean you get. I mean, if you have workers side by side, who are getting paid differently for the same work. You can imagine that those newer hires who are getting paid less not getting the same pension, or any pension. As the person they're working next to would think that this union business is really not so great I don't see what it's really doing for me. So, so one of the, one of the absolute universal concepts has to be that solidarity is absolute. People pay for equal work has to apply, and you know that you can I mean with this is, this is more the story that I tell about the FE and Louisville Kentucky, but that union leaders who are both relentless and patient with workers. And in Louisville you had some workers who were who were as died in the will racist as you can get. They created in that union nonetheless a culture of solidarity that brought black and white workers together, such that they were not just fighting the company and going on strike together and a relic relatively routine basis but also took that fight against segregation in the Louisville community together so so it can be done and I just want to I want to make one more point before I know we're going to turn it back to, to everybody else and that is that you know we're talking about you know do we have a strike wave, can we can we see more strike activity, and you know we absolutely hope we will and and should. But one of the things that I think is essential is that that strike activity has to be will rely on and be generated by people who are now union members. That's why this dear strike is so important. There's a legacy there's like you know militancy and strike activity has kind of like muscle memory like you know anything else if you don't practice it a lot. You know how to do it, you don't know how it works. And even though they haven't been on strike in a long time a dear, because there's this legacy of unionism in this community, people have a greater understanding of the importance of it, and they also understand that regardless of all the crap that the UAW has been going through and the leadership corruption and the disconnect between the leadership and the rank and file that the union is essential. And you know you can tell that in the way these dear workers are standing by their union. They believe the union that they are the union that the leadership isn't the union that they can that they are the union and they, they. They need these kind of people who have this understanding that regardless of how bad this union is, we'd be way worse off without it to take that message to folks who aren't organized the same way. It happened when the CIO organized there are so many stories anybody that's written a labor history about the 30s will tell you that it was a coal miner who worked in that plant former coal miner, who really was the advocate for and the auto plants and farm equipment workers plants in textile mills, people who had had a long legacy of unionism understood what unionism was and can be and so that's I think why this particular strike has is resonating and will be so important going forward. Thank you. Thank you, Tony and I do want to turn it back over that to Max and Chris but before I do I want to encourage any audience members this would be a great time if you have a question for our three panelists to pop it into the chat, because we'd love to get to those but Max and Chris I mean I first you might just want to sort of comment on anything that you've been hearing and please please do and, and I would also love for you to know your thoughts on this idea of like that we were seeing sort of a generational shift here that this idea that it was okay to have a different, different, different bargain for older workers and younger workers or older workers than newer workers. Is that what we're seeing or am I picking that up wrong but anyway I just want to open the floor and please comment on on anything and if you want to comment on that in particular. Absolutely. So I definitely have thoughts on that but it's been so great listening to to Chris and Tony and you Mary it's some. I feel like it's been a nice group effort right because after I finished talking I was like oh crap there are a bunch of details about the dear contract that I didn't even get to. Here comes Tony with just smashing it with the details and the historical context. Here comes Chris kind of given the delay of the land about the media industry so it genuinely. One of those kind of conversations where it feels like everyone's really lifting everyone up and I just am grateful for the opportunity to be part of it. And before I go on my tirade I wanted to also give some shout outs that I meant to give at the top. One, thank you to new America for putting this on thank you to everyone behind the scenes for organizing this important discussion. Folks watching now can't see them but they really have done a heroic and incredible job to put this together. So we're all incredibly grateful for them picking up on something that Chris said right you know like as someone who you know has kind of found my way into media in general and also the labor beat. You know I am by no means kind of ignorant of the fact that you know none of us would be here if it weren't for you know folks who have been holding that beat down like voices in the wilderness for a long time some of which you know we're already mentioned but given the nature of this conversation I would say that my knowledge of the deer strike would be very limited if it wasn't for the great reporting done by Jonah Ferman and the folks over at Labor Notes. Over there Luis Feliz Leon, Dan DiMaggio at all. But also, you know, Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen at the Labor podcast have been doing incredible work. Kim Kelly as a is really like has almost single handedly held up this 1100 minor strike in Alabama and pushed it into public consciousness for the past eight months, because she cares about the minors and their families who are doing everything they can to hold the line who are preparing to give their kids kind of donated packages for Christmas and stuff. That's I think what solidarity really means and we are all in solidarity with the great Labor journalists out there who have been holding it down. And I really just wanted to shout out their work. Also wanted to shout out the fact that you know we're talking about john dear Richard rich died walking to the picket line in northwest Illinois recently that has also been a big factor right you know a union brother was killed. And this is a sanction right that workers have and bosses are trying to take it away, and they're trying to make the picket line itself more dangerous and we saw, you know what that can lead to. Okay. So with that all in mind. I think it's about solidarity for a second. Right, I think that that is what we're seeing. And it's really it's something really beautiful to be hold right, you know, picking up on something Tony said I would mention Dan Osborne right who is the local union for the BC GM 50 G in, in Nebraska, that's the, you know, Kellogg's picket line in Omaha Nebraska so I got to interview Dan for the real news network and working people. We talked about the strike right we talked about the fact that workers like Dan who's been at that Kellogg's plant for 18 years are essentially putting everything on the line right now and they're not really asking for anything they're for the old timers they're just saying we want to keep what we have. We're really going to the map for this second tier of workers who are getting screwed over because we see where this path is leading right what essentially all these companies are trying to do with this two tier third tier system is first you know it's the it's the most basic example of dividing conquer right you you have people literally on the same shop floor doing the same amount of work for the same amount of time who are getting paid wildly different rates and who are who are some have better benefits and protection some don't have any and so then you get pissed off looking at the person next to you instead of the boss above you who is the one who's created these conditions unions like the bctgm are going to the mat and saying like we want to raise the floor for all of our workers, because this is going to be a race to the bottom. If we let this two tier system keep going the way that it is and if you think about it as a young worker when you come in if you're hired. You're not thinking about a pension right it's you need those old timers to say look you're going to need this in 30 years right trust us when we say they are ripping you off. And so the very fact that you know strikes like the the one at Kellogg's the the deer strike as Tony mentioned you know like workers have really pushed against this second tier that was already created in 1997 and then a proposed third tier that would have been created with this new contract where you know no one would have gotten any retirement so on and so forth. But going back to the original question that that you asked me Mary about whether or not people are kind of seeing what's going on and feeding off each other. I think this two tier system is a perfect example of how they are to tear it like that doesn't make any sense for your average person right especially if you've never really worked in a union right it sounds kind of very in the weeds. And as Chris mentioned like we are so used to only hearing about labor reporting in the vein of wages and benefits and that's pretty much it. So what is this two tier thing and the fact that it has become a popular enough concept for people to understand both what it is and why different work forces are striking against it. It is really important now here's what I would stress to to viewers and then I will be quiet is that this is really important it is, as we mentioned a two tier system is that issue at the john deer strike. It is that issue with the Kellogg strike about 50,000 health care workers at Kaiser Permanente may go on strike they are also you know pushing back against the creation of two tier and health care. And heaven hill distillery workers were pushing against two tier GM workers created the two tier two tier system in the wake of the recession and they are really trying to put that genie back in the bottle because they've seen how bad it has gotten. The thing that I would stress to folks watching is that the two tier problem is not something that is just limited to unions, nor is the kind of concessionary mode that Tony talked about something that is only unions, only concerning unions The class has been taking concessions for decades and you watching know what two tier looks like because chances are you have experienced it yourself in academia right 30 years ago, the amount of tenure track faculty was 70% the amount of contingent faculty was 30 those numbers now flipped. Now the majority of teaching at universities is done by contingent adjuncts or grad students or lecturers gig workers are a form of second tier labor right contractors in general at base contracting whether you're a realtor like my dad used to be and now you're fighting over the lowest kind of rate that you can get on these sort of apps like rocket mortgage, and you're drawing in way less than than you would have 10 years ago. This two tier system is basically like a generalized form of class war that working people have been experiencing. That is a form of concession that is a concession that we're being forced to take. It is a concession that wages have by and large been stagnant for working people for four decades. It is a concession that all the profits keep going to the top 1% even the workers are more productive now than they ever have been. We're all taking concessions. We all need to fight against it now shut up. Thank you Max and Chris can can you take us home here. Yeah, Mary else I just want to respond to one thing about you know you asking about generational change. I think there I think there's something there. I have two daughters in their 20s. I think for this generation there's things that are happening that fit in with how they're thinking about labor to so this is a generation that you know that that is confronted by climate change we have like, you know a bunch of like really old people in Washington making not making good decisions about climate change. But but they're going to have to live with that and they're very sensitive that they're also a generation that seem, you know upfront black lives matter. They've seen violence against Asians as well and they so they see a world that's not very fair and they've also been told that that your generation is not going to do as well as like you know the baby boomers sorry. And that's a lot that's a lot to deal with. You know I just looking at some stuff from the Bureau of Labor Statistics from just the past couple weeks, you know white women are still earning 81.9% as much as their male counterparts black men are earning 71.7% of what white men earned Hispanic men 72.8%. And so I think I think there's a new take on but you get the idea there's still a lot of inequity and unfairness in, in what's happening and these, these, you know, the legacy of, you know, two tiered contracts, you know that the ua w signed off on, you know, decades ago I mean that's terrible as well. And so I think, I think there's a new take on it and we see it in younger people. And so I think there's a new generation of younger people who are seeing how these issues connect to them. I think there's people like Lauren Kerry Gurley at Vice and Motherboard Michelle Chen and Sarah Jaffe who max million mentioned it among a number of other younger writers who who've taken up writing about labor and just work in general and how it affects people and I think that's been really a really fascinating thing so, so, and that gets out of sight of a very limited kind of labor beat to a much more expansive labor beat let's look at the entire economy and see how people are doing well or not doing well, who's making the money and who's not making the money and I think that's been a really fascinating thing so so that that's my note of optimism for today I really think that there's some really interesting things changing just just since I, you know, finish the book two years ago so that that makes me happy. That was exciting. Well we've just got a few minutes to go and I'm going to do a lightning round with a question we did get from the audience was, which was about what needs to change in the policy world to empower the labor movement. Do you want to jump into that with our few remaining, you know, what what needs to happen. Are there any, any policy solutions to where we are right now adopt the pro act. That's the, you know, protect our right to organize that's it's been around that there have been bills like that for, for many years now but that's that the current one that's out there and to follow up on what Tony and max million has said, is to carry forward that energy of what's happening right now this, this wave. And I liked what max said it needs to be kind of self referential and so it's not only thinking about what we're doing now but what can we do for everyone else and to get that past. And I know there's a lot of big agenda items in front of that in Washington right now but that one is really really important. Yeah, I just, I would add that if you, you know, I think it's great that we're seeing all this kind of support for labor, you know, all the way on up into you know the elite echelons, except that you know it doesn't really translate too much until we're going to see the support for legislative agendas like the pro act at least. And I'm also going to say, you know, to temper as a historian a little bit, some of the, some of the enthusiasm about all the, the good coverage that labor is getting. I'm going to say that when labor really gets powerful enough, you know people are not going to be so happy and they're reporting and the fact that we're not seeing like consumers complaining is precisely because labor doesn't yet have the power to make consumers really feel what it is that they're doing so you know I just wrote along Twitter thread about the 1946 strike wave. I mean that strike wave and steel coal auto transit that caused people to you know to shortages rationing, you know and not everybody was so thrilled with the labor movement, but I would say it's a powerful labor movement than a popular labor movement, because when we have that, then we can have workers like they did like the farm equipment workers in Quad Cities did in the 40s and 50s regardless of the Taft-Hartley Act. When there was a strike, they threw everybody out onto the picket lines, they interfered with cars going in, they made it clear that this they had the right to these jobs, they had a right to good jobs and good wages and they were going to protect whether the lawyers were with them or not so we need both an emboldened labor movement that embraces that kind of militism, militancy, and then we also if these people in the halls of Congress and in the editorial editorial boards are really favorable to the working class and working people and really want to address inequality, let's start seeing them put their money where their mouth is kind of literally. And max the final word before we sign off here. Oh man, I thought Tony knocked that out of the park so I guess I would just say as the editor in chief of a nonprofit news network I am not really allowed to advocate for policy I will just say that if Taft-Hartley was overturned that would be pretty many workers, and I'll leave it at that. But just to I guess kind of maybe add a final note on building on what Tony and Chris were saying, it is significant that, you know, we are seeing what many are calling the great resignation Robert Reich actually called it an unorganized general strike or an unofficial general strike. There's something there that we need to be critical about right the fact that this many workers it was like 4.3 million workers quit their jobs in August alone which was the highest number since the statistics started tracking those numbers. That's hugely significant but it also is a sign of labor's weakness because people do not feel like they have other options to stay and fight in their workplaces and demand better even in unionized workplaces. I would be remiss if I didn't shout out the family of Evan Seyfried, who was bullied by management at Kroger in Ohio into committing suicide, and I talked to his family on working people and it was heartbreaking. His local failed him and he is no longer here because of that, which is just to say that we also have as we've all mentioned, a lot of work to do within organized labor, and we have a lot to do to remind people that they can stay and fight, and that what a union ultimately means is that people, your coworkers will have your back, and that you can take on the bosses and demand the dignity and respect in the workplace that you deserve. All right. Well, thank you for that. Thank you to our panelists. This was an excellent conversation. Thank you to the audience who's joined us.