My name is emile doak. Im the executiv watch and listen Tuesday Morning beginning at 930 eastern on cspan three on the free cspan nowng apple or online at cspan. Orgfo. A healthy democracy does not just look like this. It looks like this. Where americans can see democracy at work. Citizens are truly informed. Our republic arrives. Unfiltered, unbiased, word for word the from the Nations Capital to wherever you are. The opinion that matters the most is your own. This is what democracy looks like. Good evening, everyone. I am the executive director of the american conservative. I am pleased to welcome all of you both here in washington and watching us on cspan2 tonights book launch event for the latest much discussed book tierney inc. How private power ship crushed american liberty and what to do about it. Organized by the community foundation. Founded last year the bcf seeks to advance appreciation for roman law, philosophy and religion as a triple foundation of western civilization. It does this by promoting scholarship and students and Young Professionals by offering conferences like tonights event this event is also sponsored by my organization the american conservative. It exists to advance a mainstreet vision for conservatism. We pursue our mission primarily through our print magazine and online journalism as well as select conferences and events like the one you are attending here tonight. We are founded here in 2002 only 20 years ago now to reunite conversations we felt they had neglected for far too long. Our magazine was a rare voice against the iraq war in the early days of that conflict and a commitment to a Foreign Policy of realism restraint continues to animate our publication today our mission was broader than that one issue. We want to return considerations of faith and family. To the center of our political discourse. We felt that they were too often simply played and then ignored when policymaking. We wanted to recalibrate the conversation around political economy on the political right. We wanted to advance the interests of American Workers against an increasingly globalized free trade regime that prioritize corporate profits overe the concerns of real workers in the real economy now if you read tierney inc. Which i believe the Washington Post called anonymously sensible , which i guess is a complement. If you read it you have many stories of these real workers attempting to navigate in order that is often stacked against them. Theet dispensation for the pages for 21 years now. A healthy skepticism in all forms and a preference for mainstreet over wall street. We also welcome honest disagreement and debates about the best way to advance those interests. I hope we will be able to get into some of these discussions sparked by the provocative prescriptions and tierney inc. Here tonight. We have a great lineup of speakers for you to do just that before we start i want to introduce tonight speakers before handing over to the author the book that brings us here tonight. First the founder and editor. A contributing editor to our publication and a writer to the new statesman. Previously he spent nearly a decade at News Corporation as an editor and columnist for the wall street journal in new york and london. As the oped editor of the new york post. His latest book which we are here to discuss is of course tierney inc. A private power across american liberty and what to do about it just out. If you have not picked up a copy yet, please do. Next marco rubio is a senior u. S. Senator from florida and the author most recently of decades of decadence, however spoiled elites blue americas inheritance of liberty, security and prosperity which was published earlier this year. Director of research at the American Economic liberties project and author of goliath 100 year war between monopoly power and democracy published by simon schuster. Serving as a policy advisor to the Senate Budget committee and writes the Big Newsletter monopoly. A labor unionist in baltimore in a contributored to compact magazine and last but certainly not least my colleague Bradley Devlin who was a Staff Reporter doing excellent work for us. If you have read bradleys work you may think that he is older than his years. He is actually very young. No real memories of that terrible day 21 years ago, 22 years ago just yesterday. A perspective of conservatives that have come to age. So, just a quick couple of notes here on how tonights events will proceed. Starting us off in just a few minutes here with some opening remarks. Another 1015 minutes. I will invite the full panel our schedules veryy tightly packed. If we do have time we will take one to two questions from the audience at the end. Either way we will post promptly so folks can move on to their own dinner plans. I will note to remain in your seats after the panel to allow the speakers to leave first. With that please join me in welcoming. [applause] thank you all for being here. I am thankful to the conservative for sponsoring this gathering. Thanks to the steadfast support for our work and thanks to the other analysts. Senator rubio who has shown genuine and rare leadership in pushing his party, my party to political dogmas and who has been kind enough to take this book. I would like to pan out to a global picture. Four yearsc. Now defenders of freedom have been warning of a democratic recession beginning in the 1970s and then especially after the collapse of the soviet union dozens of societies built on coercion gave way to one on the consent. Many regions backsliding the authoritarianism and ideological dictatorship. To see the severity of freedoms global funk the news with the horizon opened up for market reforms have not been shuttered. It was in this. A massive slaughterhouse and complex had had enough. The state owned firms objectives workers to a digital tracking their every move, communist party bosses make no bones about the purpose of this all present surveillance. It is to stoke a cultural fear, reminding workers that the government is continually monitoring them and failure to meet quotas or as they put it wasting the peoples time results in docked pay. At the outset of the pandemic, chinese authorities identified slaughterhouses as essential enterprises. Ordering employees to put in ever longer shifts with scant regard for the risk of viral contagion at a moment when covid and its mitigation were understood. The cavalier attitude prompted our protagonist to act. One day in april he led a walk out of his colleagues. Their demand was reasonable. They called simply for the complex to be temporarily closed and was stringently sanitized. To lapses. And it wasnt a chinese slaughterhouse that terminated a worker for leading a walkout at the height of the pandemic over. The employers careless attitude toward the novel coronavirus. No, that would be the u. S. Conglomerate amazon, founded by jeff bezos, the real john ming is named Christian Smalls, an his name is Christian Smalls a worker at amazon gfk Warehouse Facility on staten island. At the height of pandemic he became alarmed as his colleagues became sick. The Human Resources department dismissed those concerns telling another worker to keep her illness on the download according to the new york times. Then he let his walkout after a which amazon fired him. Amazons lawyer describes smalls who is africanamerican as quote not smart articulate according to internal memos. This from the same company that if you months later would elbow its way toow the forefront of corporate americas lives matter activism in the wake of George Floyds murder in minneapolis. Since then smalls has fought to organize the 8000 workers with ferocious antiunion activity crew typical of the firm including confiscating prounion pamphlets left in the break room and surveilling where workers congregating on the sidewalk according to the times. We are used to thinking of coercion is something that happens over there by a tyrannical suit systems of lack of checks and balances like their own. A course those regimes are as far as their state systems go far more coercive than ours. Pumi stop thinking about things in geographic terms and focus instead on who is meeting out that coercion we reach an unsettling new understanding. Coercion is all too common supposedly noncourse of societies like ours, provided we Pay Attention to private power and admit the possibility of privateer private tyranny. Our reigning economic ideology tells us in theha t privatesecr no one can force us to do anything recompetition ensures we are always free to sign a better deal elsewhere. The arch laissezfaire theorist for examples pale in competition is the only method bye bye which our two babies can be adjusted to each other without coercive authority. Milton friedman likewise insisted the central feature of Market Society is that prevents one person from interfering with another in respect to most of its activities end quote. But this is utopian thinking. Im some in some ways is idealistic and dangerous as other modern utopia it came to legitimate real word real word protection. Marketd utopianism shot through with private coercion. Oe coercion that we cant contest at the ballot box for the court systemre for other democratic means its giveandtake precisely because its labeled private. Take the fact that a third of the 25 million americans employed in food service and retail received less than a upcomingice of the schedules according to the university of california sociologistst Daniel Snyder and kristin hartnett. It ships the downsides associated low demand onto employees. In addition to wage prepared you because you can never be sure to have enough wages and Financial Stability of this result of that weaker workers treated this way before settling mentally as a result of their children are more likely to show signs of anxiety and act out in misbehavior doesnt take a Rocket Scientist to connect the dots the predictable results of their parents to spend regular time with them. Then there is the model employment agreements. When you sign on the dotted line for a jobjo you agree to its tol surveillance of traditional life including the confiscation of yourto personal devices the usef key logger software to monitor your communications in the recording of her voice and personal likeness for commercial licensing is no longer just about using your picture in a Company Brochure or commercial arbitration a process originally intended for resolving disputes between merchants a relatively cool equal Bargaining Power and listening to Supreme Court conserves practically rewriting the arbitration act the share of nonunion firm subjected workers did arbitrary agreements have exploded. 54 in 22017 up from 2 in 1992. The employees privatized quartz is just 21 which is 59 as often as in federal court in only 30 as often in state courts. Corporations meanwhile enjoy what scholars call repeat player advantage the more often the firm appears before private arbitrator the less likely its employees are to prevail. Arbitration moreover frequently bargains from joining forces to vindicate rights they would otherwise enjoy under statutoryl law. When it would be manifestly and just not to mention. In one notorious case a lowlevel employee of the accounting giant ernst young would have had to show up at 200,000 a ticket not disputed by ernst young and expenses to cover roughly 4000 for wage underpayments. Just as neil gorsuch riding for a high Court Majority upheld that outcome on the grounds that the employee had freely contracted to arbitrate. In that ernst young presented the arbitration clause long after a his employee Steven Morris had been hired and yet the consent of the condition of preconceived employment in other words he was told if you show up to work the next daygo Going Forward your disputes for arbitration and according to a certain kind of classical economic theory its popular among the judiciarys including with real life at that point he had the ability to renegotiate his agreement for press for better terms but in reality as most of us know what you have to do is show up to work the next day because you have to pay a mortgage and pay for all the care and childcare and so on. Things dont have to be this way. A better model would admit that coercion is inevitable and all Human Affairs not just an market activities. At he would recognize the unchecked private coercion makes a mockery of her democratic ideals and it would insist that such coercion be ameliorated by more robust political giveandtake between the asset rich view and the asset less money. This is the promise of what i call Political Exchange capitalism. It was the philosophy that underpins the new deal generating the mass prosperity that defined the three decades after a world war ii. Crucially it forms a bipartisan consensus winning the allegiance not just of progressives that earlier generation conservatives from eisenhower to nixon. These men werent starryeyed socialists. They were hardnosed realists whose experience was alerted to the dangers of unchecked market power. Political estate capitalism describes the world as it really is not the preindustrial arcadia of yeoman farmers in independent partisans the premise for much market you utopian but a machine economy characterized by few colossal firms dominating most industries. Its chief aspect as economist John Kenneth Galbraith tells us is the absence of real price competition and thats the one thinged supposedly useful under practical economic theory to prevent private coercion. That pattern has emerged by the late teen 19th century. Big tip type rules over at markets for example would bring embarrassment to the monocle is a big gilded age tycoons. Galbraith wrote that their only handful of terms in a typical industry each follows that privately exercised economic power is less the exception than the rule. Instead of waving competition against coercion Political Exchange capitalism strengthens the hands of those subjugatedjuy privatepe power especially in te labor markets. As thus the new dealers resolved to make it easier for workers to mount what galbraith called counterveiling power after a decades in whichng government hd hindered them from doing so sometimes through violence. Countervailing powers similar to competition only hear the counterpressure including is not on the same side of a given market not between producers or between employees and so i bet the other side of the market. Not with competitors. Suppliers is galbraith explains. In this way private economic power is held in check by the countervailing power of those who are subjugated to it. The first begets the second. In competition it requires action something you canmo laissezfaire type submit so in labor markets promoting countervailing power requires backing to offset the asymmetry that is otherwise created by employees and the few employers. Otherwise most employees rationally choose to put up with the bully boss or suffer precarious hours of low wages are rather than take the risk associated with collective action. This was the logic between the 1935 National Labor relations act which sought to encourage collective bargaining and a 1938 fair labor standards act which created federal minimum wage and overtime protection. The result, Union Membership peaked in 1945 to 33 , up from 2. 7 at the turn of the 20th century and during the 50s and 60s. Under new deal conditions the asset list went along to survive or pitched in tents battles against buses and sometimes lithreaten social stability. Posted deal they could channel their demand to recognize talington mass Political Parties. In a way this model made explicit what ordinary people are to do the Economic Life involves coercion put it also gave them a miniature power to negotiate things which theyve been often subjective. Foreign exchange capitalism foremost requires boosting the share of the labor force along with labor organizations but they that the gear has sunk 6 in the private economy on the long decline that began as you know in the 1970s. Apologists for the current state of affairs claims this ison because unions have lost their lusters among employees or because automation and globalization shifted manufacturing out at the United States. If organizer labor is belied by recent polling showing that units are more popular now than they have been in the past century we need the dires desire to be representative has increased among nonunion workers since the 1970s. One m. I. T. Study finding nearly half of nonunion labor force would go to join the union if given a choice meaning roughly 58 million americans are currently underrepresented. But what about the robots in china . That too was overstated. As Labour Congress lawrence michelle and a 2020 study manufacturing unit coverage for share of workers who are either Union Members are otherwise covered by collective bargaining agreements fell by 74 from 197a to 2019. The nonmanufacturing coverage fell by a comparable 60 over the same period. You can perhaps explain the manufacturing drop by pointing to rowboats in china but you struggle to explain the comparable drop in nonmanufacturing sectors. Statistical Analysis Shows overall Union Coverage only marginally changes in transposing todays industrial sized conditions in 1979 seccombe or put another way saving manufacturing would have been good for unions. As American Workers want to unionize the loss o