[SPEAKER_02]: Hey everyone, Gabe Dunne here.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am reporting to you live from a summer camp that I am at this weekend for Transmen.
[SPEAKER_02]: If the audio sounds different, that's why.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'll be back next week.
[SPEAKER_02]: But if you're listening to this on Tuesday, I'm still there.
[SPEAKER_02]: So hello, it has been really affirming and wonderful.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've made a lot of friends.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm still processing it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I will report back.
[SPEAKER_02]: probably next week, more about my experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the meantime, please enjoy this episode with writer Hamilton Nolan.
[SPEAKER_02]: He is the author of one of my favorite sub-stack newsletters, and he's also been one of the voices covering labor unions and labor activism.
[SPEAKER_02]: He is a book out called The Hammer.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have long admired Hamilton's work because I was working at Thought Catalog in the twenty-tens when he was at Gawker.
[SPEAKER_02]: We never really crossed paths, but I read his work.
[SPEAKER_02]: and was just like a longtime fan.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm excited to sort of merge that era of New York media together.
[SPEAKER_02]: And in this episode, and also to talk to someone who is an expert in this field about how labor unions collide with anti-fascism work right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the ways that everything is
[SPEAKER_02]: intersectional basically and how labor unions are important today and are necessary to help us fight proactively and in a meaningful way that will create results.
[SPEAKER_02]: right now and what we can learn from what the labor unions are up to and how all of it can come together to make us stronger against this authoritarian regime.
[SPEAKER_02]: So please enjoy this episode and I'll see you guys next week.
[SPEAKER_01]: with money podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hello, and welcome to a thousand natural shocks, a bad with money podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm your host, Gabe S. Dunn.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm very excited about our guest today because I am an avid sub stack reader.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I rediscovered you from Gocker to this sub stack, which is really great.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I was so excited to see that you've gotten into labor reporting because I remember being very talented at Gocker.
[SPEAKER_02]: So can you tell my audience who you are and what you do?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thanks for having me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm happy to be here.
[SPEAKER_00]: My name is Hamilton Nolan.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am a journalist right about labor and politics.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have a sub-stack called How Things Work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I wrote a book about the labor movement last year called The Hammer.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I am happy to be here.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I know your book looks at the past and then kind of connects that to the future has a lot changed since you were book came out to now like this current moment.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure it really has.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was a funny experience because I wrote a book and the whole point of the book is basically like reviving organized labor and unionizing millions more people is really the key to kind of saving American democracy and fixing the deepest problems of inequality that have been plaguing us for fifty years that have created this oligarchy and destruction of democracy that we're all living through.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the book came out in twenty twenty four
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, the thesis of the book is like, we really need to unionize people widely at scale all over the country and increase union density.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then obviously, like, since the book came out, everything has gone in the opposite direction of everything I said.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, unfortunately, writers cannot control the world, but yeah, we're fucked, but it's been interesting experience to watch.
[SPEAKER_02]: Be can imagine a better world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, I, you know, one of the things that I hope people take from all the stuff I write about the labor movement is, you know, a lot of people don't think about the labor movement.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people don't think about labor unions because they have gotten, they have declined for so long.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they have gotten so small in America that today less than one in ten workers is a union member today, you know, and that used to be one in three in the in the nineteen fifties.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like the scale of decline has been huge.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we've gotten to the point when I think a lot of people who are looking at, you know, the ways that America's broken and can see the problems very clearly.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't occur to them to think about labor organizing and the labor movement and labor unions as a path out of these problems.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, one of the basic messages I try to get across is like, look, don't just think about politics in terms of DC and politicians and all that, you know, think about how you as a working person can build power for yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: and unions are the tool.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think just trying to open a lot of people's eyes to the fact that, hey, unions exist.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unions are a tool that anybody with a job, whoever you are, wherever you are, you can unionize, and you can build power for yourself, and you can make more money, you can make your life better, your family's life better, your coworkers life better, and through that, the working class can build political power that can be used to kind of
[SPEAKER_00]: counterbalance a lot of the power of the oligarchy that we're seeing right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: This shows a little bit covers a one-on-one aspect.
[SPEAKER_02]: So can you tell my audience what is a union?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, a union is just simply you and your co-workers joining together to negotiate as a group.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, if you work in an office and there's fifty people that work in the office and you have a boss, normally in America, you know, the way people think is like, well, the boss is like the dictator of the office.
[SPEAKER_00]: If the boss wants to cut your salary, if the boss wants to change your hours, if your boss wants to change the policies of the workplace, they just do that because they're like, God, it work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, that's not true.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, unions are just you and your workers come together.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can form a legal legally recognized entity called a union.
[SPEAKER_00]: And your boss is legally obligated to sit down and negotiate with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called collective bargaining.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's really all it means.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a complicated process, but it's one that, obviously, in America, under capitalism, they don't want working people thinking in those terms.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't want you and the fifty people in your office being like, hey, you know what?
[SPEAKER_00]: If we all negotiated a contract together, the boss would have to pay us more.
[SPEAKER_00]: He'd have to treat us better.
[SPEAKER_00]: We could put policies in place.
[SPEAKER_00]: And most crucially, if you have a union, you can have a contract, which is something that, you know, ninety percent of Americans do not work under a contract, and people don't think about that, but what that means is that your boss can do anything to you at any time.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have a union, you negotiate a contract, and it's, for example, a three-year contract, and the boss size it, and like everything's in there, they cannot cut your salary.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they cannot change your health care, they cannot change the policies, because it is contractually guaranteed.
[SPEAKER_00]: A union is just a way for working people to get together and organize and make their own life better in the workplace.
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you think the fear is?
[SPEAKER_00]: In America, businesses and companies understand that unions give power to workers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously, they take that power away from the boss.
[SPEAKER_00]: They take that power away from the business owner.
[SPEAKER_00]: They take that power away from the investors.
[SPEAKER_00]: The people who typically have all the power in the workplace have to give some of that power to workers if they have a union.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so businesses have always had a very anti-union attitude.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they have
[SPEAKER_00]: very well developed techniques for trying to stop people from unionizing and so you know the two basic techniques are lying so if you if you tell your boss that you want to unionize the first thing they'll do is be like that's a bad idea we're going to go out of business unions are corrupt they had there's a whole list of stuff they always say and the other technique is intimidation and scaring people and and
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, threatening to fire people who unionize or actually firing people who unionize or retaliate, you know, cutting your, cutting your hours, retaliating against you for trying to organize in the workplace.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's where the fear comes from typically, but people should know that it is your absolute legal right as a working person to organize your workplace.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a one hundred percent guaranteed right that you have as a working person.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so all that retaliation that that bosses and companies do against people try to organize is illegal as a matter of law.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that doesn't mean that it's easy, but it doesn't mean that the law is on your side.
[SPEAKER_02]: What can you do to enforce the law?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like if your boss is like, hey, I'm going to fire you for doing this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a hard question because even though the law is on the side of workers in America, the overall system of labor law is very weak in terms of the penalties that it gives to your boss.
[SPEAKER_00]: So one thing that happens a lot is like,
[SPEAKER_00]: workers at an Amazon warehouse, for example, we'll say we want a union, they'll start organizing and signing people up for the union.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Amazon will come in and be like, you can't pass out this literature, you know, you can't, they'll fire the organizers.
[SPEAKER_00]: They'll do all that retaliation, which is illegal.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they will, the, the workers and their union will file charges.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can file formal charges against the boss through the
[SPEAKER_00]: through the National Labor Relations Board and it's a whole process.
[SPEAKER_00]: And after two years of hearings on what, you know, the judge will come out and say, yes, Amazon broke the law.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the penalty is like they have to hang up a notice in the break room.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's like we're sorry for breaking the law and we won't do it again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes people can get back pay and sometimes they'll have to rehire people they fired.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the penalties are so weak that it does make it hard to enforce it just by that legal process.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the real answer to the question of what you can do is that
[SPEAKER_00]: your boss, your boss needs workers.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you would not work at this place if they did not need your work to be done.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the real power that everybody has as a worker is the power of doing the work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so as long as you stick together with your co-workers,
[SPEAKER_00]: And say, look, if you do not treat us with respect, and if you violate the law and fire people who are organizing and things like that, we're not going to work for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the power of the strike.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the strike is the fundamental power
[SPEAKER_00]: of the labor movement for the last for hundreds of years now, you know, since the beginning of the labor movement, what working people understood, you know, even the most beaten down, you know, coal miners, a hundred years ago, who had not had no rights and had, you know, the boss had guns and on their house and everything, but what those people understood was that, look, they need us to do the work.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the power we have.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if we strike, we can actually force the Boston treat us with respect, even though we don't have power in all those other ways.
[SPEAKER_02]: What kind of things would cause someone to unionize or to want to unionize their workplace?
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot in a lot of cases, people will unize because they're some wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what gets people talking about, you know, we have a problem here.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that could be anything from, you know, your manager is a jerk, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Your manager is playing favorites with the schedule, like they're sleeping with one of the employees and they're giving them all the hours or like, it could be anything like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your manager is racist.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the boss is unfair or
[SPEAKER_00]: Our company just got bought by an evil private equity firm and we're scared that they're going to lay people off or they are laying people off or they're cutting our salaries or you know a lot of times it's something bad that happens that kind of triggers and people's mind the idea that oh we need some protection.
[SPEAKER_00]: in this workplace.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't just keep coasting along the way that we have been with no contract, with no safety net, with nothing to protect us except the goodwill of the boss.
[SPEAKER_00]: So very typically it's something bad that causes people to want to unionize, but I would add there that
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't have to be that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously, common sense tells you that the best time to organize and get yourself a union that will protect you is before something bad happens, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because you get that union in place.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it will be there to protect you when the bad thing happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I tell everybody, like, don't wait.
[SPEAKER_00]: for something bad to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody can and should have a union.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's your right.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are able to do it, you know, and a lot of people don't think about it until it's too late.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the best time to organize your workplaces is right now always.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I remember we were trying to unionize at BuzzFeed when I was there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And uh, don't a parody was like, don't.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like, where a family don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was, he was saying all the things that companies say, like, we're, yeah, we're a family.
[SPEAKER_00]: This will be a bad idea or like, we need flex.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to complicate things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need the flexibility because this is a new tech company and blah, blah, blah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, what, what bosses don't tell you when they make those speeches is like, you negotiate the contract.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you as the workers can,
[SPEAKER_00]: can bargain for whatever you want in your contract.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like when the boss is like, we don't want to have set hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the only way you're going to have set hours is if you, the workers are like, we want set hours and we're going to negotiate for that in our contract, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You all get to collectively decide.
[SPEAKER_00]: what you do and don't bargain for in your contract.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's kind of, it's extremely misleading the way that Boss has talked about unions as if a union is going to force you, the workers, to do certain things that will be bad for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reality is that you all, the workers sit down and say, what do we want?
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: What do we want to put in this contract?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it can be anything you want.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, the only person who can deny you what you want is the Boss, who's telling you not to have a union in the first place.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just on that point, like we unionize at Gawker a little bit before you all were trying to unionize a buzzfeed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we signed our first union contract right before the company got bankrupted.
[SPEAKER_00]: in a lawsuit funded by Peter Thiel.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when Gawker got bankrupted and that lawsuit and sold to a univision in bankruptcy, none of us had our salaries cut, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And nothing changed because we had that union contract.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we had that demonstration really fast of the value of having that union contract because we got slammed and had the bad thing happen right after we signed that contract.
[SPEAKER_02]: What about Uber or like gig economy unionizing when you don't have a set workplace or necessarily know your co-workers?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a lot trickier because the labor of the law in America is that the only people who can legally form the kind of union that we've been talking about are full-time employees, so W-to employees and employees who are classified as independent contractors like Uber drivers,
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, delivery people and tons of other people that you can think of.
[SPEAKER_00]: across the whole economy are not legally allowed to form a union like the union that we've been talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is, by the way, the biggest reason why companies are trying to make everybody independent contractors.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason why these companies want to have independent contractors instead of employees is not because they're like, oh, you love flexibility.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is great.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not the reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason is that if you're an independent contractor,
[SPEAKER_00]: you are not allowed to unionize and you lose a whole shitload of rights that are guaranteed to people who are full-time employees.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's a lot trickier for those people, but that's something that the labor movement recognizes and there has been a lot of organizing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, so even if you can't form a formal union, you can still organize with your co-workers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's been a lot of organizing of Uber drivers and, and most of the leveristas in New York who have just gone out and said, hey, we can kind of act like a union.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, organizing is its own form of power.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you can sit down with your co-workers and be like, we're all in the same boat here.
[SPEAKER_00]: We all have the same needs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's form a group.
[SPEAKER_00]: And less act collectively in our own self-interest and less agree to have each other's backs.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the real source of power.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if you can do that, you can still get the company to negotiate things with you even if it's outside the framework of illegal union.
[SPEAKER_02]: has there been any help provided by social media shaming or getting the word out there or marketing that you are on strike?
[SPEAKER_02]: I know personally the Starbucks near my work and Starbucks were boycotting whatever, but
[SPEAKER_02]: Been near my work, they were closed for a while, and then everyone was gossiping on the street that it was because they were unionizing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then mostly everyone at my workplace was like, get them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't worry, we'll go somewhere else.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, all that, all that is like a form of solidarity that people can show to workers who are trying to unionize, even if you don't work there, like you said, like you can support the Starbucks workers.
[SPEAKER_00]: in their fight, if they ask you to boycott or if they ask you to, if they're picketing, you can go and pick it with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can go on social media and support them.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can donate to the strike funds.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, raising the visibility of workers who are in all these types of fights is really important because those fights can get really lonely.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I mean, think about being a Starbucks worker and this their fight has been going on for years at this point.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and they're up against a company that's worth billions and billions of dollars and has the whole team of lawyers and everything else and PR people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it is important, you know, for regular people to be like, hey, I support you units strong, you know, we're with you like to see the stuff on social media, to see it in the regular media, you know, to for the morale of those workers for one thing, but also I think it's really valuable, you know, just to kind of raise the profile of unions in general and like
[SPEAKER_00]: When I was reporting my book, I went all over the country and talked to all types of different workers who were organizing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one thing I heard a lot of was regular, regular working people who were like, I saw a story about Starbucks, or I saw a story about the Amazon Union.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that put in my head, hey, why can't we do that here?
[SPEAKER_00]: That was something I heard over and over.
[SPEAKER_00]: Having those campaigns that are visible and get some attention can actually spread the concept of unionizing farther than you could ever imagine.
[SPEAKER_02]: Why do you think it was more prevalent to be part of a union in the past than now?
[SPEAKER_02]: I know Reagan had something to do with it because he always has something to do with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, it's a really interesting question.
[SPEAKER_00]: The short answer is like businesses made it their goal to destroy unions.
[SPEAKER_00]: right for all the reasons we already talked about because unions give workers power give workers more money and businesses said we want that power we want that money and they spent literally the past seventy plus years
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, on a legal campaign to make those labor laws weak, all those weak labor laws that we talked about, that's not an accident.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that's because businesses make donations to politicians who will pass weak labor laws because they want weak unions and also laws that make it hard to organize new unions and write to work laws that make it difficult to sustain unions once you have them.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of that stuff is a very deliberate
[SPEAKER_00]: and purposeful campaign by business interests in America that has gone on since, you know, nineteen thirty-five and still goes on today.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like the environment in America is just hostile to unions and that has eroded the power unions slowly but surely over time.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were some other factors like when people were working in factories
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it was a little easier to organize people, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because you work in auto factory with five thousand other people and like a union organizer can stand outside the gate and you could sign up a thousand people in a day or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as a normal, right, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, as the as industrial jobs declined, that was a really heavily unionized sector.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that said, like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I said, unions are for everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's no reason why just because people work in different kind of jobs a day, they can't have unions, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: As the Starbucks workers are showing, you know, they work at Starbucks, they don't work in auto factory, but they still deserve and need a union and they're doing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like,
[SPEAKER_00]: people shouldn't think that oh unions were just a thing for construction workers and they're just a thing for auto workers and now jobs are different like that those are lies that bosses tell people to get them not to union out and they say oh you're gonna be paying dues for nothing blah blah which is like always kind of scary
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's funny, like when we were unionizing Galker, some people were like, well, we have to pay dues.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our dues are one point five percent of your check is your union dues.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're like, we guarantee that we will get a raise that is greater than these dudes.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we don't bring you a contract with the raise, that's bigger than the do's than you can vote it down.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so obviously, you will get a raise.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very, very likely that you will make more money if you unionize.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you will make a much more money than you're paying in union dudes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this again is something that companies know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they lie to workers.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're like, oh, you have to pay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, Delta Delta is a big union buster.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are people trying to unionize Delta.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at one point, they put up these posters in the workplace that had picture of like a PlayStation on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they were like, you could buy this PlayStation with the money they want you to pay and you need to, you know, and it's like, you know, you're not mentioning that you're going to get a raise.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's twice that much, you know, so it's, it's another kind of really mislead to PlayStation.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to, you're going to get to play stations for the union.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you're talking about the boss, like, well, first of all, with Starbucks unionizing, it's each store independently has to do it because there's no overarching system with which they could do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But are they going against Howard Schultz or like, you know, their boss at Starbucks?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, this is actually a really big issue
[SPEAKER_00]: in America and the way that America does unions, that makes it hard to unize a lot of people, which is in America you have to unionize at the level of the workplace.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Starbucks is organizing one store at a time rather than being able to organize the whole company at once or
[SPEAKER_00]: In a lot of other countries, they have something called sectoral bargaining, which is where you're like the whole fast food industry, right, is going to be in this group.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're going to negotiate a contract that covers the whole fast food industry at once, right, which obviously would be a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: easier and more straightforward to give more people the benefits of those contracts.
[SPEAKER_00]: And America, you've got to go one place at a time, unionizing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the way that our laws are make that a lot more difficult, but at Starbucks, you know, if they can organize enough stores, they can get Starbucks to negotiate a contract with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: That could potentially cover all the workers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what they're trying to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: But are you going against like your boss that you see every day?
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like awkward.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you're not Starbucks is negotiating with the corporate leadership of Starbucks corporation, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's who they're negotiating with.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now it depends.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, if you work in a, in a, in one person's insurance office, you know, you would be negotiating with your boss, but like,
[SPEAKER_00]: It's also important to say, you know, or a Buzzfeed, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You would be negotiating with Jonah Peretti, who maybe you work with every day.
[SPEAKER_02]: I never saw that guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a bad example, probably, but like, but you know, it's it's also important to say that like a union is not
[SPEAKER_00]: an insult to your boss like a union is just being like we want to have normal ass workplace protections here like it's not it doesn't mean your boss is mean you know it doesn't mean we hate the boss like maybe you hate the boss but maybe you don't i mean i worked with bosses who i think are cool
[SPEAKER_00]: And we still wanted to unionize because we want to contract and we want our pay guaranteed and you want the basic things that a union gets you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like that tactic is actually another union bus in tactic that is very common and that that bus is used a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, which is being like
[SPEAKER_00]: acting as if it's a personal insult to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they're like, I thought we got along.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we thought we're family like, why don't you do this and you're like, look, this is not about you.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is not an insult to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is basic level of protection and respect for everybody that works here.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, when I've had those issues.
[SPEAKER_02]: at work, I have said to you, like, like, sometimes to a direct boss, like, I'm not mad at you.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's not, which is so silly to have to say, because it's like, the idea of being at work.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've, like, messed with the idea of being at work is like, hey, I'm not mad at you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Just heads up before I give you this information.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not mad at you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, turn, you know, if you turn the viewpoint around, it's like,
[SPEAKER_00]: bosses and managers are always being like we're a family like our most important asset is our employees right and we are our highest priorities are team and all that like that's the stuff they say until you're like okay can we get a contract you know then it's like no oh it's an insult to me like you don't work at a job to make your boss
[SPEAKER_00]: Happy, like, that's not the point of a job, you know, is to pay or is to survive.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, it's actually kind of insulting from from your manager or your supervisor or your boss to be like, on the one hand, oh, we respect you and care for you so much, but as soon as you're like, can we get, can we get that in writing?
[SPEAKER_00]: They're like, absolutely not.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have like a customer service job that I bandied from different stores.
[SPEAKER_02]: And at one of the stores, it was very interesting because you saying, you know, these bosses need your labor.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I never saw the owners ever.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was one hundred percent the most, the one of the best employees there, although my sister runs a restaurant and she told me that, but it's always the worst worker who says that they're the best worker.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, a little under undermining comment there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I took it under advisement, but you know, I was like, I'm going to leave and they didn't care.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then once I left, I was like, I knew that things were going to fall apart.
[SPEAKER_02]: But there was such a disconnect between the bosses who I don't think had stepped inside one of the stores for sixteen years.
[SPEAKER_02]: and the idea that me starting to leave and watching everything fall apart because I'm not there to like do all my little things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, another good thing about unions is like you create this sort of structure that can actually tell
[SPEAKER_00]: the boss is how to run the place better, you know, because the union is just all the employees in an organized structure.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like unions are very good at being like, if there's problems at work, who's going to know better than you, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You, you, the employees know the workplace better in many cases than the boss, like, exactly what you're talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, you know, one reason why I always think it's kind of dumb for companies to be so hostile to unions is like,
[SPEAKER_00]: companies that are smart enough to work with their unions and be like, this can be a productive team.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, can get that feedback and a really well organized way and make the company better, you know, just by listening to the employees.
[SPEAKER_02]: One hundred percent.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've that never thought of it that way.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's actually really smart.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think this company's going to go under.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and Europe, there are things called work councils that are like organized groups of employees that meet with management, and it's exactly what you're talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like here's how we can make this company better.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you have a union, the employees are more invested in the company.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you just have a crappy job for a big company, you're like, what do I care if this company goes under?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it sucks, and I hate my job.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have a good job and a good salary and you're happy and you have a strong union then you're like we want this company to succeed and so like there are in fact places in the world where the company and the workers work together to make the companies better.
[SPEAKER_02]: You've also been writing a lot on your sub stack and sort of how can anyone not about sort of the political climate and what's going on and you mentioned briefly that bosses would come and they just have guns.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I wonder if there is a connection to now, because I feel I've been deeply involved in the anti-Is protest downtown in Los Angeles.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, that's kind of been, we go to City Council, we do all this stuff, meet with City Council members privately if they want to, it's very rare.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, very deeply involved on the ground.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I have just had the thought of like, they'll just shoot us.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they'll just shoot us.
[SPEAKER_02]: They don't care at this point.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's I don't think it's that far fish.
[SPEAKER_00]: And fortunately like the more we see a national guard, you know, getting called out into American cities.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's hard for me to imagine that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can put hundreds and thousands of national guard people in a bunch of different cities all over in America and nobody is ever going to pull a trigger.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just mathematically the more you put cops and soldiers out in our cities and provoke people.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's definitely a fear that I have.
[SPEAKER_00]: Stay safe out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's such an important cause right now the ice protests and one of the values of the labor movement that I really respect a lot is that it's about solidarity, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're kind of teaching people when they organize with your co-workers
[SPEAKER_00]: is kind of a way of teaching people like look solidarity means we all got each other's backs and that extent that can actually you'll see people's politics change you know you can have somebody who's a white Republican who has never thought about any of this stuff go through a union drive and through that process learn about solidarity and start to understand those concepts and
[SPEAKER_00]: And people can then apply that out to the wider world.
[SPEAKER_00]: So seeing what's happening to immigrants is an example of where we have to have solidarity outside of the workplace.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's the labor movement's responsibility, too, I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I would hope that it would sort of bring to mind, hey, we can change this, we can do this, you can work together.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just been really hard and disheartening because, I mean, I always say this, you don't have to agree, but maybe you do having worked in internet media.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I'm like, people who haven't, I'm like, think of the dumbest person you know, times it by three.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's most people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I mean, right, if you read the stuff that people say on the internet all day, you're like, wow, there's a lot of morons in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is definitely true.
[SPEAKER_02]: And bootlickers and people that will side with their boss and people that will side with Howard Sholes, even though it's against their own interest.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's been like increasingly difficult to communicate with people that this is like,
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if they feel like it's cringed to have a union and try.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if they feel like it's not something like that they don't want to even young people like there is an element of we're going to try and get involved and where more woke or whatever mixed with oh my god that would be so awkward and embarrassing to do like a union drive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, that's definitely one of the things that makes organizing so frustrating, you know, and like the reality of organizing anywhere is like it's it's fucking hard, you know, because you have to go through all that stuff and like you have to try to listen to all of people's crap.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know and not just be like shut up idiot right because as soon as you say shut up idiot you're not you're not going to organize with that person like you've closed that door so organizing is you know is it was funny as you said like if if you're a right somebody who wrote on the internet for a living like all writers on the internet just like
[SPEAKER_00]: You're all idiots and shut up idiot.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was kind of like the tone of our writing, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So then we had to organize.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, I had to learn entirely new outlook on life because I was used to just writing things.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're like, I'm writing your wrong and shut the fuck up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when you're trying to organize you know like no no you cannot have that attitude you have to be like look let's talk and let's explain why you know so I do think the process of organizing whether it's union organizing or community organizing or political organizing or all that stuff you know it does make you be like how can I actually kind of get people to sort of come our way.
[SPEAKER_00]: more than just being like fuck off your all idiots, even though you still really want to want to say that to a lot of people.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's been my thing now when people comment on my work with anti ice protests and stuff working on the ground in LA is that when people write something stupid now,
[SPEAKER_02]: My reaction now is to write back, like, I fight for you to even, you know, even though you believe this way, I will make sure that your life is good.
[SPEAKER_02]: God bless you.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's very mature.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I commend you for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I tried to, I try to have that ads.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'd also, and it's obviously a constant struggle because, you know, it's natural I think to get pissed off of people, but we do have to remember also that like,
[SPEAKER_00]: People were born people grew up in America and people you know all the propaganda that America produces like that's what's been going in people's head for their whole lives and so you know a lot of that stuff that can be frustrating in the way that people act against their own interests and you know bootlick and and our racist and all that stuff is like
[SPEAKER_00]: Partly you're like, this is what comes from growing up in America.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, we have to like try to work to get people out of that slowly.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, it's all, it's always a struggle between that and get pissed off of people.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I have main line, the podcast that you've been on and it's such a
[SPEAKER_02]: a thing that's talked about a lot is like the intersectionality of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So not just people working, but talk of, you know, the Black Panthers working with unions because members of the Black Panthers were working at those places or like the crossover of all the different
[SPEAKER_02]: groups together, you know, like it really takes not just solidarity amongst the people around you, but showing up for other groups.
[SPEAKER_02]: And like, hey, this is actually going to help disabled people.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, this is actually going to help, you know, I think there's more cross section than people think, even with, you know, a big thing for me with the, with the ice stuff was I carry my psychiatric meds in my backpack.
[SPEAKER_02]: because I mean, I don't know if it'll do anything, but if I get arrested and I've to spend four days in jail, I will have serious issues.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's like part of it, too, is like, are they getting mental health access?
[SPEAKER_02]: Are they getting, you know, which is like kind of this holistic look at things that I'm not sure people are viewing right now in the way that they may have in the past.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, you're totally right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, you know, the labor movement and unions are not just like this thing in your workplace, like an HR department, you know, it's a way to be like,
[SPEAKER_00]: We all work to live and how do we take care of working people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when you talk about taking care of working people and taking care of the interests of everybody and have a solidarity, it's not just your salary.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's if somebody is oppressing you, that's a problem for me because I am in solidarity with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm your union.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm part of the working class with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: We all have each other's back.
[SPEAKER_02]: We need an elevator because Steve's in a wheelchair.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's literally a real issue that we had at one of the companies I worked at in our big union issue.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had employees in a wheelchair and they couldn't get in the bathroom door.
[SPEAKER_00]: And who's going to solve that problem?
[SPEAKER_00]: Not the company doesn't care.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the union takes on that problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: So everything that you think about that are problems to people being oppressed in all types of ways, whether it's racism, whether it's, you know, gender discrimination, like all those things are union issues.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by extension, unions in the labor movement are political and are involved in these bigger struggles, like ICE and all that, you know, immigrants are workers like
[SPEAKER_00]: All of these things are connected.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, in an ideal world, you have a strong labor movement, a strong unions, and they're like this base that can then support this whole universe of progressive causes and anti-oppression work that we're all involved in.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it has been interesting, assuming that everybody on the ground with us is leftist.
[SPEAKER_02]: There are people that are working with us, that are libertarian.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like kind of a whisper, like, did you know that Gary's a conservative?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_02]: And we were like, whoa, but that's because you and you're not gonna agree politically with every person that you're working with.
[SPEAKER_02]: Even, you know, downtown, it's not like everybody has, do I have to sort of sometimes say, hey, that's a little antisemitic,
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but like fine, or, you know, somebody was taunting a DHS convoy and they made a sort of transphobic comment.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, hey man, but it's also like we can't, we can't just, it's the, I've seen people talk about this a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm unsafe.
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you on safe or are you uncomfortable?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now you're right and it's a part of it I think is like the difference between
[SPEAKER_00]: the stuff that we learn in books and the stuff that you learn from lived experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been to Union rallies at a strike by coal miners in Alabama.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I guarantee that most of those guys were probably Trump voters.
[SPEAKER_00]: They live in rural Alabama.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're dry pickup trucks in every stereotype that you can think of.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what were they doing?
[SPEAKER_00]: What they were basically doing was socialism.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know they were doing socialism in action they were on strike against a big company with a private equity owner and they were trying to build power for the worst right so it's like you know if you go up to one of those guys and you're like what do you think of socialism they might say blah blah blah that they saw in fox news but like the lived reality of what people are doing the same as you're talking about with ice like whether they whatever they think their politics are
[SPEAKER_00]: They're seeing something in the real world and they're like, this is fucked up and we have to act against you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's like the process of how people get good politics really is through that lived experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: They will change in ways that just like yelling at each other through the media doesn't always do.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want people to get off the internet and go do things in real life.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I sound so I feel like I'm thirty seven and I've become old man yells at cloud.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I feel like.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it only gets worse.
[SPEAKER_00]: It only gets worse.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, cool, cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you talk about following Sarah Nelson and what that was like in who she is?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, Sarah Nelson was one of the main characters in my book.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she is the head of the Association of Flight Attendants, which is America's biggest flight attendant union.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has fifty thousand plus flight attendants in America.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she's a really kind of fiery, very progressive, great speaker.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like just the type of union leader who I like tell people, you know, to look up her speeches and watch them, you know, to see like what it can be, you know, she's the type of person who knows how to like rally people and also who has like a thing for the stuff that we're talking about where it's not just, oh, we want to get better pay, blah, blah, blah, but it's like let's we can have a better world through solidarity and here's how we do it, you know, so
[SPEAKER_00]: I followed her around for about a year when I was when I was reporting the book and wrote about you know some of her aspirations to kind of lead the entire labor movement and then like how or that is and what a struggle it is to actually.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know sort of round up this huge disparate movement all over the country and so it's not it's not like.
[SPEAKER_00]: something that had a fairytale ending, but she's still out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's, you know, they're trying to organize twenty five thousand flight attendants at Delta.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're doing, you know, they're doing big things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like again, these are, these are the big labor fights that are always going on that like I really encourage people to look up and plug into and support and talk about because they always need attention on those things.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, it's just another industry where I was like, oh, flight attendants, of course.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: What are some other industries that you've seen?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there are unions in all types of industries from construction workers to firefighters to teachers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Police ironically are one of the most heavily unised industries.
[SPEAKER_00]: That one's a little, don't even.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll go into that one.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't, but you know, all the way up to restaurant workers, casino workers, hotel workers, the people that clean rooms and hotels, you know, up to like, and the casino workers have like a really strong union.
[SPEAKER_00]: Extremely strong union, one of the strongest political forces in the state in Nevada is the union of the work people that work in all the Vegas casinos, you know, and they're very progressive union.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have created the middle class in Las Vegas.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have made those jobs middle class, and if they didn't exist, those would be terrible city jobs, and all those people would be poor.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a great demonstration.
[SPEAKER_00]: But also like university professors, journalists, aeronautical engineers at Boeing, all those people are unionized.
[SPEAKER_00]: So again, there is no job that cannot be unionized.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some industries, there's really strong unions that exist that you can plug into, and some industries, it's like, yo, we got to build this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tech is really an industry that doesn't have very many unions, and it's really important.
[SPEAKER_00]: For those workers to unize because if there are no unions in industry at all, all that happens is the people that own those companies have all the power.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is exactly what we saw when all those people were sitting behind Donald Trump on the stage at the inauguration is like, here are ten people who have too much power and no checks on their power.
[SPEAKER_02]: the power of unions is kind of interesting because I know you spoke some about on other shows about how there's a kind of attention because these unions become
[SPEAKER_02]: places where they endorse a candidate.
[SPEAKER_02]: They become more politically involved in the sense that they endorse a candidate or they donate money or these kinds of things, which can you speak to kind of the tension of that and sort of I think there is a bit of like a
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, that's not what we're supposed to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, one of the reasons why unions have lost power so much over the past half century.
[SPEAKER_00]: In addition to all of the union-busting stuff from the corporations that we talked about is like, they got a little comfortable.
[SPEAKER_00]: And unions always have to be organizing workers.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is the purpose of a union is to give you a union if you don't have one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, however, the economy changes and wherever the workers go, the labor movement got to go in there and organize those people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is something that, you know, collectively, we fail to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can tell by the fact that we went from having one in three people in a year into one in ten.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, like,
[SPEAKER_00]: it's not that it's easy to do that but one thing that happens sometimes is unions get big and they think more about protecting their own members that they already have than they think about hey we got to go out and organize the next people and so you know when you combine that through dozens and dozens of unions over over decades you get a decline in you membership so you know one of the big messages in my book is like
[SPEAKER_00]: New organizing right going out and organizing the people who don't have unions into unions has to be the biggest priority of the labor movement and instead what you see in reality not always you know there are great unions all over the place but in many cases.
[SPEAKER_00]: what you see is these unions being like we just need to protect ourselves and what we already have and trying to kind of sit in a little castle while the world burns down around you you know and that is obviously not going to fly in the and especially in the time that we're living through right now you know when
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, all of us are under attack.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so like we need more collective action.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need more solidarity.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need more like reaching out and trying to pull in the people who aren't part of unions instead of just thinking about protecting what we already have.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, one hundred percent.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think I've been frustrated by people on the internet who make reels or comments saying, well, I'm feel so helpless.
[SPEAKER_02]: What can I do?
[SPEAKER_02]: Or like, why isn't anyone stopping this?
[SPEAKER_02]: Or time to rise up?
[SPEAKER_02]: And then like my friend showed me there was like a thing about city hall meeting, meeting, you know, to we need to be there in the hallways and stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there were seven hundred likes on the comment.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so he showed up that day, he was the only person.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a great, that's a great comment on the internet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a real thing that like, you know, one of the worst things about the internet and social media is like, it gives you this, this simulation of of doing something that doesn't actually do anything, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a, it's like a vacuum for
[SPEAKER_00]: People's political energy that doesn't accomplish anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, I mean, you're, you're exactly right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, I always tell people just, I always tell people just join an organization.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I don't even care well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Literally, like, whether it's DSA, whether it's, you know, the ice protests, like, whether it's a union, like, I don't care what it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, volunteer to soup kitchen, like, just get involved in an organization where you are doing something in the real world and like use that as a base to start doing stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, and don't just yell on the internet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So can you tell my audience where we can find you and read your sub-sac, which I guess is right, yelling on the internet?
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's what I do as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so a huge hypocrite, my young internet.
[SPEAKER_00]: My site is at HamiltonNoland.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called How Things Work and it's free to read.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can subscribe and read it for free and you only have to pay if you want to and like it.
[SPEAKER_00]: and I have a book called The Hammer, which is all about the labor movement and stuff I've been talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find that wherever books are sold also.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was a good talk.
[SPEAKER_02]: A thousand natural shocks a bad with money podcast is a production of noted bisexual produced by Melissa D. Montz and Diamond M. print productions edited by Diane Kang post production sound by Coca Lorenz and music by Zach Sherwin as sung by Sam Barbarra.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Love you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Bye.