 Hello and welcome to today's event. My name is Mary Alice McCarthy and I run the Center on Education and Labor here at New America. So today I had the enormous pleasure of welcoming Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and author Farah Stockman. Farah is joining us today to talk about her new book, American made what happens to people when work disappears. In this book Farah tells the story of the closing of the Rex Nord link belt plant in Indianapolis, where for generations workers had manufactured world class ball bearings that were used as you say in the book Farah, and just about every piece of machinery that moves. American made is a deeply reported account of what happens to workers during and after the closure of a plant with beautifully written detailed narratives that really bring these workers experiences to life. It also puts these stories into a broader context of political, economic and social change over the last several decades. That in turn shapes what happens to the individual workers and their different trajectories during and after the plant closing. So with that, let me welcome you Farah. Thank you so much for joining us today and just to kick things off. Can you tell us, can you tell us what the American made is about and what made you want to write this book. Well, first thanks for having me. It's, it's really a pleasure to be here and it's a pleasure to see workers and working people make it into the national conversation for all kinds of reasons right now. I started thinking about this book on election night in 2016. I was at Wellesley College and my assignment was to gather string for what we all thought was going to be the historic election of the first female president. And instead, everyone in the place where I was, was shocked to see so many millions of Americans casting a ballot for a man who had never served even one day in office. And they made him president. I'm from Michigan. I'm from the rest belt. And so I started asking around like why, why Donald Trump. What do you see in him. And I kept hearing the same thing from folks in Michigan. He's going to save our job he's going to bring the factories back. So I decided to follow people at a factory who were watching their job move overseas or move abroad to really find out like, what does that feel like to be told that your job is going away because these people over here are going to do it cheaper. And at the time, during, during the campaign, Trump used to have these rallies where he would basically ask workers to call out their years of seniority. And it really, you know, people from Carrier, which was a sister plan to Rex Nord would be asked like, okay, anybody here from Carrier, like how you know how many people, how many years did you work there and he had this real rapport with people in the audience based on this and he would say, Oh, I'm never going to eat another Oreo because of, you know, the, the company that was making Oreos was moving away so this was a real theme that a lot of people had missed and I personally hadn't paid enough attention to it and so this was a chance. I decided to pick Rex Nord because right after the election he tweeted about it and got into this big spat with their union president Chuck Jones on Twitter. And it was just fascinating coming out because I was like how you know if he wants to be a champion for workers, why is he getting to this huge public spat with their union president. It just sort of flew in the face of everything I thought I knew about labor and unions and politics and so I really dived in and got it got an education, for sure. Thank you for that and yeah that that is wonderful framing. It's, you know, making sense of the of the 2016 election I think for for many in Washington and in the media was, you know, an urgent urgent priority after after the 2016 election. You chose to do that by following the lives specifically of three workers, John Feltner, Raleigh or Wally Hall Jr. and Shannon Mulcahy who all worked at Rex Nord. Why these workers and what were you hoping to discover through their specific experiences. Yeah, so john is a white union vice president who I met at the union hall. He was the first guy I met. And this was his second plant closing so he represented kind of an almost militant pro union stance somebody who he'd been he was the son of a he came from a long line of union people his granddad and great granddad were all mine workers and so he came like unions ran in his family. And so this was really interesting to me and I knew I wanted to get that perspective because there were a lot of people like that who I'd met who had been lifelong Democrats or their families had been always voted for Democrats and yet they cast balance for what was that, and I wanted to understand that better. There were a lot of black workers at this plant as as there are a lot of black workers in factories all over. And so, you know, in the media we talked about the white working class voting for Trump, white and the black workers vote for Trump, they were working side by side right they presumably have the same economic interest what was it about about the black workers or about Trump that caused them to have a totally different view of what was going on and so I really, I met Wally at a union rally where he gave us a fiery speech about interracial worker solidarity we got to stand and fight y'all. And afterwards there was this long line of, of guys and Harley Davidson jackets that were waiting to shake Wally's hand and hug him. And I was at the end of that line and I said, you know, I want to, I want to hear from you. I want to hear more from you and he, he, he became suddenly the most optimistic person that I had met up till that point he was the only one who had a plan for what was going to happen after the factory closed and he said, me personally, I'm going to start a barbecue and he handed me a card. And it was, it was Wally wood fires, barbecue, he wanted to start his own restaurant which was a big surprise to me. And so I was like, I want to follow him to see if he actually does it. And Shannon was the last person I found she was white single mother who had worked her way up from being a janitor to a heat treat operator she was at the time I met her. It was one of the most highly paid and dangerous positions on the factory floor she was a first woman ever to have done it. And she overcame huge obstacles to get that job. And she just was nothing like the factory worker the stereotypical factory worker that you think about she. And so, you know, she was kind of this sort of blue collar feminist. And I really wanted to tell the story of a woman in that plan because the story of blue collar women, it rarely makes it into the political conversation. And there was so much assumptions about them and that they would cast ballots for Hillary Clinton, and put her over the top and really, you know, the things that they were thinking about in their everyday reality weren't. They had they had a hard time relating to Hillary Clinton, or they had outright hostility to Hillary Clinton because she'd been married to Bill, who had passed NAFTA and NAFTA was just this recurring theme hatred for NAFTA anger and a feeling of betrayal at the passage of NAFTA which was allowing so many of these factory jobs to go to Mexico. So I learned a lot from them. And I mean I guess the biggest thing they had in common was that they let me follow them around, which was not something every factory worker wanted. So, there was there was that. How long did you follow them? It was about two years in total and three years. I pretty much follow them the entirety of the Trump administration. I started. I followed Shannon intensively for seven months in 2017, which is when the factory shut down. And I kept following her and, and I got to know John and Wally much better in 2018. And, and I, you know, I really followed them until, you know, I turned in a whole copy of the book in 2018 and then my, my publisher said no you, you know, do a few revisions and then, and then in 2020 COVID hit. And she said you got to add COVID. And then it was like you might as well go until you see who wins the election and so it ended up, it ended up being pretty much the whole Trump administration which was amazing to see how their views changed. Usually, when you're political, you know, doing a political story, you get a quote here and you know it's, it's kind of reflective of what the, the reporter already thinks, and what polls have already suggested and so you get this one quote that's hanging there in time but when you really follow people you can see how their views change shift what what moves them. You have to really see Shannon, and in particular a sort of a bellwether bellwether for American public opinion, because if she was angry at the administration about something. I knew that Trump would have to backtrack. And if she was, you know, if she was not bothered by Trump, then I knew, okay, this was not going to be, you know, this, this was going to sail through. So, anyway, that's what I, that's what I came to, to figure out and so in 2020 when she started souring on Trump I thought that that was the first glimmer that maybe he wasn't going to win. And I just have to say, having read the book, they, it's such an intimate portrait and and and it's just wonderful. Yeah, the complexities of the individuals and their stories and and and just the, I just found myself repeatedly sort of surprised and and and you know by the by the people's views and reactions to things and their resiliency was also just always inspiring throughout the book. But yes just such wonderfully complex and richly reported individual narratives. Another thing I really appreciated about the book was how you weave together these very personal stories without, you know, a really helpful explainer on the history of US trade and economic policy, and how those policies directly shaped what happened to each of these individuals. And so in the beginning of politics and policy, you and I had the opportunity last week to speak with Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio about your book he's a big fan of the book, and to talk about his views and as a as a senator from Ohio, much of it resonated with him very much so we're going to now run that clip of our conversation there and then when we're done with that we'll come back out and be able to catch back up with our with our live conversation. And now I have the tremendous pleasure of welcoming Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio to the conversation Senators welcome and thank you for joining us today. I know you read American made what happens to people when work disappears I was wondering if we could just get started by having you share with us how you felt about the book just your general impressions how it made you feel. I feel inadequate for a number of reasons to one I read the book once but my wife read the book twice, but my I gone through it before this interview to but I was really taken with what this book does that few books are written about trade from the perspective in this country. One of the things that I thought Miss Stockman said so well, and I probably should quote it to get it right she said that that every economist I ever ever interviewed the subject of free trade is sure to be it was a boon for the country. And then the next two pages later she said that college educated very far better and the fact that on, then on others. And I've seen what I am a traditional progressive Democrat that has fought for workers my whole career and this book really does show Democrats how the country presidents of both parties, the business community leading the way, and in the country is a whole betrayed workers, especially in middle America but really ever works just a more concentrated in the state that Miss Stockman focused on Indiana and my state next to Ohio. But I also unfortunately from my political parties viewpoint in my political ideology viewpoint is a progressive. This book really did show that working Americans, white, I mean, certainly white working Americans but African Americans feel the same way on this issue. It felt this betrayal and it felt stronger coming from Democrats because we are the workers party. They expected it from corporate America they expected it from from the the shills if you will in Congress that always represent corporate America of course they're going to be for these trade deals. But what what President Clinton did and President Obama did the damage it did to the country, aided by almost all Republicans and frankly too many Democrats that I think is just so well documented and in American made and I was saying to Miss Stockman before that I am when I when I read books I one of my favorite quotes from a book called how to read a book by I'm forgetting that the founder of the Aspen Institute. He said he said if you want to honor the craft of the of the of the of the printer, you don't write in books if you want to honor the craft of the writer you're right in the book and I obviously wrote a lot of notes in this book because it was so well done it's it's personal it's ideological it's it deeps deeps and deals and deal it dies into the psyche of workers in a way with quotes and stories and she's a wonderful storyteller and that made the book that much better. Thank you senator that you just made me feel a lot better about writing in books. I wonder if you want to reflect a little bit on the senator said in terms of what he's hearing from people in Ohio and he talks his constituents the sense of betrayal and the sense of frustration is that something that track with with what you were hearing in Indiana. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think the senator is is is a Democrat elected in Ohio today because he never he didn't vote for an after he was never confused about how the working people felt about it. So to me it was really eye opening to talk to people. A lot of the steel workers I followed were from die hard Union families that had always voted for Democrats. And it was, you know I sat there in the union hall and they told me the day they decided to stop being Democrats and a lot of it had to do with NAFTA and two workers I followed. This was their second plant closing. So their first plant closing was 10 years ago or 15 years ago. And that's when they started feeling that the Democratic Party had gotten in bed with corporations and if you think about how we determine what is US interests when we go and negotiate a trade deal. In the past it has been almost exclusively what is in the interest of American corporations and labor and environmental standards were just kind of side agreements if they were mentioned at all. So I do think that you know there's a hopeful sign to all this. They did renegotiate NAFTA in the last, you know, in recent years, and that has been that was a bipartisan success that we don't talk a lot about. Because, you know, Obama promised to do it, and Trump promised to do it and it finally happened and this is a finally an agreement that actually has teeth to it and and the hope of some enforcement so we'll see the jury still out about how it's going to work but this is what workers were talking about and asking about and a new far more about NAFTA than I did. I would slightly disagree with the stockman that this bill, this new round of the bipartisan success Trump. It became that in the end, but Trump put out another NAFTA just a dressed up corporate trade agreement that helps corporations and betrays workers. And it was Ron Wyden and me and some people like Catherine Ty working in the house who now is the Biden trade rep that said no, there will be no renegotiated NAFTA, no US MCA as Trump said, unless you write it, putting workers at the center. And it took us a year to convince the US trade rep that we meant business we will not have we will block it in the Senate. I have enough votes with my Democratic colleagues. And it was pretty much all Democrats to block it in the end, corporate America wanted another trade agreement, and they were forced to take language that that finally puts workers in the center and that what that means in the future is that every trade has a minimum those workers standards to lift up workers in other countries because to me it was never anti Mexico anti China in fact it was pro Mexican my position was pro Mexican worker and pro Chinese worker, because they're doing better as well I used to say when we all do better we all do better. And if workers in other countries are doing better it means that that they won't the companies are much less likely in Youngstown or Dayton or Miss Stockman in Indianapolis to shut down production and move overseas collect the tax break the Trump gave them and that the Bush gave them collect the tax break. Under mine worker safety standards and then sell those products back in the United States all these workers and Miss Stockman's chapter chapters on on workers in Indiana training workers to take their jobs. And so the world dropped out if the whole community experiences of plant closing I grew up in Mansfield Ohio we had, we had electrical workers thousands at Westie House, thousands of auto workers and General Motors, thousands of rubber workers in Mansfield tire thousands of workers and plant after plus steel workers at Empire Detroit. When they first leave people's lives fall apart. They look to blame somebody because somebody should take the responsibility, and even those Republicans did it to them, much more aggressively than than Democrats, they blame Democrats, in part because we promise to do better. And we have been the party of workers once we over through our segregationist FDR days. Thankfully, we became the party on a questionably the party of workers. And Republicans were party of corporations they continue to be the party of corporations we can we became too much the party of corporations to and as Truman used to say, shed might as you're not two choices you might as well take the real thing. Corporate America they go with corporate America and that was our, that was our loss in the country's losses. The stock one pointed out so well. Speaking of biases sort of built in biases but also maybe some some changing conventional wisdom is is is labor unions, you know you both mentioned labor unions you mentioned the steel workers direction or plant that you document is a steel worker plant or was a steel worker plant. And for a long time I felt like not only were sort of elite sort of, you know, thinking that plant closures were inevitable but also that somehow labor unions had caused them to a certain extent we're part of the problem and I feel like are we seeing a shift in that opinion as well and I guess for both of you where do you see sort of unions sort of fitting into the people you talk to in terms of how they see them as part of, part of, you know an important part of the future and, and in particular where do you see the American labor movement as is part of sort of recovering from what what has happened to our want to start on that and start. Um, I think for a long time unions were in a death spiral, if you, you know, even the, even the factories that didn't close were forced to negotiate away benefits that they had gotten their, their members, because the threat of closure and the threat of moving was, was so serious. And so that's what I saw with the with the union I followed and by, you know, when, when every round you're giving up something you're giving up whether it's wages or, or benefits that you had previously fought for that cynical and about what the union can do for them. I think now we are seeing a change in resurgence of faith in unions and what unions could could bring not only in the United States but internationally I think the Biden White House is putting a lot of energy into trying to make sure that unions in Mexico can, can fight for workers and that you're, you're not going to be fired or killed if you, if you join a union in some of these countries that enjoy the benefits of free trade with us. So that's part of, part of, that's a big part of our, of our renegotiated NAFTA is to empower Mexican trade unions as the Stockpins come and suggested I Republicans are as anti union as they've ever been. We have a labor movements number one priority in the Senate, or maybe number in the top three anyway, something called protecting the right to organize the pro act 47 out of 50 Democrats are co sponsored co sponsors zero out of 50 Republicans Republicans still put on they put him about in Ohio which is a swing state that's gotten more and more conservative as I think most of your, your viewers know back in 2011, the only time an issue like this has actually been in a state ballot. Republican governor Republican legislature Republican businesses we're trying to take away collective bargaining rights from public employees in the state. And we beat them almost two to one on a ballot on a ballot issue. So clearly the public believes in unions, but the deck is so stacked against them by the, and that's why the pro act matters so much. Democrats really are fighting for the pro act and Republicans are blocked at McConnell is absolutely using the filibuster blocks it over and over and over again so it's clear that Democrats are still the party of unions and the party of workers. It's just we don't we, the public is less convinced of that. I mean I think the public thinks, many, many workers think that neither party is on their side. Well Clinton once said to a group of us he said I can remember this right he said, he said the voters don't working class voters don't think either party will do anything for them but they vote Republican because they think the Democrats will do something to them. It might be take their guns it might mean force their daughters to have an abortion I mean it might be those kinds of things. But that's why our economic message. I have, I've been, I've got an F from the NRA my whole career I've been for marriage equality 30 years I've been pro choice my whole life, my whole adult life when I kind of do what it was. And, and I went in elections I don't I went in spite of those issues in Ohio and I know that there are a lot of people that a lot of workers at this but because I keep the focus on always on justice I never back away from one of guns or choice or civil or human rights in any way ever and won't. But if you keep talking economy because I mean look look where, look what Dr King was doing when he was assassinated. He was fighting. He understood. He understood how worker rights and civil rights come together. Who was he who was he fighting for he was fighting for the most exploited workers perhaps in America, sanitation workers two of them had been killed, both black men by a garbage impactor the week before I think his first trip to Memphis I'm not sure the timing, but he understood that that fighting for workers and fighting for civil rights were essentially the same thing. And that message loud and clear doesn't just when elections it gives us the path in the, the, the recipe on on how to govern and that that that commands a huge majority in this country. And that's the last question for you Senator and also for you for you Farah which is, is, what, how can we, what's it going to take, or how can we revive American manufacturing and should that be a priority of the federal government, moving forward and if we can what does it mean to do that. Well, I think we're starting to have policies that look at that and prioritize that in the past, we've only looked at Americans as consumers. And so it didn't matter whether they lost their jobs, all that mattered was the price of their income set, and being able to consume low cost goods was all that anybody thought about. And so I think the conversation is shifting towards citizens need jobs Biden talks about jobs a lot. Not every Democrat does, but we need to do more of that because jobs are more than a paycheck jobs are. Social networks, their self esteem. You know, the one of the steel workers I followed was a woman who was able to leave an abusive man because of a job in the factory to her that's what women's rights were getting that job in the factory that had previously. Had ever done before. And so I just think we need to get back to what these things really mean to blue collar people. And even just having an understanding of this in Washington. And that's not heavily siloed. Civil rights is about jobs factory jobs being available to everyone we fought a civil rights movement so that black people could have equal access to jobs in those factories and 15 years later those factors started moving away. And even just shifting the conversation towards the importance of jobs the psychic importance of jobs can matter a lot. I mean, we can go we can go on about whether the future factories are going to employ as many people. And, but I think just start having as a starting point, the fact that blue collar people want to work, and they don't want to live off a check that is from the mail from the government. That's not. I think that's not what gives them dignity, according to the steel workers that I've followed. I think just starting with that would make a difference. I think she kind of miss Stockman kind of, she didn't really dance around it but she, she showed, I was going to say she may have danced a bit around the, that just right now the term dignity of work I, it's a term that I use often it's a term that I love Leo, the labor Pope I'm Luther and not Catholic but I, I love Pope Leo because he, he really is the first major figure in the world that talked about the dignity of work and in so many Latin words. Dr King sort of popularized the term dignity of work. And miss Stockman in her book showed so very well how these jobs give dignity to people. I went to Johnny Apple see junior high and Mansfield senior high school in Mansfield, Ohio, with most of my classmates, their parents carrying union cards, and they could send their kids to Ohio State. Some even to a private school like Denison or Leslie and higher up. They could date some of the kids knew they would end up in fact good paying union factory jobs son of the wanted to be trades people, but it had a certain dignity to that to it. Then I think policymakers don't think they think well somebody's got to have those factory jobs well. The fact is if you're making a decent wage, and particularly if you believe in your union you're part of something bigger than you, which is what trade union you then you then have a certain dignity and a pride of work that really is good for families and communities and I think miss Stockman's interviews really went to that centrally and how important that is and I would I would add about what you said Miss McCarthy about manufacturer what's going to happen I miss this most recent bill we were working on biggest victory with but for by American the infrastructure bill we've ever had so you're you're you're building the Brent Spence bridge and Cincinnati, which carries 3% of GDP back and forth of the Ohio River every day. You know, build build it with American steel made made by American workers you we we've we're working on something pardon the acronym you seek a which will help to restore competitiveness with China understand all many of these supply chain problems are because US companies lobbied their Congress on trade and tax policy so they could move jobs overseas, make more money, sell those products back to the United States, making the supply chain who knows where and much harder to put it back together when we really need to rebuild like we do after in the pandemic. So, we gained by this, this new manufacturing policy, as the stockman said there won't, there won't be the Westinghouse plant of 7000 in Mansfield Ohio again they will not be that big, but there's simply no reason we can't continue to make things in this country and do better than we have with a partnership with the federal government not not a bunch of subsidies but more of a partnership on training and investment and all that that we knew how to do as a nation that we sort of forgotten about. Alright, welcome back everyone and thank you that was a great conversation I want to pick up on the on the theme that you and the senator were talking about fair on that last question, which is just again about about the workers and their sense of pride and dignity and their work. I mean a theme that comes through loud and clear in the book is that these workers do take a lot of pride in their work and the quality of the bearings that they produce in their specialized knowledge or about how to make that equipment work I mean Shannon and the and the furnaces you know and she really cares deeply and knows a lot about how to make complicated equipment work and also a lot of pride in their shared history. And it also comes through really clearly that these are workers who want to be treated with respect and dignity and that becomes a big point of contention. When the company expects them to first of all pack up their plan to ship to Mexico and then train their replacements and can you just walk us through a little bit you know and help us understand just the emotional journey that that these workers go through as part of this process and what you took away from it. Yeah. So in the beginning I was, I was really following them as they agonized over whether they were going to train their replacements, and this was sort of a like a microcosm of American politics at that moment because their plant was moving to Mexico, they were angry, and they had to decide, are they going to train their replacement for like an extra $4 an hour of a bonus or are they going to refuse and try to fight and keep the plant there, which is what the union tried to do. So, John Feltner, who was the union vice president went through the whole plant saying nobody train, nobody train if they can't, if, if, if we, if we can stop the trainings, then they can't move the plant, because guess what the guys in the suits with the college degrees, they don't know how to operate these machines, they don't know how to build a bearing, right so this was his, this was his idea. A lot of the, a lot of the black workers said, hmm, you know what, we're not going to stop this thing from happening. We might as well get the bonus. So they, a lot of them raised their hand unapologetically, and in the back of their mind, a lot of them thought, hey, we remember when it was not so long ago that you didn't want to train us. We weren't going to train our dads and our, our uncles, and our granddad's. And so, there was that element of, you know, not refusal to train the Mexicans was racist. And so that was an interesting element. Shannon as well she, she agonized over it, and she ultimately raised her hand. She remembered how horrible. It was to try to get trained as a heat treat operator in the beginning she was told, heat treat is not for a woman. He treats not for a woman. So, you know, there was there were different opinions, differences of opinion and friendships were torn apart by this sort of agonizing over what to do when the Mexican trainees came into the plant. And I went to Mexico and interviewed the Mexican trainees as well about their experiences and a lot of them surprisingly felt incredible sympathy for their for the Americans, even the Americans who had rejected them. And I remember being holed up in this office, while the steel workers outside were hosting a rally and it was considered too dangerous for them to leave the plant, walk through the phalanx of, of rallying steel workers so they stayed there and just listen to the chanting and keep it made in America, and the honking of cars passing by. And so, you know, a lot of them, the, the, the two Mexicans trainees that I really talked to, both of them left the company within six months after that, because they said, we see this company is throwing away its workers, and they're going to throw us away too. And so, you know, there was a sense of workers get screwed, no matter what. And, and, and so that was really, that was really hit hard for me. And I have to say, when I was the first time I'd ever read a book where, again, that the impact on the workers who are inheriting the jobs and just the complexity of that for them, and, you know, and just the way that you are able to sort of, sort of, describe the sort of pitting of workers against each other and their awareness of that it was really, really amazing. And that's the highlight of the book. So, you know, throughout the book for your very open and honest about how your life and your circles, your social circles, pardon me, look a lot different from the people you're writing about, and how those different backgrounds contributed to very different as you went into writing the book so can you talk about what it was like to write from the, from the vantage point from your vantage point, you know, being a lead educated, working for the media, and did this process make you think about your life differently since writing the book. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, just a little bit about me, my mother grew up as a black woman and Jim Crow Mississippi, and she got a PhD, and was a professor, my father, a white man from Pennsylvania, he wasn't from any great means. He considered himself middle class when he was growing up but he's probably lower middle class they didn't have a ton of money. And yet he was able to get a PhD and so I was a child of two PhDs, I went to Harvard, and at Harvard I felt, I felt poor, I worked in the dining hall, right, two or three days a week to make money to cover my bills and stuff like that I felt like, because who am I comparing myself to all the rich kids I'm going to school with who don't have to work in the dining hall and who have computers in their rooms and all the stuff I didn't have. But the reality is anybody with a college degree at an elite university or really any university in this country is immensely privileged education is an immense privilege in our country and the the economy is really designed for people with college degrees and yet we make up a third of the adults in this country only a third that was the most shocking thing I learned in this whole process was that two thirds of American adults don't have a four year college degree. And it was, you know, there's a lot of resentment around that for workers, the feeling that their knowledge was considered less important because nobody had certified it right so workers training each other on the factory floor. They mastered skills they mastered machines that I'm not sure I could have done Shannon's job, but because no university or training program had come through and certified what Shannon knew, you know what she couldn't take it with her. It was hard to take it with her and the kind of jobs that she could get as an expert in heat treat. There were jobs that she thought were a dying breed job. Like, you know, she was everybody walked out of that plant was afraid that the next job they were going to get if it wasn't a factory was also going to close down. There was like the you know the rug being pulled under you out from under you and so there's not a lot of appetite for for factory jobs right now because people think it's a dying. So I came to really see that even though it's normal in my circle to have law degree or a PhD it's normal. I, I, I interact with almost no one on my daily on a daily basis that has no college degree. And yet, that's the majority of the country. So for people who are listening who are decision makers who make you know make decisions about the country. You have to think about the majority of the country, and they're not like you. They're not like they're not like us. Their economic reality is different and it and it's not to say they should be like us that the answer is, it's not everyone go out and get a college degree. Because then what you have is education inflation, you have people who are baristas with college degrees right like now these days you need a college degree to stand behind the counter at a Hertz, you know, red a car. So, I mean, I don't think that's the answer is to make everyone just like us, but we need a better understanding we need to restore the connection between working people and and and the decision makers. Thank you for that and I do want this is such an excellent conversation I know lots of questions keep popping up in my head and I just want to encourage to everyone who's listening that please tee up your questions in the queue we are going to have a period of question and answer with Farah and I know she'd love to hear your questions. While you're doing that I am going to just ask a quick follow up question to that. And, you know, again, the fact that the education that educational divide is such an important one and sometimes I think misunderstood one, particularly among college and much of the media. I think it's something, you know, a lot of people are grappling with. I wanted to ask you to I think a lot of people, you know, we're sort of seeing conversations between which are more divisive racer class and I hate to pit them against one another because, of course, they're both very divisive but I wanted to ask you whether or not you were surprised at all by how race figured into some of the relationships among your workers and, and you know, it's salience I mean one of the workers that you profile Wally is African American and the other two are again they all share, not having gone to college and working in a factory, but then they do straddle this other you know very start divide in the United States just wondering any insights or any surprises for you in that you do talk about that in the book. Yeah. I was surprised by the extent to which the white workers had good friendships with their black co workers and yet we're unaware of how their black co workers felt about basic things. They're, you know, they had really close friendships they had a bowling team, they went to Colt's games together, they ate dinner at each other's houses a lot. They were in the same union fighting for each other's jobs. And yet, when it came to race, they didn't have a lot of deep conversations with each other about how they felt it was kind of a, it was a taboo subject. A lot of times a lot of white workers were like oh I don't want to step on that landline. You know, and you know they learned that things could blow up if you talk about race so don't talk about race. And so they were unaware of, you know, they were not privy to a lot of the conversations I was hearing when I talked to black workers about why they didn't like Donald Trump, or why, you know, why they, the fact that they felt it was racist not to train Mexicans. Like, you know, these were not sort of conversations that they were having with each other very often, or in a deep way. That was kind of surprising but I do want to say that the sort of I kind of got a different sweep of history when I looked at, you know, you, when I looked at these workers, and you can see that we got a middle class in this country because of a labor movement that made jobs factory jobs like that middle class jobs. Nobody gave them those, those middle class wages or safety or vacations or healthcare, they weren't given that they fought for that. And yet, you know, in the 60s only white men really had those jobs. Right, pretty much, pretty much white men were the ones who dominated in those, in those good paying union jobs. And then you had a, you know, the civil rights movement got, got black workers and women the right to any job on the factory floor theoretically, right, that's what it, you know, you couldn't discriminate on the basis of race or sex that's what we got with the Civil Rights Act. And then, and then the factory started moving. And so, you know, these are intertwined struggles. And it's not to say that every worker, you know, if you're, if you're a black woman working these factories you're going to have, you know, that's what intersectionality is all about you're going to have more struggles but, but I think the fact remains that these workers had much more in common with each other than they did with the CEO. And so who's in whose, who's benefiting in the end of the day, when we focus. When we focus solely on race, and to the exclusion of class, like, who does that help. So, I mean, I just think I think we have to, we have to see them as in sort of interlocking interlocking struggles and, you know, the two often I hear, Oh, those workers are whiny privileged entitled, you know, white men who just want to, they feel entitled to jobs that they, they don't really deserve and it's, you know, I'm not sure that that those arguments being made by college educated people who are doing pretty well. I'm not sure that rings true or that that helps us get to a better place. I've gotten some questions from the audience. So thank you. And I'm going to go ahead and tee one of those up right now. This is a question from Laura. And she's asking what kind of social support services were available to the workers you followed and, and from your perspective what ideally would be in place to help these workers get through something like a plant closure. One universal health care. The one thing that, you know, health care came out big in the book, the three people I followed it was a huge. It impacted them a lot they all tried to buy it after they left and compounded on affordable, even with a lot of care they found it on affordable. And just the way it was set up. It was really hard for them to get it. They had a price that they could that they found affordable unemployment insurance was something that really helps, even though it was taxed and it wasn't, it was not a ton of money that that helped and it was something they didn't feel ashamed to collect. I went with john to, you know, I watched john go through sort of run the gauntlet of collecting unemployment insurance and he said, look, this is a system I paid into all my life, so I don't, I don't feel shame collecting this check. If it were welfare, he a system he hadn't paid into. He would have, you know, rather walk through fire, or done, you know, he would have, he would never have wanted to collect from from something called welfare, or deemed that he deemed welfare and so there, there is a whole program called TAA, which is trade trade adjustment assistance act. It's, it's, it's aimed at workers who lose their jobs because of trade, it's supposed to retrain them, but there's a ton of hoops, so that they have to jump through they have to get approval for the classes the classes aren't always nearby. There are reasons why some of the workers I talked to just all they wanted was another job, they didn't want to go jump through government hoops. I didn't know all that many people who ended up getting retrained through that, and studies of TAA retraining aren't great, don't lead us to believe that that those workers do better. In fact, studies show that they're actually earning less people who went through that training that had they just gone out and gotten another job, which is the kind of discouraging fact we don't do a good job of that and these are particular workers they're in their fifties, you know they're people who are, you know, they're too young to retire but they're kind of too old to go back to school in a way. And so this is a particular kind of problem. Yeah, and that was one of the other questions that we got Farrah from Greg was it was about, you know, did you observe any effective retraining for workers where positions were lost and didn't lead to long lasting work opportunities in the same geographical area and it sounds like you did not but I didn't know if there's anything more you want to share on that. I should say that there were some workers who got on at a plant run by Eli Lilly making medicine, and those workers seem to do just as well if not better, as they have been. And that's because they were making migraine shots that cost $900 a pop. And healthcare, if you're in the healthcare industry, you were doing pretty well and healthcare in Indianapolis was like the third best industry you could be in if you're a blue collar person. And some people told me healthcare is the new factory. It's the new thing you can do to earn a middle class wage without a college degree without a four year college degree and so a lot of people flocked into the healthcare industry. You know, the trouble is just that it's it's an industry that's based on, you know, insurance and this is the reason we're all being dragged down by the anchor of healthcare costs increasing healthcare costs is that it's now it's such a big part of our industry and there's so many lobbying for those, you know, increasing costs because you're paying all these salaries of people who are in that industry. There's one of John also ends up in a hospital doesn't he, which brings me to the to the next question is, have you been have you stayed in touch with Shannon and John and with with Wally's family and can you give us any updates on how they're doing today. Yeah, john was in a so john agonized over whether he should get another job as a steel worker which he could have done and that you know I thought he would do that because that was such a huge part of his identity, but he decided to work maintenance at a spoiler lawyer to everyone at a hospital, because he thought, okay, nobody's going to tell all those doctors that this hospital is just closing down right he was like I want to be in the same boat as those rich doctors, because they get taken care of, and and the first thing is going to last long. So that was his even though he took about a 20% pay cut. And, but he thought, this is a job I can do in the future and this is something that isn't going away. He recently got in a big bad motorcycle crash and almost died, but he is. He's, he's, he's okay and he's, he's, you know, he's recovering. And Shannon, I've kept in touch with her. And she's her life is still tumultuous but she's, she's gotten another job at a factory she's making popcorn now. And it's really funny because I almost put it in the book. And she thought about going for an interview in the very beginning right when she got laid off, and this at this popcorn plant and they sent her the mission statement, and she read it and it was, you know, she considered it so corny that she couldn't imagine working there so she didn't really go through with the interview and now after years, she's there and and seems to really like it so we'll see and I'm glad I didn't ruin her chances of getting hired there by bad because I don't have a corny mission statement in my book. And we can get a question in the chat for I think sort of asking, you know, kind of pushing back a little bit on the on the union question and was it essentially was there not a time when unions became so strong that the productivity and quality of the power they had, did you ever get a sense of that that there was a certain sense of like, well, this is happening because we overreached or we got to load like that. A lot of things that a lot of things that unions fight for are things like shift shift change, you know, I want, I want to keep my shift I want seniority I don't they fight against flexibility. And I, this wasn't Rex Nord but another plan that I wrote about in West Virginia recently that was also steel workers they voted down a contract because the company wanted to change from three shifts or to two or, you know, and they voted it down and, and then the company decided alright we're out of here, we're moving to India. And so, there is a sense that workers see the world as labor and capital, and that is, that's the primary fight of that's how these union reps were trained. But when globalization came around, there was a, you know, a new element to that where capital could then take the factory elsewhere, right. And, and, and instead, you know, the people who own those factories said, you need to get in, get with us get on our team. Right, if you want to keep these factories here in the United States, you have to stop opposing us, as if it's this, you know, endless fight between labor and capital. This is America versus other places. And if you want to keep this here, you got to get on board and that was kind of the Trump message it was like yeah you fought for environmental rights and minimum wages and OSHA and EEOC. But now the, now the factories are side stepping all of those things that you got and moving overseas so if you want to bring the factories back cool let's do that, but you're not going to get those things get rid of the environmental standards get rid of the minimum wage, get rid of healthcare, start, you know, stop piling all the stuff on companies. That was the deal Trump was giving workers, you will bring them will bring the, that's, that's the deal he offered them I don't say he gave it. But let's get rid of all of that stuff that made it expensive to have a plant in the United States, and will have your job, you might earn $10 an hour, instead of 25, but it'll be here. That was kind of the deal that he was, he was, he was offering them, and, and they were taking it. They were willing to take it. And so that just tells you about the centrality of jobs, and the hunger to be a part of the American economy and to still be of use. So I do think that they're, you know, a last point I'll say about this is that a lot of these unions are run by small groups of people. And it's, it's a pretty thankless job to be a union rep. But like, you know, the members pay their dues and they don't often go to the meetings and so a lot of unions can be hollow. You know, the workers aren't really connected to what the fight is. And, and so it can, it can be, it can feel like an insular group are fighting for themselves, instead of, instead of everybody there were a lot of workers. After Rex Nord announced the closure there were a lot of workers who said, let's take the 30% pay cut. Let's take it. Let's just, let's do whatever we have to do to keep our jobs here. And that was not what the union was, was trying to say. Thank you for that. And so we are at almost three o'clock I just want to sort of give you the last word for is there anything you know again, for people who are reading your book particularly young people you know, and policymakers, any sort of final takeaways that you'd really want them to, to take from the book any any lessons or insights. I just, you know, I spent most of my career, focused on foreign affairs. I started my career in Kenya, working with street children, I had, you know, most of my attention was on poverty and other parts of the world. So this was the first time at the age of 42 that I started looking at the needs of Americans and how they are not being met. And I found that there are a lot of places that really need our help and they need our understanding and we should look to them with the same amount of sympathy and attempt to understand them as we would people in another culture. And I think, I think if we're willing to do that. There is a hope that we can start to devise some solutions to some of the problems that I was seeing. Well, on that note then farewell wrap up thank you so much for your time thank you for this fantastic book and I encourage everyone. You know, if you haven't read it yet please do it's really fantastic and this recording to have this conversation will be live on our website in about 2448 hours and we'll be sending out the links to folks but thanks so much this was a great conversation really appreciate your time and and and look forward to your next book. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. Take care.