Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words With Tamara Draut 2016052

Matter. And for Immigration Rights movement. So i think we are just beginning to see the potential of this new working class in the latent political power they have. Before we get to the new working class lets start where you did with the old workingclass. Start with your dad. I grew up in a workingclass household, neither my parents went to college. My dad went to the steel factory his entire life, ultimately becoming a machinist in detroit, in middletown, and ohio. It was the quintessential factory town. There are many factories and the town was built with the support of the factories. They built schools, hospitals, all of that stuff. My mom went to work when my brother was five and she works at an Office Manager in an orthodontist office. And heres heres the thing about growing up workingclass back then at least, for people who worked in that major manufacturing days like my dad did. We were workingclass by education and occupation, but really middleclass, by lifestyle. Theyre able to semito College Without any debt, we took yearly vacations, packed into the minivan down to myrtle beach, south carolina. We always had Health Insurance, were never hungry. So i wanted to really begin looking at what happened to the idea of the working class. That title has been scrubbed from our lexicon. We do not really refer to our janitors and Home Health Aides, and fast food workers as workingclass. We refer to them as lowwage workers. So i really wanted to bring back into our debate to the idea that we have a working class and it is fundamentally different, it is more female and more racially diverse. We need to think of them as a Political Force that we need to Pay Attention to. Now back then, while your father was in ohio you start with his a death actually which is it right after the bankruptcy why did that matter . Guest symbolically im actually really glad my dads and around to see the bankruptcy of detroit. I think it wouldve been painful for him. I think it is important because symbolically i think it was like the nail in the coffin of the net manufacturing heyday of american. It had wayne wayne for several decades before detroit went bankrupt. Its sort of put a pin in that banality. And what that meant for an era of america where you saw productivity went up workers actually saw that in their paycheck. Their paychecks went out. Out. We had a period of time when incomes grew at the bottom faster than they did at the top which has never happened in my lifetime. It is hard to wrap your mind around that concept if you have only known this era of inequality that we are in today. Host so detroit was really a blunt symbol of the passing of the torch from an industrial era workingclass it to a Service Sector workingclass. Guest there is workingclass and middleclass. Host and talk about that continuum and that divide. Guest academics love to debate how to measure class. There are several different ways but a common one is by college education. That is how i defined workingclass throughout the book. So the dividing line is whether you have a four year degree or higher or nothing less, or anything less than a four year fouryear degree. That is how i define workingclass. It could be high school graduate, high school graduate, some, some college or an associates degree, thats workingclass. In reality its a pretty good marker because what is happened in the last two or three decades is the quality of life afforded to people in this country has diverged sharply between College Graduates and those without college. Host you writing your book, Sleeping Giants about how in your household money was tight. Especially before your mom went back to work. But you never went hungry, you did feel the security of housing, food, explain that and explain the role of union as you were growing up. Guest i grew up with three brothers and a sister, thats a big big family to feed on one salary especially. Times were tough. I was teased as a kid kid for my hand me down close, most of my close came from rummage sales at our church and things like that. But i never was hungry. I never experienced what is so, today for kids and workingclass households, which is hunger. I never had to worry about not having a place to live. My parents owned their home. And it was a nice home. It was a twostory twostory home with three or four bedrooms. The first time i grew up inches so there is a level of security that was afforded by my dads job. s job. That is largely because it was a union job. So he saw his income go up as the company did well. He got vacation time, he got paid time and a half if you worked on a sunday. If he did a double which is working a shift back to back. So there were ways when money was tough he could work more, he did sign up to work double and he often did do that. Host how have unions come to be so vilified . Also, how have unions lost so much power . Guest it is a long checkered story. Host what you do so well in this book is a tell a story. Guest i appreciate that. It begins with as part of the new deal package, president roosevelt signed into law the wine raft which allowed them to vote in the union a workplace and have democracy. As soon as it passed guess what happened . Workers took advantage of it. They started started unionizing their workplaces. Then we had world war ii, we had labor peace because all of the big unions agreed not to strike during the war. After the war we have this huge outbreak, and labor piece which is an agreement by unions that they will not strike during a certain amount of time. In exchange, the Company Supports the union. So there is all of this pent up energy. There is lots of grievances and that accumulated and then we had this huge outbreak of unionization and strike. The elites got some really worried and i thought well, wow, we have to tamper this down a little bit. This union thing is a little more powerful than we expected. So the conservatives in congress, with the law basically written by the National Association of manufacturing past tafthartley, and that is so relevant to what is happening today in america because tafthartley did to, did a lot of things to make it harder to unionize, but two big ones that are important for today. One, it allowed states to pass right to work laws. We are seeing an emergence again of new states having right to work laws. Host explain what right to work. Guest that is a misnomer. Right to work means that if you are in a state that has a quote on quote, right to work law, it means that if you are represented by union, if a union a union is a voted in in your workplace and you do not want to be part of the union, you do not have to pay any what is called fair share fees. You. You do not have to pay for the cost of all of the negotiations of the contracts that happen. You dont have to pay for any of the administrative costs of maintaining economic democracy in your workplace, including negotiating for Better Benefits and pay. So what that does, it greatly weakens the union because people love to free ride. You you still get the same paycheck as the pound the to you who is paying union dues, but you dont have to pay them if you dont want to and youre getting the deal. Its a great irony because it really is a free writing. When conservatives sent to really look down on what they see as a freeloaders in our society. Thats what they call them. But that was the idea, one of the and remaining reasons for right to work was Southern States wanted to protect their very rigid wage hierarchy by race. Right to work was a way way to ensure that unions cannot come in and starting to build solidarity among white and africanamerican workingclass people. Host you talk about the power of the union then, how did those jobs get lost over time . Guest that is another story that is really starting to be the center of our political debate right now. We had an era of what is called free trade. We made all of these trade agreements that we are now i think empirical evidence is in that it has not been a net gain for manufacturing workers in this country. We we have lost millions of jobs as a result of these contracts. It hasnt really been a game for mexico either whos of farmers for example are now competing with our major, big agribusinesses and actually this quashing of Small Farmers in mexico is one of the drivers of immigration toward country. The population that immigrated in the 90s and 2000s, its, it disproportionately came from rural areas because they could no longer sustain a living farming. So they came to america to find a new livelihood for themselves and their families. Host i went when the revolution happen which is the day that it went into effect, they were rising up against nasa understanding this was likely to help working people. Guest what we have over time, i would say the last 70s until now, is a real takeover by our elites in this country, whether it is political elites, media elites, cultural elites, of our governing system where economic power has been so consolidated and used to translate into political power and so the people writing the rules for economy, whether it is our trade agreement whether its the minimum wage, regulation that protect people from predatory lenders, the people writing those rules are now the titans of business in the finance industry, there the titans of the Retail Industry and restaurant industry. Unions used to be part of that elites. That was a good thing because they came to the table with working clap class peoples interest. Now that theyve been shoved out by a concert aggressive assault over the last 30 years, the elites dont have a counterbalance force. Unions, one of the big threads and i think this is important to understand that the case that corporations make against unions often centers on, well have to cut our workforce or raise prices because wages will go up. The biggest threat is of the political power that comes with unionization. That is the real threat. Less. Less the economic threat but the idea that you have now in institution who is educating its members about what is going on in the world around them and how they can have real power and influence over the decisions that frankly impact their lives very deeply. Host so you talk about free trade when others might take about corporate managed trade of the 1990s under president bill clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton. How much did she weigh in at that time . Spee2 thats a good question, i dont go into detail in the book, i wrote the book before we knew that trade was going to be at the center of our debate which i think is fabulous. Its its time we had a conversation about the real tradeoff. It is so easy for corporate elites and our political elites to say overall its been good, this is whats really disturbing about this argument. I just read the sentence of the New York Times and it has made all the time telling people that globalization has been good because it has raised their Living Standards by allowing them to consume and buy more stuff cheaply. We have been told that because everyone can afford a microwave, a cell phone and a television, if not two, that we have seen an increase in Living Standards for the working class in this country. I do not think most people define their quality of life by the gadgets they can fill their homes with. They defined they defined their quality of life by whether they can send their kids to college, whether they have Health Insurance that is actually meaningful and protects them when someone gets six. They do find it whether they have and nest egg for retirement. They defined it whether they have a house that is safe and they can live in. Those are the Living Standards that really matter to people. All of those things have been chipped away at it until there is a thread that is left of our social contract in this country. Host talk about how the jobs changed over time. So i will shorthand this by saying. Guest we went from a place that made stuff instead of serving people. In that distinction and shift, in addition to who is doing network is one of the reasons why we have seen a working class that is so marginalized and has been so invisible in our political process. So todays workingclass is employed in retail, food and leisure, home healthcare, healthcare, those are the really big ones, as well as you think of warehouse workers, janitors, that is where most of the workingclass men are. So it is completely shifted. I think we have had a deep and long history in this country of undervaluing work that involves serving people and especially caring for people. So we now have a working class that is much more female and much more people of color then the industrial working class was. That very definition, of who is working class is one reason why i think we have seen a disappearance of the idea of a workingclass in this country. Host you really animates the trends that we see and changes to the new working class with story. Tell tell us about eric and damon who work for cocacola guest eric and damon both work at a Warehouse Distribution center on the outskirts of atlanta, for coke. Their jobs are what they call internally poolers, fishel either called order builders. What they do is they take cases of beverages, put them on the palate and then shrinkwrap these gigantic pallets that then go to talk truck drivers, moves them to where they need to go to be shipped out. So, at the time i interviewed eric, he was trying to organize the warehouse, with the help of the teamsters. He was starting to get a lot of support and the reason why was because the working conditions that these people are under is insane and dangerous. They are paid by the cases they move. When when they show up for their shift they are giving a quote, lets say they have to move 1000 cases during their shift. If it takes if it takes them six hours, they are done. If it takes them 10, theyre done. Theyre not allowed to leave until their finish. But if it takes you ten hours, your wage is a lot lower than if it takes you six hours to meet your quota. So what does that mean . That means that these workers are running around in a warehouse with big machines, forklifts, what have you and running around with shrink wrap guns, eric sent me a video and people are getting hurt. Their bodies are wearing out. Damien is 32 years old and on medical leave when i interviewed him. His knees. Are shot. Cocacola has been one of the most aggressive antiunion companies in this country. This was always going to be a longshot battle, but you speak to eric and the calling that he feels to do the work of trying to help workers find their voice and find their power, you cannot help but be inspired and help to be hopeful that workers like eric and damon who are really taking big risks to try to help build the solidarity and bring economic democracy into the workplace in this country, it is contagious. Im optimistic that they are going to win. The thing that eric and damon, they were some of the first people i met and talked to to when i started writing the book. What they chronicled and the words they used to describe their treatment by their bosses ended up being through line for all the workers i talked to. Disrespect, a gentleman who is a commercial truck driver said its like the workingclass of the lepers of society. Needed to power the economy and make it strong but completely disregarded when it comes to our needs. I talked to people that work in retail, fast food, warehouses, more than one of them reference that they can almost relate to slavery, or call that the new plantation, a truck driver driver said its like we are sharecroppers on wheels. That is deeply mr. Disturbing that we have workers who see the way they are treated and equated it with art nations original, most recent. It is deeply disturbing and i think its a reflection of just how far we have let Worker Protection fall and how far we have let the dignity of work fall in this country. Host you wrote about cubicle jobs. Guest cubicle jobs are, think of your administrative assistants, the people on the other line when you call the bank and need someone to help you with your statement where you see a charge you do not understand, cup system cup system or service representatives. Bank tellers actually fall into this category. I had a great conversation with a woman who was a bank teller and it was a surprise to me that bank tellers actually have become salespeople and have quotas themselves that they need to sell, i would say push as with many bank tellers, new products on existing customers when they come in. Host for example . Guest for example what i check out this new of credit or what you think about getting a new cd open, or things like that they are evaluated on how many new products they can get existing customers, already customers of the bank to sign up for why not at a savings account to your checking account. Host and they know a lot about your personal finances they can look at your account. Guest absolutely. The cubicle jobs are a big part of the new workingclass economy. We. We have a lot of Customer Service reps we are very consumption oriented economy and under that is a lot of people who answer phones, they filed paper and keep our offices and workplaces running. Host from the cubicle to the caring jobs. Guest the caring economy, from medical assistant to Home Health Aides to registered nurses is going to be a sector that continues to grow. It is really going to explode particularly in what is some of the lowest paying occupations in our country, and that is home health aide. So if you look at who does the work of a home health aide, it is overwhelmingly will make, and its overwhelmingly women of color, often immigrant, often immigrant women. These jobs usually pay around minimum wage, they involve hard work because hearing caring is hard work. They do a lot of manual labor. They are often lifting patients with, without machines lifting patients who are much bigger than they are and this is work that, for so long was expected to be done for free. Now, it is done for pay, but its done by the same groups of people who are doing it free throughout our history, women and particularly africanamerican women and women without College Degrees. Most Immigration Rights<\/a> movement. So i think we are just beginning to see the potential of this new working class in the latent political power they have. Before we get to the new working class lets start where you did with the old workingclass. Start with your dad. I grew up in a workingclass household, neither my parents went to college. My dad went to the steel factory his entire life, ultimately becoming a machinist in detroit, in middletown, and ohio. It was the quintessential factory town. There are many factories and the town was built with the support of the factories. They built schools, hospitals, all of that stuff. My mom went to work when my brother was five and she works at an Office Manager<\/a> in an orthodontist office. And heres heres the thing about growing up workingclass back then at least, for people who worked in that major manufacturing days like my dad did. We were workingclass by education and occupation, but really middleclass, by lifestyle. Theyre able to semito College Without<\/a> any debt, we took yearly vacations, packed into the minivan down to myrtle beach, south carolina. We always had Health Insurance<\/a>, were never hungry. So i wanted to really begin looking at what happened to the idea of the working class. That title has been scrubbed from our lexicon. We do not really refer to our janitors and Home Health Aides<\/a>, and fast food workers as workingclass. We refer to them as lowwage workers. So i really wanted to bring back into our debate to the idea that we have a working class and it is fundamentally different, it is more female and more racially diverse. We need to think of them as a Political Force<\/a> that we need to Pay Attention<\/a> to. Now back then, while your father was in ohio you start with his a death actually which is it right after the bankruptcy why did that matter . Guest symbolically im actually really glad my dads and around to see the bankruptcy of detroit. I think it wouldve been painful for him. I think it is important because symbolically i think it was like the nail in the coffin of the net manufacturing heyday of american. It had wayne wayne for several decades before detroit went bankrupt. Its sort of put a pin in that banality. And what that meant for an era of america where you saw productivity went up workers actually saw that in their paycheck. Their paychecks went out. Out. We had a period of time when incomes grew at the bottom faster than they did at the top which has never happened in my lifetime. It is hard to wrap your mind around that concept if you have only known this era of inequality that we are in today. Host so detroit was really a blunt symbol of the passing of the torch from an industrial era workingclass it to a Service Sector<\/a> workingclass. Guest there is workingclass and middleclass. Host and talk about that continuum and that divide. Guest academics love to debate how to measure class. There are several different ways but a common one is by college education. That is how i defined workingclass throughout the book. So the dividing line is whether you have a four year degree or higher or nothing less, or anything less than a four year fouryear degree. That is how i define workingclass. It could be high school graduate, high school graduate, some, some college or an associates degree, thats workingclass. In reality its a pretty good marker because what is happened in the last two or three decades is the quality of life afforded to people in this country has diverged sharply between College Graduates<\/a> and those without college. Host you writing your book, Sleeping Giant<\/a>s about how in your household money was tight. Especially before your mom went back to work. But you never went hungry, you did feel the security of housing, food, explain that and explain the role of union as you were growing up. Guest i grew up with three brothers and a sister, thats a big big family to feed on one salary especially. Times were tough. I was teased as a kid kid for my hand me down close, most of my close came from rummage sales at our church and things like that. But i never was hungry. I never experienced what is so, today for kids and workingclass households, which is hunger. I never had to worry about not having a place to live. My parents owned their home. And it was a nice home. It was a twostory twostory home with three or four bedrooms. The first time i grew up inches so there is a level of security that was afforded by my dads job. s job. That is largely because it was a union job. So he saw his income go up as the company did well. He got vacation time, he got paid time and a half if you worked on a sunday. If he did a double which is working a shift back to back. So there were ways when money was tough he could work more, he did sign up to work double and he often did do that. Host how have unions come to be so vilified . Also, how have unions lost so much power . Guest it is a long checkered story. Host what you do so well in this book is a tell a story. Guest i appreciate that. It begins with as part of the new deal package, president roosevelt signed into law the wine raft which allowed them to vote in the union a workplace and have democracy. As soon as it passed guess what happened . Workers took advantage of it. They started started unionizing their workplaces. Then we had world war ii, we had labor peace because all of the big unions agreed not to strike during the war. After the war we have this huge outbreak, and labor piece which is an agreement by unions that they will not strike during a certain amount of time. In exchange, the Company Supports<\/a> the union. So there is all of this pent up energy. There is lots of grievances and that accumulated and then we had this huge outbreak of unionization and strike. The elites got some really worried and i thought well, wow, we have to tamper this down a little bit. This union thing is a little more powerful than we expected. So the conservatives in congress, with the law basically written by the National Association<\/a> of manufacturing past tafthartley, and that is so relevant to what is happening today in america because tafthartley did to, did a lot of things to make it harder to unionize, but two big ones that are important for today. One, it allowed states to pass right to work laws. We are seeing an emergence again of new states having right to work laws. Host explain what right to work. Guest that is a misnomer. Right to work means that if you are in a state that has a quote on quote, right to work law, it means that if you are represented by union, if a union a union is a voted in in your workplace and you do not want to be part of the union, you do not have to pay any what is called fair share fees. You. You do not have to pay for the cost of all of the negotiations of the contracts that happen. You dont have to pay for any of the administrative costs of maintaining economic democracy in your workplace, including negotiating for Better Benefits<\/a> and pay. So what that does, it greatly weakens the union because people love to free ride. You you still get the same paycheck as the pound the to you who is paying union dues, but you dont have to pay them if you dont want to and youre getting the deal. Its a great irony because it really is a free writing. When conservatives sent to really look down on what they see as a freeloaders in our society. Thats what they call them. But that was the idea, one of the and remaining reasons for right to work was Southern States<\/a> wanted to protect their very rigid wage hierarchy by race. Right to work was a way way to ensure that unions cannot come in and starting to build solidarity among white and africanamerican workingclass people. Host you talk about the power of the union then, how did those jobs get lost over time . Guest that is another story that is really starting to be the center of our political debate right now. We had an era of what is called free trade. We made all of these trade agreements that we are now i think empirical evidence is in that it has not been a net gain for manufacturing workers in this country. We we have lost millions of jobs as a result of these contracts. It hasnt really been a game for mexico either whos of farmers for example are now competing with our major, big agribusinesses and actually this quashing of Small Farmers<\/a> in mexico is one of the drivers of immigration toward country. The population that immigrated in the 90s and 2000s, its, it disproportionately came from rural areas because they could no longer sustain a living farming. So they came to america to find a new livelihood for themselves and their families. Host i went when the revolution happen which is the day that it went into effect, they were rising up against nasa understanding this was likely to help working people. Guest what we have over time, i would say the last 70s until now, is a real takeover by our elites in this country, whether it is political elites, media elites, cultural elites, of our governing system where economic power has been so consolidated and used to translate into political power and so the people writing the rules for economy, whether it is our trade agreement whether its the minimum wage, regulation that protect people from predatory lenders, the people writing those rules are now the titans of business in the finance industry, there the titans of the Retail Industry<\/a> and restaurant industry. Unions used to be part of that elites. That was a good thing because they came to the table with working clap class peoples interest. Now that theyve been shoved out by a concert aggressive assault over the last 30 years, the elites dont have a counterbalance force. Unions, one of the big threads and i think this is important to understand that the case that corporations make against unions often centers on, well have to cut our workforce or raise prices because wages will go up. The biggest threat is of the political power that comes with unionization. That is the real threat. Less. Less the economic threat but the idea that you have now in institution who is educating its members about what is going on in the world around them and how they can have real power and influence over the decisions that frankly impact their lives very deeply. Host so you talk about free trade when others might take about corporate managed trade of the 1990s under president bill clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton<\/a>. How much did she weigh in at that time . Spee2 thats a good question, i dont go into detail in the book, i wrote the book before we knew that trade was going to be at the center of our debate which i think is fabulous. Its its time we had a conversation about the real tradeoff. It is so easy for corporate elites and our political elites to say overall its been good, this is whats really disturbing about this argument. I just read the sentence of the New York Times<\/a> and it has made all the time telling people that globalization has been good because it has raised their Living Standards<\/a> by allowing them to consume and buy more stuff cheaply. We have been told that because everyone can afford a microwave, a cell phone and a television, if not two, that we have seen an increase in Living Standards<\/a> for the working class in this country. I do not think most people define their quality of life by the gadgets they can fill their homes with. They defined they defined their quality of life by whether they can send their kids to college, whether they have Health Insurance<\/a> that is actually meaningful and protects them when someone gets six. They do find it whether they have and nest egg for retirement. They defined it whether they have a house that is safe and they can live in. Those are the Living Standards<\/a> that really matter to people. All of those things have been chipped away at it until there is a thread that is left of our social contract in this country. Host talk about how the jobs changed over time. So i will shorthand this by saying. Guest we went from a place that made stuff instead of serving people. In that distinction and shift, in addition to who is doing network is one of the reasons why we have seen a working class that is so marginalized and has been so invisible in our political process. So todays workingclass is employed in retail, food and leisure, home healthcare, healthcare, those are the really big ones, as well as you think of warehouse workers, janitors, that is where most of the workingclass men are. So it is completely shifted. I think we have had a deep and long history in this country of undervaluing work that involves serving people and especially caring for people. So we now have a working class that is much more female and much more people of color then the industrial working class was. That very definition, of who is working class is one reason why i think we have seen a disappearance of the idea of a workingclass in this country. Host you really animates the trends that we see and changes to the new working class with story. Tell tell us about eric and damon who work for cocacola guest eric and damon both work at a Warehouse Distribution<\/a> center on the outskirts of atlanta, for coke. Their jobs are what they call internally poolers, fishel either called order builders. What they do is they take cases of beverages, put them on the palate and then shrinkwrap these gigantic pallets that then go to talk truck drivers, moves them to where they need to go to be shipped out. So, at the time i interviewed eric, he was trying to organize the warehouse, with the help of the teamsters. He was starting to get a lot of support and the reason why was because the working conditions that these people are under is insane and dangerous. They are paid by the cases they move. When when they show up for their shift they are giving a quote, lets say they have to move 1000 cases during their shift. If it takes if it takes them six hours, they are done. If it takes them 10, theyre done. Theyre not allowed to leave until their finish. But if it takes you ten hours, your wage is a lot lower than if it takes you six hours to meet your quota. So what does that mean . That means that these workers are running around in a warehouse with big machines, forklifts, what have you and running around with shrink wrap guns, eric sent me a video and people are getting hurt. Their bodies are wearing out. Damien is 32 years old and on medical leave when i interviewed him. His knees. Are shot. Cocacola has been one of the most aggressive antiunion companies in this country. This was always going to be a longshot battle, but you speak to eric and the calling that he feels to do the work of trying to help workers find their voice and find their power, you cannot help but be inspired and help to be hopeful that workers like eric and damon who are really taking big risks to try to help build the solidarity and bring economic democracy into the workplace in this country, it is contagious. Im optimistic that they are going to win. The thing that eric and damon, they were some of the first people i met and talked to to when i started writing the book. What they chronicled and the words they used to describe their treatment by their bosses ended up being through line for all the workers i talked to. Disrespect, a gentleman who is a commercial truck driver said its like the workingclass of the lepers of society. Needed to power the economy and make it strong but completely disregarded when it comes to our needs. I talked to people that work in retail, fast food, warehouses, more than one of them reference that they can almost relate to slavery, or call that the new plantation, a truck driver driver said its like we are sharecroppers on wheels. That is deeply mr. Disturbing that we have workers who see the way they are treated and equated it with art nations original, most recent. It is deeply disturbing and i think its a reflection of just how far we have let Worker Protection<\/a> fall and how far we have let the dignity of work fall in this country. Host you wrote about cubicle jobs. Guest cubicle jobs are, think of your administrative assistants, the people on the other line when you call the bank and need someone to help you with your statement where you see a charge you do not understand, cup system cup system or service representatives. Bank tellers actually fall into this category. I had a great conversation with a woman who was a bank teller and it was a surprise to me that bank tellers actually have become salespeople and have quotas themselves that they need to sell, i would say push as with many bank tellers, new products on existing customers when they come in. Host for example . Guest for example what i check out this new of credit or what you think about getting a new cd open, or things like that they are evaluated on how many new products they can get existing customers, already customers of the bank to sign up for why not at a savings account to your checking account. Host and they know a lot about your personal finances they can look at your account. Guest absolutely. The cubicle jobs are a big part of the new workingclass economy. We. We have a lot of Customer Service<\/a> reps we are very consumption oriented economy and under that is a lot of people who answer phones, they filed paper and keep our offices and workplaces running. Host from the cubicle to the caring jobs. Guest the caring economy, from medical assistant to Home Health Aides<\/a> to registered nurses is going to be a sector that continues to grow. It is really going to explode particularly in what is some of the lowest paying occupations in our country, and that is home health aide. So if you look at who does the work of a home health aide, it is overwhelmingly will make, and its overwhelmingly women of color, often immigrant, often immigrant women. These jobs usually pay around minimum wage, they involve hard work because hearing caring is hard work. They do a lot of manual labor. They are often lifting patients with, without machines lifting patients who are much bigger than they are and this is work that, for so long was expected to be done for free. Now, it is done for pay, but its done by the same groups of people who are doing it free throughout our history, women and particularly africanamerican women and women without College Degree<\/a>s. Most Home Health Aides<\/a>, if theyre lucky they get six weeks of training, the best ones get really good training, that is not always the case. These are very lowpaying jobs, often without Health Insurance<\/a>, often, 9 per hour, these are individuals that are caring for people in their most vulnerable state. Often people who just got discharged from the hospital, after a surgery or Something Like<\/a> that. For someone for someone who is disabled and needs help on a daily basis. We devalue that work so deeply that we are willing to only pay nine, 10 an hour for. Host so talk about what unions like the Service Employees<\/a> international and the sei you are doing, the remarkable Domestic Workers<\/a> alliance, what shes doing. Host so. [inaudible] has really brought to the forefront the need of Domestic Workers<\/a>. People who work in other peoples home for pay. Finally it has undone some of the exclusion that happen way back when the fair labor standards act was negotiated. Host explain. Guest the fair labors act act puts out guidelines for minimum wage and overtime pay. When those guidelines were adopted they excluded, deliberately Domestic Workers<\/a>, and at the time also farmworkers at the time all Domestic Workers<\/a>, by and large were africanamericans. So. So these jobs, throughout our history have been denied the right to minimum wage, and the right to overtime. So what the Domestic Workers<\/a> alliance has accomplished is giving those rules passed and states, and now, finally a break throughout the federal level where we are finally, in 2016 going to ensure that Home Health Workers<\/a> get paid minimum wage and overtime pay for the work they do. This is unbelievable that we are still having to fight today. That is, an entire book about the lingering effect of racism and sexism, on the work, the pay, the job quality, of the new workingclass. Host so tell us about what happened in new york for example around changing the laws and the pressure brought on the legislature. This is truly ingenious and collective organizing. Guest so its a new model of organizing. It is is a long sigh, with unions but also outside unions. I think what you have had and what is so brilliant of the strategy of the messick Workers Alliance<\/a> is that they have built coalitions that include the caregivers and the people being cared for and the families of those caregivers. We passed it to make domestic bill of right and i think california was the first state and it basically sets out basic Worker Protection<\/a> for people who are employed in the service of somebody else in someone elses home. Whether it is nannies, housekeepers, and it really was watershed. I think those winds really set up the ability for president obama to mandate the department of labor to finally update these guidelines and include all Domestic Workers<\/a> in minimum wage protection and overtime. Host so how does it work . Do do Domestic Workers<\/a> make minimum wage . And we will talking about this,. Guest the way it works is i chronicle marla in the book, this is someone who is a Home Health Worker<\/a>, shes very active in these fights to become an activist as well as a caregiver. She would often have to spend the night at her clients house. She would work all of those hours, even if she is still sleeping she still at work. She might have to get up in the middle of the night to help her client go to the restroom. At the end of the day, when you divided her hours, she was making less the minimum wage because she was not getting paid for this sleeping time that she had to be there for. That no longer is going to be the case. That cannot happen. Happen. If you need a Home Health Worker<\/a> to sleep over nights, in addition to being there during the day, you will have to pay them for those hours. Host who are you appealing to when you are not getting paid . Guest i believe its the department of labor in your state or city. You have to file a complaint. Host so where does the sei you come into this. Guest so they did a great thing out in california where they realized that most Home Health Workers<\/a> are paid through medicare but they are often hired by families so what they did was set up a Marketplace Exchange<\/a> in the state where the state said we will agree to be a joint employer people who are Home Health Aides<\/a>, well create a roster where where families can go to help match their needs with the skills of the home health it a. We will keep that system, well create that system, that way we can ensure that workers are being paid and protected. It has worked to gray. In fact it it is one of the largest unions in the country, i i think the sei you has been pioneering in looking ahead and realizing that the new workingclass is the Service Sector<\/a> and that voting in a union is one part of the battle, but raising the stakes and putting any quality the table with the fight for 15 which has been enormously successful in terms of actually passing new minimum wage law and in terms of impacting the public debate. When the first workers in new york city demanded 15 per hour, they were laughed at, nobody is laughing now. At the demand for 15 minimum wage. Host is the essential part of Sleeping Giant<\/a> on the cover. You have the images the People Holding<\/a> a sign for 15 per hour with various different images among them, french fries that say 15 per hour, but talk about how it took hold, how how they reach for what seemed the impossible and soon everyone from cpac to seattle to los angeles, to new york where the governor had said this is absolutely not going to be possible, that it is ridiculous to reach for Something Like<\/a> this. He is champion it. Guest i think it took a couple of things. I give sbi you a lot of credit because they have been supporting this effort, this financial resources. So far they have not exceeded in getting a union work place, that said, they have made huge gains in peoples lives in terms of the wage increases. I think the reason it happened is because people said enough. They were willing to go into the streets with risk being fired and stand up and make a demand that they deserve a dignity wage and they were not to take it anymore. It has been sustained, it is not a flash in the pan. When i actually first actually first pitch the book it was about three years ago around the time of the first walkout in new york and i said something is happening, not just just is not just fight for 15, if you look at cities, and states across the country there is a bubbling up of new workingclass organizing that is happening. The first question was like yeah but are these movements really going to stay around, people think of out occupy which achieved a lot in a short time but it did not go on as a movement that still going in the streets today. The the success belongs to the worker, the workers who are still doing it, still going going out on strike, still protesting and i think what you also see today is a real Cross Movement<\/a> collaboration, so you have adjunct faculty members now standing in solidarity with fast food worker saying we are with you, you have how aid saying we are with you. It just kept broadening out as more and more workers decided that they had common cause with the fast food workers and were going to help make that fight to reality. Then you have walmart. Host yes, walmart. Talk about how large it is. Guest so nothing epitomizes the new workingclass more than walmart. The industrial era, gm was the nations last largest private sector employer. Today it is walmart. That difference is very much the difference between the old workingclass in the new workingclass. Walmart is extremely powerful, not just in terms of its scale, and turns of the story it has. Its powerful because it exerts pressure through the entire supply chain. It negotiated with its suppliers to drive down cost of those suppliers be to drive down cost in their warehouses for the people who are packaging the goods and getting them where they need to go. So every step in the supply chain, walmart has the ability to really drive down wages to the point where you have workers who are not getting paid for all of their hours, who are being and expected to work on theres doors. The mentality i think is the real innovation of walmart. Discount prices every day, thats what theyre known for but really the innovation that they have brought is a relentless focus on cost cutting and a complete paradigm shift where people, where their workers, their employees are viewed as cost to be minimized. That is how walmart views workers in this country, cost, costs that need to be minimize at every possible chance they get when you join walmart as an associate, you watch an antiunion video, blatantly antiunion video. It is a company that is deeply antiunion, deeply powerful, and deeply unwilling to negotiate and come to the bargaining table. Despite many attempts. Host so talk about how the public subsidizes walmart particularly walmart workers there has been some really great research, the reality is that when walmart or other companies, other bigbox other bigbox retailers fail to pay their workers a decent wage, that means their workers cannot be there families, dont have healthcare and so they have to get that through there are safety night so thank goodness we still have some safety net left, and so so what you have is billions, billions of taxpayer dollars providing food stands and healthcare coverage to walmart workers because the company is in doing it. Host if you were really struggling you could call a walmart worker and they would actually direct you to how you get, basically welfare, how you get public subsidies. Walmart would be telling you, at the same time they are all for deregulation and they are all for not interfering with the private sector. They rely on the government on taxpayer money to subsidize their workers. Guest it is commonplace that Walmart Stores<\/a> for have a toy drive and food drive for their employees around the holiday. Mcdonalds got busted in a huge, embarrassing pr for having a website for their workers to help them learn how to stretch their measly paycheck it included i think to slower so that you dont feel so hungry, this is, these are American Companies<\/a> who have full acknowledgment that the people they employee cannot be there families or buy toys for their children at christmas, they work at the stores that everybody shops that during the holidays and their own workers cannot shop there and feed their families. It is shameful. Host so talk about how they really, how workers have brought pressure and the victories that have been one from mcdonalds to walmart. Guest so what we are seeing, and i love that when Companies Put<\/a> out these press releases they refuse to admit that any pressure for them to voluntarily raise the minimum wage came from workers protesting. So we have gap, mcdonalds, walmart, all who have volunteered to raise the minimum wage of their lowest paid employee. Its a start, its great. 10 is much better than 7. 25. What remains to be seen,. Host talk about what happened with mcdonalds. Guest so mcdonalds agreed to raise the minimum wage with a giant disclaimer which was only in the stores that it operates. Now if you dont know this, when i mcdonalds here in new york city and at mcdonalds in cincinnati, ohio, ohio, are probably owned by different franchisors. Most fast food out lights are fast food outlets. Franchises. What that means is mcdonalds only owns and operates a very small percentage, those are the only people who are going to get a raise. What is interesting now though, is there have been lawsuits filed with the nlrb making the claim that mcdonalds really does employee all of these workers across the country, because in the contract with their franchisee, it is so minute in detail in terms of the cost of operating expenses theyre allowed to incur that they are setting wages, they may not directly hire or fire employees, but they have enough say into how those franchises have to operate that they need to be considered a joint employer, which means they have responsibility over the working conditions in all of their franchise stores. This is playing out right now, this is a huge decision. This has all of the big business lobbies up an arm and up and capitol hill doing everything they can to say that if this happens, if it Big Companies<\/a> like mcdonalds, and burger king are not responsible in part for what happens in their franchise stores, that will and the industry as we know it, thats not true. What were basically saying is you do have a responsibility to make sure that people who are wearing a uniform with your logo on it are treated fairly and are paid the wages they have a legal right to. Host and then theres the whole supply chain so like the groups of monopoly workers, they work a nice early on that if they just went to the owners and they say guys, we cant give you that money because were getting pressure from taco bell which is owned by Young Branson<\/a> walmart, chp only, chipotle, so they went right up the chain and had actually very significant success. Guest so this is great. In the second second class chapter of the book i spend the whole chapter interviewing the new leaders who are innovating, that such a great example, its not in my book, but you havent texas, people who are trying to improve the working conditions and instead of going after the companies who employ these workers, they went after the builders. That is who has the power. You see that is the same with the watershed innovation and organizing. It it really happened with justice for janitors campaign. Instead of going after the companys employment janitors janitors they went after the building owners. So going to the people who are exerting the energy and has the power for the whole system has been a brilliant strategy that is paying off time and time again. Host talk about the intersection out about the different movements now. We talked about lowwage workers, working class people, 2006 the seminal moment that you begin your chapter on immigration, when immigrants, activists, people dare to come out of the shadows and march in freedom. Guest it was incredible. What was so great about that is that you had, for example unionize Court Workers<\/a> in the port in california stopping work and shutting down the port. Want to talk about businesses where it counts, it makes them a lot of money in the day for stopping their goods from moving. The fact that you had unionized workers who are standing in solidarity with immigrants who are walking off the job is amazing. We are seeing more of that. That site for for 15 is showing up for black lives matter, is showing up for five or 15. We are witnessing the beginnings of what has always been elusive, which is on multi racial solidarity of progressive movements in this country. It is very difficult to maintain and sustain. But it is beginning to happen. Host you refer to dreamers being young people were not documented. Guest they were brought here by their parents and the dreamers have i think bravery, when you all of these movements have a level of bravery that do not exist at the corporate ceo level, it would be great if it did, or among our politicians. We are lacking people in congress who are willing to be brave and do what is right instead of do what is going to be a political wind. Host talk about jim giancarlo. Guest i met him, we were working on some higher and stuff in new jersey. Giancarlo found out that he was undocumented when he was going to get his drivers license. His mom told him that i have something to tell you. As he got older and started applying for colleges, when he first heard that he was undocumented the full implication did not really hit him. The driving thing was like its okay we have public transit, i can get around. But that he started applying for college and realize this was a serious problem. It was a a serious problem for him to get a job, the Community College<\/a> that he went to he had to pay the International Student<\/a> rate. So he cannot get instate tuition. This was the first a mans of the dreamers it was to allow undocumented immigrants the he became an activist. He showed up up for a meeting at the school where he was and he went all in. He is now, he got awarded after couple years got awarded a post color ship to rutgers, in large part to his activism. In his fight for real human rights for his family and his friends. Host you have a chapter and it definitely applies to this president ial politics year on the new populism. It even goes back to the freetrade discussion of in the 90s of all the socalled freetrade deals. Deals. But today you have the president ial candidate, Bernie Sanders<\/a> and, interestingly for all of his racism and gina phobia, donald trump opposing what is called freetrade and saying that it is not fair. They joined together in bernie Bernie Sanders<\/a> puts enormous pressure on Hillary Clinton<\/a> who then has to also weigh in and really shift positions on everything from tpp, the transpacific Transpacific Partnership<\/a> because he has laid out the case for how this is hurting people. Guest absolutely. The fact that we are finally having at least one issue that really matters to workingclass people at the forefront of our political debate is fantastic. The working class, particularly the White Working Class<\/a> has been written off as being red wing conservative. On most could issues the workingclass of all issues is more privette progressive. There are likely to believe that government should do everything it can to make sure everybody has food, housing, to make sure college is affordable. These are things they fundamentally believe in. Where it breaks down and this is what we are seen with trump is around issues of race. The White Working Class<\/a> is more likely to believe that they are the victim of Racial Discrimination<\/a> and their africanamericans. They are the one group who is antiimmigrant sentiment immigrant sentiment is greater than everybody elses in terms of feeling like immigrants are taking away their jobs. That is fueling Donald Trumps<\/a> presidency. I happen to believe the, if the democrats actually offered a full package, if they really created a workingclass platform and put the workingclass it back in the center of the party, that they could peel off a significant percentage of those of white, workingclass voters that are voting for trump. They could get a much higher turnout as opposed to what we are seen as an Enthusiasm Gap<\/a> among the new workingclass witches workingclass women, and people of color. Host you and your book with a blueprint for a better deal. Which is what . Guest i am a policy person at heart. I do not just want to diagnose of problem, i want to give solution. I say that its time for better deal. The reality is we have not updated our social contract, the basic agreement we have of what we as people in this country oh 21 another and guarantee one another, so i say it is time for a better deal which is a little play on the new deal. So it is a comprehensive plan aimed at addressing the totality of people. It is about our democracy. The rules of the game and the economy. It is about the fact that we need to finally joined the rest of the advanced world and provide affordable childcare and paid family leave for everybody in the country. It is about really, finally having a debate about how racism has kept our country from achieving its full potential and kept individuals of all races from achieving their full potential. Host and explain that, of all races. Guest since nixon there has been a strategy to divide americans by race. And to associate the benefits of government as it going to africanamericans. That has been a deliberate tool. The gradebooks dog whistle politics which i highly recommend to read. What is happened is people internalize, and unconsciously when they hear government, they think of those people getting benefits. They dont think of themselves. So, that drumbeat has been so successful, it really ripped into high gear with ronald reagan, the welfare, he was brilliant at spinning that, what it means is that we cannot as a people agree on things like funding affordable childcare because we are so worried and have been convinced that there is a population that is going to take advantage of it, that paul ryan likes to say our safety net has become a hammock. These are all different riesling coated terms. In peoples minds when they hear those terms they dont see a white person, they see a person of color. Today, it is of the same piece. What it does is divide people from working together the things that would benefit all americans and racism has undercut that sense of solidarity and the sense that we need to demand more from our government in terms of economic security. Host black lives matter has been astounding in really interrupting business as usual discourse in politics today. They have had a demonstrated effect, particularly on the democratic party, they are not letting these candidates go without saying, what has happened and they address everything mass incarceration to work, to the tremendous inequality in this country. Guest that is what is so powerful about the black lives matter movement. It is connecting the dots in a way that no other movement has. It is talking about criminal justice. Its talking about the oppression by the police. It it is talking about the lack of investment in these neighbors hoods and communities that have been happening for decades. Its talking about inequality. Its talking about how our democracy has been hijacked by elite, by wealthy interests. It is pulling all of those together in a coherent analysis about race. I think it is high time we had that conversation, i think it has been brilliance that they have stuck to the message that they need the parties to put out a real platform to address what is one of the greatest challenges to our country. It is high time we address it. Host as we begin to wrap up, you begin the book with your dad. The old workingclass as you put it. You and by talking about, again your own personal experience and the trajectory of downward mobility that is expressed in your own family and how it relates to race and the whole issue of the Sleeping Giant<\/a>. Guest my parents were divorced when i was in college. My my dad had a great pension, definedbenefit pension from his union shop. But what happened was, my siblings did not finish college, i, i am the only one who finish college. And i have seen that shift from being able to provide for your family and earn a decent wage without a College Degree<\/a> to being poor working class in the absence of a College Degree<\/a>. So, among my family there have been three bring great disease, one foreclosed home, my mom was laid off from her job, she did not have Health Insurance<\/a> for the first time in her life for over three years until she turned old enough to get medicare. So i have watched, just this downward spiral that is by no means unique to my family. One one of the things i talk about is that unlike many other families, my family does have the privilege of asset accumulation, thanks to being born white. And was able to buy home and sell that home and buy another home that was bigger, and then sell that off when it was needed. And enjoy and enjoy the proceeds of that. My dad passed down, got stocks from his dad, these are are bluecollar families that have been passing down stocks in Procter Gamble<\/a> of all places. That saved us so many times. It will continue to save my family. Host talk about the disparity between your family and the family of color, this sounding wealth gap. Guest the wealth gap in this country is enormous. They grew in the great to recession because the reality it is that africanamericans latinos had toxic mortgages were all but destined to not pay it. It was about 10 cents on the dollar in wealth. And wealth, unlike income, it is a huge income. Cap. There still a white, male, wage premium in this country that is very real. But wealth is a cushion. It is also an aspiration. It allows it allows you to dream. It allows you to protect yourself or your family when someone loses a job. Thats what it does. That is something that time and time again we have excluded africanamericans from being able to accumulate wealth in this country. Host so how well, looking at your subtitle in this last minute that we have, the new workingclass transform america . Guest i think the new workingclass, i fundamentally believe that if we want a more secure Economic Future<\/a> for everybody in this country, it is not going to happen without this workingclass reclaiming real political and Economic Authority<\/a> in the country. I think theyre theyre going to do that by continuing to stand up and make demands. Host well what a read, Sleeping Giant<\/a>. Sleeping giants, thank you so much. Cspan, created by americas to Cable Television<\/a> companies are brought to you as a public your cable or satellite provider. s Thomas Edison<\/a> said that i didnt fill 10000 times, just found 10000 ways that didnt work. But he eventually got to where he was trying to go and i have been and had the Great Fortune<\/a> in 58 years of living, excuse me to participate at the highest level of athletics. Ive been in the Faith Community<\/a> is that youth pastor, fulltime for eight years. Highest level in the political arena, i have all my own business, i have sat on corporate boards, i have learned a lot and all of those things and in dick deep i take my experiences, my good, my bad my ugly and try to pass on the wisdom that i learned to the reader and the tools that i mention. Because you lose does not mean that you are a loser. I think that part of me was grown and nurtured through my athletic career. Of course, you put on top of that a faith component that says, it does not matter how difficult things are, every storm runs out of rain. The sun is going to shine again. Now, life can be hard, life can be difficult, life can be messy i try to encourage the reader to understand that tomorrow will come. Digging deep is a matter of saying what everyone of us have within ourselves, that special something that says im going to fight another down, im going to fight another day, going to going to fight through the bad relationship, im going to fight through the bad business deal and i am going to get to the mountaintop. If we all, regardless of what our skin color or what are gender, or what part of town we grew up in, if up in, if we are liberal, conservative, republican, or democrat, that special something that we all have within us, we just have to dig pretty deep sometimes to find it. It is there, if we are to stand on the mountaintop, at some point in time we are going to have to call on it","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia800305.us.archive.org\/2\/items\/CSPAN2_20160529_020000_After_Words_with_Tamara_Draut\/CSPAN2_20160529_020000_After_Words_with_Tamara_Draut.thumbs\/CSPAN2_20160529_020000_After_Words_with_Tamara_Draut_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240625T12:35:10+00:00"}