 Sarah, let's just start with you, because you and I have spent some time in the last few months talking about this summer of worker empowerment. I mean, you look at it on the surface, you're asking for a 40% raise over the course of a contract, but they're saying, our boss has got these raises. The share prices are up. The profitability of these companies are way up. Everybody's in a rush to have the workers take a piece of the action if there's a cut, if there's cost cutting involved, if there's tough times, if there's recessions, if there's cutbacks, if there's COVID. So not in that much of a hurry to give the money to the workers when times are good. And right now, for the auto companies, times are good. Yeah, the demands are in the range of what the American worker expects and should expect. After years of cuts and concessions, and don't forget when the auto companies were in trouble, it was the workers who billed them out right alongside the American public. And they took incredible concessions, including this tier system that means that some the majority of the workers actually are making far less pay, do not have the secure retirement, do not have the secure healthcare in their retirement. And they're fighting to end all of that. They're fighting to turn around the wrong direction that this country has been going in and the expansive difference between CEOs and the billionaire class and the average worker in the country who makes this country run. And Bob, that's kind of the point for a lot of people, right? That we're not all suffering. I mean, you talk to the average American and they'll tell you they're having a hard time making ends meet and inflation. But actually, the whole country's not suffering. Lots of people are not suffering at all. If you've got money to put in an interest bearing account, you might be okay. If you've got money to invest in the stock market, you've been doing particularly well. And if you are a white collar executive in this country, you have fared really well. But if you go back over time, Bob, you and I have talked about this many times over 50 years and you look at the median worker in this country, they're in many cases earning less than they were 50 years ago. Yes, that's exactly right, LA. In fact, it's shocking when you look at 1969, the average weekly non-supervisory wage, that's the wage for people that were not managers and not supervisors, was higher adjusted for inflation than it is today. And so you have an economy that over the last 40 to 45 years, 50 years, has done wonderfully well overall, has exploded. It's about two and a half times what it was then. But the typical worker, the non-supervisory worker, the worker on the front line, is actually worse off in terms of real purchasing power, in terms of non-inflationary, adjusted for inflation. Well, this is ridiculous. We used to have an economy that worked for everybody. Now we have an economy that works for people at the top. The big investors and the CEOs and the top executives. That's not only unfair, it doesn't even sustain itself because where are all of the consumers going to come from if people don't have money in their pockets? Even Henry Ford understood this at the start of the last century. That's why he gave everybody in Ford a raise because he understood that where are the people going to come from to buy the new Model T Fords if they don't have money in their pockets? I think that we have got totally, of course, we now have a two-tiered structure of the economy and this is not only unfair, it's bad for the economy overall. Sir, tell me what your thoughts are on this. So Secretary Reich is 100% correct. And the only thing that I would say is that Henry Ford came to that conclusion because Walter Ruther and the fighting auto workers made him come to that conclusion when they built up the union contracts and built up what many praise as the middle class. But the next standard of living and the standard of living that we should expect as American workers and with the promise of what this country has said to us, that this is a country for everyone to prosper and everyone to equally prosper in this country. All right, both of you stay there because I want to talk about the new approach that some of these unions are taking in terms of trying to get the concessions they need out of the companies when we come back. Sarah Nelson and Robert Reich, stick with me. We'll continue more Valsche after a break. This really to me isn't about the president or the former president or presidents before them. This is about working class people standing up to get their share of economic justice and social justice after being left behind for decades. That was UAW President Sean Fain with my colleague Jonathan Capehart, just a couple of hours ago. We want to pick up our conversation on day three of the UAW strike with former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and the president of the Association of Flight Attendant CWA, Sarah Nelson. Secretary, let me start with you. We still have a couple of strikes ongoing for a long time. The Writers Guild, the SAG-AFTRA strike, UPS managed to avoid a strike with the Teamsters in which the Teamsters got some remarkable concessions. There's still stuff happening around the edges with Amazon and with Starbucks. But we've got union leaders like Sean Fain, like the Teamsters Union, who are saying, I understand that this could affect the economy to have strikes like this. I understand that it could cost a lot of money to shareholders and stock prices, but we're doing this. This is the moment we have to use to fix these things. I'm sorry if it's going to hurt some other people while we get what's due to us. What do you think? Well, strikes are not things that anybody enjoys. I mean, it's not as if workers really say, oh, great, terrific, we're now going out on strike. No. In my experience, the striking workers really do sacrifice. The funds that a lot of these unions have to help their workers during a strike are not very much, and there are a lot of other ancillary workers who are injured. But the importance of a strike is to develop and enforce countervailing power against these large corporations that have become larger and more powerful over time. What workers have is the ability to strike. They don't have very much else. And at a time when corporate profits have soared, at a time when corporations are providing to their investors huge stock buybacks, at a time when CEO pay is out of control, a strike is all this left. I mean, that's the way workers since at least the National Labor Relations Act in the mid 30s, and that's the way workers have to respond. That is the tool they must use. Sarah, this is something that's similar in your industry. The automakers came out with statements to say we've made very good offers to the auto workers, and they're far better than the automakers who operate in the United States who are not unionized. They're making the argument that we're paying our unionized members better than those others that are not unionized. This is often an argument that companies use when talking about striking workers. Well, what's going to happen is that the workers are going to win here. They're going to stick together. I want to be very clear that times have changed. 75% of the American public are with the auto workers striking right now. That's a big change, and that is showing that the narrative that it's the workers who choose to strike rather than the companies who are not bargaining with us fairly are the ones who are putting the economy on its head. No, it's been these executives who have done that, and the workers with the backing of the American public are going to turn that around. So we're going to strike and turn this around, and the workers are doing that everywhere, and they're prepared to do it everywhere. Flight attendants at American Airlines just took a 99.5% strike vote. Alaska Airlines Flight Attendants, United Airlines Flight Attendants are not fired behind them if necessary to take on these companies to make sure that we get what we deserve. So workers are prepared to do whatever it takes, and it does hurt, but I want to also recognize that UAW is being very smart about this. They are using a strike tactic that is much like one that our union uses called chaos, and they're going to roll out the strikes on the union's time. So workers can also be creative. Robert Reich is correct that this is our one tool that we have to stand up for ourselves, but we can also be smart about it, and we can do this in a way that is going to make sure that we can be out there one day longer and one day stronger than the company, and that's exactly what's happening on the writer's strike and the strike after strike and the Pittsburgh strikers at the guild there. And they are doing this, and they're going to stay doing this until they win. Robert, let's talk about, there might be one other tool that strikers have today, and that is Joe Biden and this administration, which is very pro-union. Every time I talk to the administration about these things, they tend to not want to look like they're putting their thumb on the scale, but if this strike goes in the next week, we do know that Gene Sperling, whom you know, and the new labor secretary might get themselves involved. What does that look like? Well, it's a very, very good question. I hope they get involved in the sense that they make it very, very clear to the workers, to the companies, and to the public that the administration is on the side of working people. There should be no question about it. I mean, this is, in all of these industries, this is not only the auto industry, you see over the last four years that profits have soared, that stock buybacks have soared, but actually worker pay has gone almost nowhere. And if you look at the future with artificial intelligence, workers need some protection. They need some security. And when you talk about workers, we're talking about most people in this country. We're not talking about a small group of unionized workers. Those unionized workers are, in a sense, representing all workers, because all workers need a raise. So I hope the Biden administration comes out very squarely and unambiguously for the workers.