Beaten, worked up. Guest thanks for the kind words, congressman. Great to speak with you. Host when i think about this book, i think about it as having three major parts after you sort of introduced the situation now, you do a really good job of talking about three stories about how workers struggle and built the middle class by organizing and bargaining through a lot of adversity and demanding policy changes. And then you go through a lot of thhard times is what i call the reagan era that we are still in where companies and starting with the president of the United States who attacked workers a lot in their unions and then you telling the hopeful stories about different creative and innovative ways and make some policy recommendations. A lot of books like this are criticized because they come up short on the policy recommendations i hope we get into that because you paid quite a few interesting suggestions on what might be done to restore the voice of power and workers in this country but a lot of you start by laying out where you see things right now to shape their own lives at work. Guest one of my concerns interviewing people over the nation so many people have no idea how to bring pensions and the folks who brought us the weekend. I want to explain to people they have achieved a lot in American History but now they are in decline and as a result, things are considerably worse for workers than was the case 30 or 40 years ago and far too few americans realize compared with other industrial nations. On very basic things. We are the only industrial nation that doesnt have a ball to guarantee parental leave and maternity leave, the only industrial nation that doesnt guarantee paid vacation. Workers are guaranteed at least four weeks paid vacation in france, eight weeks. For decades now, and American Workers have been suffering terrible wage stagnation while profits have reached record levels so they get something is broken and then they are frustrated and in my book i try to explain why things have worked this way. Its arguably the weakest that its been in decades. Its down from one and three when they are at their peak and certainly they have some faults but despite this theyve played a key role building the middle class in helping to get workers a voice whether it is on safety or pensions or something pulled in and theyve played a key role on an acting medicare and making Social Security more generous but in the recent years theyve been on the defensive and Corporate Power has really trumped in many ways and as a nation we have to figure out a way to give more power to help create a fair nation for example minimum wage hasnt been increased and i submit and argue that is because workers have been so weakened in congress that they are able to persuade minimum wage and its very, very hard for millions to live on 725 an hour federal minimum wage, so one of the keys of the book is to educate about the problems workers have and look at strategies to try to increase power for workers to help create a more prosperous nation for millions of americans and millions of workers. A lot dont realize how few of rights they have for a disabled onexample oneof your suggestione might go away from our Current System in almost all states i think except for montana in which workers can be fired for judged many decades ago a good reason, bad reason or no reason at all you suggest going towards a just cause system. Literally they could fire you for that and anything like that and most dont think that it can happethatcan happen to them untt does. Guest i would get a phone call from someone say my boyfriend got fired yesterday at work because he came in two minutes late and his boss was angry about his attitude and that he wasnt smiling. Isnt that illegal. I said dont you understand the United States meeting your employer can fire you for any reason or no reason except specifically. The jobs can be very precarious and uncertain into my mind one of the big problems workers dont have enough power or they are scared to exercise the voice at work, i write about the Upper Big Branch mining disaster where a dozen workers were killed and they knew about the game jurors in the mine but they were so scared of speaking up that they didnt think about what was filling the minds and they are way too scared to speak up. Some people argue we should move to the just cause so they can only be fired for a legitimate reason and just cause system would make them more willing to speak up when they see the state problemthis tapeproblems or whee captured in Sexual Harassment on the job. Guest the other issue that you mentioned, raising the minimum wage, it is unbelievable weve gone this far without a raise in the minimum wage. In the house we passed the raise the wage act which would raise the minimum wage to 15 an hour by 2025, gradually over the next five years or so and we would end the practice of the sub minimum wage for tipped workers that are disproportionately women and people of color taken advantage of and that would put millions of dollars into poor peoples pockets and workers i think your plate i point is thee not had the power in our politics in washington and State Capitol to try to get a visa to shake. Guest one thing that tells me i read some editoria have rel pages that complain about big labor and its supposedly so extraordinarily powerful and i did some research in my book who is really powerful and disulfide in the 2015, 2016 Campaign Cycle 3. 4 billion in donations which was more than 16 times as much as unions according to the respected Nonpartisan Group each year in washington the corporations spend under 3 billion lobbying would spend 48 million a lot of the problems that we see in washington so to me it was weird that congress rushed to enact a Corporate Tax cut for business when corporations were making record profits on wall street. Host how far will we get before we go in a different direction. Guest absolutely in that kind of explains why they were doing nothing to raise the wage because they are listening to their corporate donors. Host i want to talk about these policy ideas that i want to emphasize to the viewers i at least got so much on this book from your stories and i think its a great part of the book throughout American History and i want to ask you dont you think that a lot of the stories you tell have a lot of relevance to today so why dont you talk a little bit about the uprising of the 20,000 for example tell us about that story because i thought idonthave a lot of relt of the struggles workers go through today. Ive read a lot of labor histories and a character that fascinated me over these years was born in ukraine, she was jewish. Her father very religious. Relatives have moved to new york and she would write letters for them. She was very literate. Her family moved to new york from ukraine and she was a very bright young lady hoping to be a doctor someday but when she went to new york she only spoke yiddish and what did she do, she worked in a sweatshop and she was appalled at the conditions. She said i used to work from 7 a. M. To 7 p. M. I would go into work before the sun came up, six or seven days a week. Some of the bosses would sexually harass the women, they were told not to be in the bathroom more than a minute or two, had to pay for their needle and thread and had to pay to use Drinking Water when they are just making 5 a week in chief of this is appalling. She became an activist and a i m not going to take this. This young woman in her late teens, early 20s became a prominent activist and went on strike and there were some math one or two factories and derisive decision saying should we have a strike of garment workers to try to put maximum pressure on the factories and there was a big debate presiding over the meeting and he was kind of temporizing i dont know if we should have a strike or if women workers are dedicated enough to their jobs. She said im tired of being a poor Woman Working struggling day after day and that began the largest strike today at a. The 40 hour work week was handed down by god and i explain it was by struggle and in the uprising blasted two months in the dead of winter mainly jewish and italian immigrants, the families went hungry for many we got after two months, they won the work week and the right no longer to pay for their needle and thread and most, they won the right to join the union and have recognition. Later there was a horrendous tragedy where 146 workers died in the triangle fire. Here you have a story of a teenager and a woman in her 20s many were teenagers very young overwhelmingly women, overwhelmingly immigrants. They didnt speak english, they spoke italian, yiddish, they were despised by the high society you dont have time to tell all the details, but they were beaten up, sent in by their employers. My question is today when we have these kind of inspiring movements that we should stop mass incarceration, that black lives matter, immigrants lives matter, that the kids are saying we demand our rights and the rights of other undocumented people. And the young people are out here in the movement about climate change. When i read your account, i thought how inspiring for an activist today fighting for the rights in this country, but i dont think in their mind they thought i better look to the 19th century labor union. What do you think about this . One of the themes in the book, people working collectively, actively protesting to lift themselves up to hito and improve improve theo to help fair treatment of africanamericans but they also stress agency is important. Individuals need to be willing to stick out their neck and stand up and try to demand justice in the uprising of 20,000. What was crazy, at one point they broke it within 11 ribs. She didnt even want to tell her parents because she thought they wouldnt let her gwould let herk on soapboxes. Also, if there are incidences literally in papers to explain they would come and beat these young women and then the police would come and arrest them, the police were so one sided back then, and it shows how the establishment they were so aligned against the workers but even despite that they were able to win the strike ended the book i write about they used their agency to fight for a better life and i write about those in kansas city. He held to fast time to do jobs that left six in the morning, would come back at midnight. He had three daughters. They complained you work so hard he doesnt see his daughter most of the week if they became homeless and it was craz is crat someone who was busting himself working two fulltime jobs could hardly make ends meet and he became an activist in the fight and one of the leaders in the team and i explained in the book i was the first journalist to write about the 515 and when it began years ago and they demanded 15 an hour, i said that is super ambitious, thats pie in the sky. Here we are seven years later new york, california, illinois, maryland, connecticut, massachusetts, theyve all and acted the wage so that shows when the workers are willing to stand up and individuals are willing to stick out their neck, they really can achieve big change and a lot of them today, whether its climate activists were black lives matter activists or the need to win in the activists, they write about how the labor union involved with the strike in your home state and michigan and when they stand up and come together they can achieve historical change. So i explain on the teachers strikes in West Virginia and oklahoma and arizona and in los angeles and chicago the teachers were tired of being beaten down we have to do something to not just increase the cave to ensure they are getting the funding they need in the class size and that we have enough money to buy the modern textbooks and the teachers strikes have sent a message to the nation about how the worker power trade unions and labor unions can help to build a fair nation. Host lets talk about strikes as a mechanism because they were very important in building the middleclass in this country and the. Talk to us, you share both in information and stories in the book about how many strikes there were in the 50s, 60s, 70s, things like that and how both because of the wall and weakness in the labor perhaps they followed into the complete disuse and then tell us what your thoughts are about today when we are starting the teachers into a coworkers and the auto workers at gm recently. Right now my kid is on strike as a graduate employee at harvard. To teltell us about that sort of strikes and how you see it going forward. Guest in the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s there were far more strikes than today and in the 70s there were three and trade large strikes a year and there have been about 13 far less. Workers have become intimidated and in the 1950s and 60s there was good cooperation between employers and unions they were very prosperous after world war ii and bake a fairly generous contracts. Come the 1980s, the United States felt pressure from globalization and imports of steel and elsewhere and tvs and radios and those few things made them bolder. Shortly after he became president in 81, the air Traffic Controllers went on strike and engaged in an illegal strike and it was kind of a make my day movement. Im not going to put up with this and even though hed been president of the Screen Actors Guild i think that he really tried to show he isnt going to let labor push him around and he fired air Traffic Controllers for going on strike and illegally. I explain in the book they mishandled the strike and didnt get enough support from their fellow unions, so they were really clobbered and that was a major setback for the unions across the nation that were discouraged and at the same time they ambled and corporate embole america so its starting in the 1980s you saw a major decline in strikes and also we saw corporations getting tougher and that made it much harder and its a big reason its about half of what it was in the 1980s because they engaged in the tactics they voted to form a union. The numbers have fallen to the lowest level in half a century that last year something happened if us th was the time e strikes. There was a volcanic explosion where thousands or tens of thousands of teachers wearing red shirts went on strike in charleston and explained how the two teachers and the leadership of the union they were coding of the corporate cutting the Corporate Tax is into the fees in the budgets statewide and the salaries into these teachers fault the governor of West Virginia explained in the book who was the richest man in West Virginia the only billionaire he said im going to give you a raise of 1 a year for five years and the teachers were upset about that because they had the worst pay levels of any state and worst of two healthcare premiums went up so they were offered a raise of 400 a year in Health Premiums would go up more than that and j. Oneill, two teachers started a Facebook Page which started slowly but once the governor said we are going to give you a tiny raise and the Facebook Page exploded and all of a sudden we have a big movement and people are set up fed up we are not going to take it anymore. The heat was turning up and getting worse and they were moving backwards economically and basil the tax cuts for the rich and said we are not going to tolerate this anymore. They wanted to raise into the ability healthcare premiums would go up as much as they forced the governor and state legislator to pay more attention after years of starving the education budget. Host and teachers followed suit and many other states that would surprise many of the viewers where unions are supposed to be weak. Oklahoma one of the richest states in the union a High School Social studies teacher there was on tv and said we could do that here in oklahoma and there was a huge strike. They won doubledigit races and in arizona because of the phone with the teachers that led a strike in West Virginia and learned some lessons there and it was really an effort by the teachers and it happened later in chicago the system is broken. We are tired of austerity for the schools. Our kids are falling behind, class sizes are getting bigger. We have obsolete textbooks into the teachers went on strike to fight not just for wages for themselves but for a Better School system and they say we are fighting not just for ourselves but for the community. In a recent gm strikeanothers interesting aspects of th aspecy that it began, the union chief negotiator said it isnt for us, its for all americans. It explained you are also concerned about factories moving overseas, so are we. The uaw was unhappy about this factory in ohio closing and thousands losing their jobs. Chevy cruz is declining so they closed their plant but it kept open a plant in mexico and one of the purposes of the strike is to say we dont want to tolerate this anymore. We want to try to stop jobs from moving overseas. The American Public who are concerned about the future of jobs for your kids and grandkids, so are we and they said General Motors, one of the biggest most iconic corporations in the United States, 7 of the workers were temps and 7 were factory workers and they made 15 an hour and said weve got to fix this. Host the strike lasted 40 days including after they were voting on it and went back to work and i cant tell you how many of the different lines i was on where i would talk to the senior people, the members ten, 20, 30 years and to say wha saye you really out here for an assuming he said im out here for the temps. They havent had a raise in a long time. They had a lot of their own concerns that they felt it was so unjust that they were working next to somebody making half of what they were and it was corrosive to the culture of the workplace and they wanted to end the idea of twotiered wages and temp workers that have few rights and they succeeded in the strike in improving the