 I think Jack Hawaii rule of law and a new abnormal, whatever that may mean. And we have the good fortune to have with us today. Professor emerita for familiar Randall University of Dayton School of Law, and leading national and international scholar on race and racism and the law. I'm Jeff Portnoy. Partner at Kate shuddy and former University of Hawaii region and constitutional and First Amendment law expert, and David Larson. Recent chair of the American Bar Association section of dispute resolution now the immediate past chair and professor at the Mitchell Hamlin School of Law in St. Paul. David so how's the nurses strike there. What's going on. Well, as you may know, it's the largest nurses strike in American history. So it's bloody it's worrisome. You know, there's no way you can lose that many health care providers at one time and not have that impact patient care. What's interesting about this strike and I've been following it is that as I'm listening to the president of the Minnesota nurses association and listening to her speak. And I followed a number of strikes over over the years. And you hear anger you hear frustration. What I'm hearing now in her voice is is a strong sense of desperation. 37,000 health care workers have left in the last couple years left the profession for a variety of reasons exposure to coven being overworked, but every time a health care provider leaves that means it's more work for the remaining ones. And it's gotten really difficult for the nurses that are still working. They're having to work extended shifts and really they're just exhausted. And right now I think the reason they're in strike is they've just hit a boiling point they they're at their wits and they don't know what to do they're exhausted. They've been risking their lives for a couple years. They, they've been angels. They've come to work under circumstances when other people may not have come to their jobs. I don't think they've been terrific, but they're exhausted. And we're in a real crisis situation because, on the one hand, they want better scheduling fewer hours, more pay. But on the other hand, the health care organizations the hospitals have had to suspend elective surgeries, cosmetic surgeries, nobody's getting those jobs over the pandemic. And a lot of the income that they were getting for a lot of these elective surgeries gone away. So, their income has gone down. But if you are losing people you need to be able to attract them that might might mean higher wages number one. And if your current workers are dissatisfied and are threatening to leave, you might need to pay higher wages number two. And now we've got this very difficult situation where we, it's, it doesn't seem possible we're going to increase income flow in the short term, but they're very strong financial demands to make the health care situation better than nurses. So, yeah, it's a really troubling situation. The one thing that might help is that, you know, sometimes this can help in lieu of any kind of wage increases that nurses have been asking for more input and control over the scheduling that they'd like to have more cooperative committees set up so they can, they can dictate a little more when and where they're going to have to work. And if the health care organizations the hospitals can be a little more lenient on that a little more open to allowing more self government in terms of scheduling the, maybe that can diffuse the situation. If it has a question. I haven't really followed the nurses strike but I've been having talked healthcare law is something that I am really familiar with in terms of the stresses and one of the questions that I have because I feel like profit and nonprofit hospitals and organizations do this trick. They talk about income coming in as a reason for not being able to increase wages, but at the same time, they have these huge financial reserves. And the question I always had was okay you're in comes not coming in but draw from your financial reserve. This is a crisis, you know, what are the financial reserves of the hospitals and people in in in your area. I know that I don't know the financial reserves but it's thank you for bringing up the point of finances because one thing that actually has been very troubling is that as with many entities in the United States, when you look at the multiples of what CEO salaries had to do with the average worker, the latest report had it at 324 times the median wage. And so you've got healthcare workers who are hearing the explanation I just said about the financial pressures who are also looking at administrators and executives, at least at the high end that are getting paid very well still multimillion dollar salaries. And you're telling me no money's available but you're paying. And those salaries actually have gone down during the pandemic, as much as 25%. But they're saying still, you're still resting at $2 million a year $3 million a year, and we're well below $100,000 a year. So that's another reason where why we're out on this picket line is because of that, that pay in. Yeah, so that's playing into that to Professor Randall. Well, now that Biden settled the rail strike and get on a train and get to Minnesota and settle the nurses strike. It's that easy. Well, hopefully that'll happen. Is the, is there a mediation service involved in that one for the labor negotiations. Well, so it's, you know, it's, it's unlike with the rail strike and the railway lay. So with the rail in the railroad industry, the National Mediation Board. And, you know, so, and there are some mediation obligations that are statutory doesn't exist under the National Labor Relations Board, they're not the same obligations. And one of the calls by the hospitals, and there's 15 hospitals that are being struck, which actually ended last night is a, it's a situation almost was thrown down the gauntlet nurses went on strike for three days. And the kind of demonstrate that we're serious about this, we're not going to go out and strike for an extended period we've been without a contract for six months, which is true. We've also been frustrating. So they said, Okay, we just want to show you that we're serious we're going out for three days. And that ended last night and they're back at work at a lot of the hospitals but saying that this is a warning and we can go out again and next time it might not be for just three days. So one of the one of the calls for the hospitals is that we haven't done enough mediation. We have to do more mediation. What the union is saying is that we need to get a little closer on these huge broad requests before mediation will even be productive we don't think we think that we're so far apart that going into mediation would be a waste of time, because the mediator is not going to be able to pull us together whether that's true or not I don't know I guess I'm not convinced of that I think a mediator can always help, but, but unlike the situation with the railroads there isn't the statutory requirement for mediation under the NLRA that there is under the railway labor act. Jeff you followed labor for years and it sounds like one of the things that may be a little different than the traditional compensation and benefits negotiations is now that workload and resources are becoming a major problem in not only healthcare, but in the air transportation industry in teaching and education and maybe across the board. How does that. Is that happening and how does that change things in labor. Well, I really can't talk about what's happening other places but all you have to do is look at Hawaii. We have more tourists now than we've ever had over the last four months, and our tourism workforce is down depending upon who you talk to and what you read, 20 to 25%. Particularly at the hotels. So I mean there's there's a disconnect somewhere because the hotel rates in Hawaii now are the highest in the United States and very close to being the highest in the world. All you have to do is go online and see what it costs now to get a hotel room in Hawaii, and then understand that the workforce has been reduced by a fifth or fourth depending upon who you talk to. So, you know, you have to fight to get your rooms clean because they haven't wanted to rehire the, you know, the housekeepers. You have to park your own car because they haven't hired the valets. You're lucky you can get a reservation at a hotel restaurant or any restaurant in Hawaii for that matter now these days because they can't get staff. So, you know, there's a new paradigm and, and, you know, you can blame it on COVID very convenient. A lot of people do. But I think, you know, it's a number of factors depending upon the industry. I represent lots of doctors, including lots of ER doctors and over the last two years I've, I've heard multiple horror stories about lack of staffing and emergency rooms and what's going on here. I can't talk about other places. Wait times are the fact that the homeless are using the ER is their personal physicians on a daily basis. And, you know, then you hear the hospitals cry. As David just suggested that, you know, they don't have the resources so I don't know. I mean, maybe we'll become like Europe where major industries will go on strike for a month until the public decides that they can't live with it anymore. You know, I mean, spend any time in Italy or, or England or France, where every day you wake up wondering all right who's going on strike today the postal workers, the baggage handlers. I mean the disruption is unbelievable. I was in England when they went on strike in London on on the on the subways it it was brutal. And, you know, they were out for a long time so David David's the mediator and probably has been involved in these negotiations I've been tangentially involved actually represented the nurses here at one point on something quasi related so I don't have any answers. I just look at the situation and so I don't know, you know, you look unions were dying. Right, three or four years ago, the number of union memberships were way way way down and they had virtually no power. And then in the last couple of years there's been a rebirth, you say that's good or bad. And McDonald's, Amazon, you know, Walmart, you know, facing all these Starbucks facing all these unionizations and, you know, it seems to be in transition again. Who knows. Well, one of the things is the. I'm so happy to see the unionization and the strikes, because the working conditions for American workers is low and middle level workers is horrific. No, our contracts scheduling people in a way where they working less than 30 hours a week, but they're not they don't have a set schedule, and they have to be available for people paying wages so low that people qualify for welfare and for Medicare. The working conditions for people in America is horrific. And it's largely because we haven't really had strong unions. We don't even have to have it across the board, just like I think it's 15 to 20% of the population was unionized and struck. I think that would drive up condition in, in, in the whole in across the board, but there's a reason people are striking and until people want to get off their profits and their high wages on the high end. I think it's going to continue because people have horrible working conditions. Yeah, one of the one of the kind of the impetus for the National Liberation Act will go back to Woodrow Wilson, who said that the unionization supports the democratization of industry in the workplace. I think that's part of the impulse for unionization right now that the schedules as Professor Randall says the schedules were being offered and demanded to follow our exhausting and we we just feel we need to have more control over our own lives and our work schedules and the demands in the railroad industry. One reason they're that's, that's the railroad workers when it strike is that, again, as, as Jeff says the workforces have shrunk across the country, and they're not enough railroad workers and people are being asked to work very long hours long consecutive days. And so not only long hours per day but many days in succession and and what they're in they've got a kind of an odd attendance system where they are penalized for any time away from work including health visits and if you get COVID. And I think that's one of the things that we need to do is make sure that the workers run against you and you're going to be penalized for any kind of absence. And the feeling is that that's, that's impossible, you know, we have life threatening diseases and we're being penalized on our employment when we have no control over it. We're in these conditions so part of what's happening with the unionization is this recognition that as employers are putting more demands on because of a shrinking workforce that they're pretty much helpless unless they speak with a collective voice and and do things like going strike. Well, it sounds like the part of the movement has been from the traditional compensation and benefits disputes. Certainly in the last 40 years with increasing income inequality and just egregiously unequal distribution of wealth that that's now become an issue as well as the resources and the choices of the workers themselves. A lot of work was shown by the pandemic to be capable of being done remotely. And there are a lot of people that would greatly prefer that. But you look, you know, the irony here is, and this may be a little bit of an overstatement, but I don't think it's much of an overstatement. Trump's supporters. If you look at it by economic breakdown and education. Far more are in the lower demographics of income and education. And he's the same president who is so anti labor and appointed his own cronies to the Labor Relations Board and all the other related federal agencies that deal with issues like this. It's a tremendous irony, because they support the politics of a president who is in favor of all the things that they don't want low wages, you know, too much pay for CEOs and, you know, administrators, there's a tremendous irony there. And you can agree or disagree with the politics. The Democrats have always been pro labor, maybe too much, in my view, and other people's views, but on the opposite end, the Republicans have been the exact opposite, at least in recent memory. So, you know, they have to either vote with their pocketbook or vote for the social policies they want. And right now, they're not voting with their pocketbook. Yeah, why, you know, like, I speculate on this and I certainly don't pretend to be an expert when they think of you and why is it what Jeff is saying is absolutely true. And when you look at the red states and the populations that are supporting Trump, they tend to be the lesser educated lower income individuals and you ask how can it be, because the policies are hurting them. And what I've speculated is that Trump also presents a kind of a philosophy of discrimination and hate, and that there are people who are making the choice that even though this is going to cost me financially, I feel so much better if my worst instincts are approved and emboldened, that it's worth it for me. I mean, if I get to be a bigot and a racist, and that's okay, the leaders say that's okay. Well then, the fact that's going to cost me some money, I'm okay with that trade. You know, there is there is one thing that he plays on and I'll defer to the press in a second. He does pander to those voters by saying the reason you're not getting more than $9 or $10 an hour is because they're hiring all these African Americans and illegal aliens who have taken all your low paying jobs. That's why you're not getting $15 an hour. And it's a strategy that has historically worked. I mean, we look at Trump and his supporters as if they are somehow different, but if we look at the history of the United States, white people and the whole concept of whiteness is something born out of a wall here in the United States. I mean, I'm not discounting the historic issues of how race was formed, but the concept of whiteness was formed here in the United States in 1792, when the United States first passed the first immigration law that said you cannot come to this country unless you're white. And what that resulted in is people who here to before who didn't identify as white, but French or German or Australian or, or whatever, saying hey, I'm white. And what led me in is it resulted in a huge number of cases, in litigation, people saying I was denied entry because they said I'm not white. I am biologically white. Don't look at my skin color. Look at my biological connection. The concept of whiteness started at the beginning and has been something that politicians have appealed to throughout our history. Ignore your, ignore your interest and support the people who will protect your whiteness. I was going to say it may take a little too long but when Norwegian cruise lines came out to Hawaii, they were able to sail within the islands, despite the Jones Act, because they made an arrangement that they would hire a certain large percentage of Americans. If you've been on cruise ships anywhere else, you know, 95% are Indonesian and Filipino and Eastern Europeans. Well, I know this because I was their lawyer. They soon learned that young Americans weren't willing to do the work that was necessary for the pay they were getting. That wasn't what they were used to. And so there was a real problem in staffing the ship. And so that's part of it too. I mean, you know, it's like, I'm not going to work for 10 bucks an hour. And so who fills the void, right, people who are willing to work for $10 an hour, because they've come to this country because they were making nothing where they were. So I mean, there's a real dilemma, particularly in the service industries. Professor Randolph mentions people ignoring their interests to protect their whiteness and I'm not, I would maybe even frame it a little differently, that that one of people's interest, given human nature is to feel better about yourself by putting down other people. That's part of our interests. It's a base, ugly interest. But it's, it is, I think it's part of being a human being. So, and it's a powerful, it's a powerful drive. And I think what is happening is that that's such a powerful drive and it's so comforting to me to know that it's okay for me to feel like that and say that and act that way. And that's going to cost me some income that's going to cost me some luxuries. I don't care. I'd rather, I'd rather have that trade. So, so you ask why would you follow a politician, who's going to hurt you financially hurt your retirement hurt the, you know, your wages hurt you in all kinds of different ways, because I'm getting this other thing. This other thing is very comforting to me. And I'm willing to lose over here to gain over here. I have great insight the connection to the identity politics. And the workplace conditions as a part of the identity of entire sectors of people, black, Latinx, Native American, and others. And the question of whether there may be more choice now. So one of the questions is looking historically, but we saw that after the last major recession depression. When FDR came in, and some of the same measures is stimulus infrastructure building and employment at levels where it had not previously been supplemented. Are those things going to help are they going to make a difference. I think they're going to make only marginal difference for the black community, because I think that they're going to be implemented in a color blind way, which we, and in a racist society. Whenever you start a program that's supposed to be color blind, but supposed to affect everyone equitably people's biases, people's conscious and unconscious bias programs design all work to continue racial discrimination and and so I think that they're not going to have not withstanding the, the, the Democrats, saying that the idea is to deal with some of the historical racial wealth problems. Yeah, I think that in the end, it's only going to be marginal and not just for blacks for Latinx and and for Asian Americans and for Native Americans as well. You think low unemployment is is going to help things because everybody will be able to get a job, be able to raise themselves up. Low unemployment is usually the way you pull yourself out of recession. But the problem is that a lot of these jobs being created are not particularly attractive jobs. They are not high paying jobs. They're not very rewarding work and they're difficult and they're strenuous and sometimes dangerous. So even though we might be encouraged when we see unemployment numbers, when you look a little deeper. Sometimes those numbers are a little more revealing as to whether or not that's going to be our way out. And right now it doesn't seem to be because we do have those low unemployment numbers, and yet we're not getting a sense of satisfaction and comfort in our communities on people aren't coming back to work. So that alone isn't the solution. So in our last minute or so. Your thoughts on where all this is likely headed. Jeff. All this. What's this. Racism, unemployment strikes, I mean, wealth is very, you know, look, the more things change and more things remain the same. And you go back and look at history as the professor has done. We go through cycles, and we're going through another cycle, you know, we've had this pandemic. And that is new. Since 1917 and 18, really, and we'll see how the country comes out of it. I mean, the good news is, we're only six weeks away from an election and I've talked about this before where those of us who were very worried about losing complete control of the federal government are now feeling very optimistic that at least we won't lose the Senate and who knows what's going to happen in the house. So, you know, all is not lost, but are things going to change dramatically one way or the other. I doubt it. There'll be ebbs and flows. That that's my view. Professor Randall, your thoughts. I agree. I don't think things will change dramatically and I think largely cause the Democrats are going to be unwilling to make changes in how the Senate operates so that they can do stuff that are dramatic. Yeah, I, you know, there's, there are good reasons not to vote for mega Republicans, but there's also the hope that the Democrats are going to make a difference is a misplaced hope. It's going to do marginally better, but not make a significant difference. The unemployment rate among African Americans continues to run twice as much as whatever the unemployment rate is for whites and that's not because African Americans don't look for jobs and don't want jobs and don't try to get jobs and won't take a job because of the wages. It's because they don't get offered jobs don't get hired don't get interviewed. And, and so they. So, so that's not going to make much of a difference. I don't think the elections is going to make a much of a difference with that. David, coaching thoughts. I always like to try a little optimistic and hoping that when the fact that we're seeing, for example, unionization taking hold in industries where it never existed before. It's never in the Amazon warehouses wasn't in all these fast food franchises that that that employers will stop and think, why is this happening and what can I do to avoid this and make the workers more comfortable. So we're not so adversarial. I'd like to think that there'll be an epiphany that we can actually voluntarily make things better, rather than going into labor strife. And that's what I'd like to see. Thanks so much, Professor Randall, David, Jeff, all of you who have joined us or will join us to view this. Come back again in a couple of weeks. We'll be back. More issues, more choices, more questions. Thank you. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktecawaii.com. Mahalo.