American History Tellers - The Legacy of The Triangle Fire | 5

Episode Date: November 20, 2019

In September 2019 Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren invoked the memory of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire at a campaign rally just a few blocks from the site of fire in Manhattan. It was a powerful reminder of just how deep the legacy of the disaster runs. Organized labor and workplace safety have come a long way since the fire but after years of political opposition, unions and worker rights are on the decline. In the U.S., unions represent 6.4 percent of private-sector workers and just 10.5 percent of workers overall. That’s the lowest percentage in more than a century, and down from 35 percent in the 1950s. That's according to Steven Greenhouse, author of the new book Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor. Greenhouse joins us to talk about the state of labor in America today and why after years of decline, labor is starting to gain steam.Support us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's November 20th, 1816. You're a printer's assistant in Albany, New York, and you're on your way to a downtown tavern by the shore of the Hudson River. You had to stay late, setting type on the flatbed press. Your hands are still covered in ink. No manner of scrubbing will get them clean, but you've grown used to it.

It's a point of pride, actually, that you're a member of an important and prestigious trade. When you arrive, the tavern's already full with the supper crowd, but you edge your way through to the tables. The smell of stew is thick in the air. A voice calls out. Hey there, boy. You missed all the fun this evening. It's your boss, towards the back, holding court with some members of the Albany Typographical Society. You've not once coined these meetings as fun, sir. True, never once. But the Albany Typographical Society

is the height of pure entertainment these days. Remember Mr. Bradley, the journeyman I ran out of the shop last month? Yes, you remember it clearly. Mr. Bradley was a printing tradesman from Philadelphia and had taken up a position alongside yours at the press. But he was fired when it was discovered that his letter of introduction had been forged. Yes. So not only did that man forge his credentials,

it turns out he was a known scab in Pennsylvania. So he was stealing jobs there too? Yeah. It's just, it's not right for a man to just decide he wants the job of another. A job that another man has studied for and apprent of another. A job that another man has studied for and apprenticed for. A job that another man might devote his whole life to. I just, well, it's just not right. Gentlemen, agree? The men sitting around the table cheer and raise their tankards of wine. As the hubbub dies down, you turn to your boss. But what of tonight's meeting, sir? We decided to get the carrot far

in front of the horse. So tomorrow, we're mailing a list of scab workers to other typographical societies in Philadelphia and Manhattan. Ah, so their names might be known before they try to find jobs in other cities. That's correct. The printer's trade will not succeed with scabs in our midst. Any man who doesn't wish to abide by the rules, well, they may try their luck in their own shop and with their own press. That's right. The men raise their tankers again, and you raise yours too.

The job of the printers is all you know. Your hands may be ink-stained, but you've earned the right to those stains. Years of hard work and study is through your sacrifice and your dedication that you've also earned the right to make your daily wage. From the team behind American History Tellers comes a new book, The Hidden History of the White House. Each chapter will bring you inside the fierce power struggles, intimate moments, and shocking scandals that shaped our nation. From the War of 1812 to Watergate.

Available now wherever you get your books. Now streaming. Welcome to Buy It Now, where aspiring entrepreneurs get 90 seconds to pitch to an audience of potential customers. If the audience liked the product, they'd pitch them in front of our panel of experts. Gwyneth Paltrow. Anthony Anderson. Tabitha Brown. Tony Hawk.

Oh, my God. Buy it now. Stream free on Freebie and Prime Video. From Wondery, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American History Tellers. Our history. Your story. On November 20th, 1816, the Albany Typographical Society brought the word scab into the American lexicon. Then it was a term used to describe those who sought shortcuts into trades like

printing with long-established guilds or unions. Today, it describes those who cross picket lines to replace workers on strike. And more than 90 years after Albany typesetters first printed the word in that meaning, scabs played an important role during the Triangle Shirtwaist workers' strike. Max Blank and Isaac Harris hired scabs to replace striking Triangle workers, and on one occasion, violence broke out. When police showed up to break up the fight, it was the workers, not the scabs or hired thugs, who were arrested. Today, we conclude our series on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire with a look at the state of the labor movement in America today. At Washington Square Park in

New York City on September 16, 2019, Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren delivered a speech in front of thousands of supporters. During that rally, she made an interesting reference to history when she said, it took 18 minutes for 146 people to die, mostly women, mostly immigrants, Jewish and Italian, mostly people who made as little as $5 a week to get their shot at the American dream. She was referring to the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, the site of which was just a few blocks away. Warren's speech, more than a hundred years later, is still a stark reminder of not only how powerful the disaster's legacy is, but how workers' rights are still an issue in politics today.

Our guest today is Stephen Greenhouse. He's a journalist who covered labor for the New York Times for 31 years. And in his latest book, Beaten Down, Worked Up, The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor, he writes about the history of unions and worker power in America and the factors that have fueled its decline, like globalization, the gig economy, and what he calls America's corporate war against labor unions. Here's our conversation. Stephen Greenhouse, thanks for talking to me on American History Tellers.

Great to be here. On our series, we describe the revolt of the girls and the larger strikes that followed, led in large part by the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union, which other than a mouthful, is also a very important institution in this era. What happened to this union after the fire? After the fire, it grew extensively. There was a huge protest, march, eulogy in New York, down Fifth Avenue. Tens of thousands of people came. There were huge memorials at the Metropolitan Opera House. And this union grew to a peak of like four, five, 600,000 people. And it became a political force headed by one of the nation's most prominent labor leaders, David Dubinsky. It was a big supporter

in the 1930s of FDR and the New Deal. It pushed for all sorts of pro-worker legislation. It was a real force to contend with. How did it become a force to contend with? Because just in the turn of the century, these women workers, in large part, were certainly not a political force. So I think what we saw with the 1909 strike, the uprising of the 20,000, and then the huge cloakmaker strike the following year, where tens of thousands of workers took to the streets, they went on strike, they protested, and they saw the collective power that thousands of workers had when they acted together. So first they engaged in the strike, then many of them officially joined this union. So it went from a union that just had

a few thousand members to a union that had hundreds of thousands of members. And when hundreds of thousands of Americans work together, whether it's in the Me Too movement or the Black Lives Matter movement or the union movement, they have real power and they could really influence corporations, they could influence politicians. They could help elect people. And here in New York City, where the International Age of Government Workers Union was strongest, it played a major influence in politics. It played a major influence in pushing through legislation to make sure that factories would be safer after the horrendous Triangle fire. Well, you didn't have an opportunity to hear this, but in our cold open, we discussed

the origin of the word scab, and it was 100 years before the events at Triangle. So I'm curious, why, if America was accustomed to unions and guilds and organized labor, why did it take to this the bejesus out of workers, including many female workers and sometimes teenage workers. And I think the main reason it took so long for unions to really grow strong in the United States was that there was fierce employer resistance. In the Northwest, when the international workers of the world are trying to unionize loggers, the union organizers were literally lynched. There weren't only lynchings in the South, as horrendous as those were. There were union organizers were lynched. So there was huge organized suppression, oppression of unionization efforts.

And it only took horrendous things like the Triangle Fire to really embolden workers in a big, big, big way to say, hey, we have to unionize. We're going to try to overcome this horrendous employer resistance. And I think the employers saw with things like the Triangle Fire and the death of these 146 workers that we can't go on fighting unions so hard. We look bad. The public sees that working conditions and safety conditions are terrible, so we have to kind of stop fighting unions so hard. And that's a big reason that unions grew so much in the years right after the Triangle Fire.

So I'm hearing it was a confluence of events. It was the scale of the strikes, perhaps. It was also the scale of the tragedy. But then there was a public relations factor. A line I often use is successful strikes beget other strikes. And successful strikes encourage workers to think more charitably about unions, to be more willing to join unions, to fight alongside unions. And the uprising of 20,000 female gun workers in 1909 was a huge success. The cloak workers strike the following year involving, you know, mainly male workers was another huge success. And, you know, people became more open to joining unions.

They saw the success that unions can bring in raising wages, in reducing hours. And you take that plus the Triangle Fire, which was one of the worst tragedies in American industrial history. People said, we have to stand up, we have to fix things. And the way to do that is unions. And they weren't quite as scared about employers sending thugs to beat them up or employers firing them.

They felt much more emboldened. And I think that and, you know, smarter union organizers really led to, you know, great growth in the International Ladies' Government Workers' Union and unions in general. Let's fast forward 110 years and shift to today, because the Triangle Fire has been brought up by Elizabeth Warren, presidential candidate in 2019. And she's used this incident in her campaign rhetoric. What do you think she's trying to accomplish by linking her progressive policies

to unionization efforts a century old? If I might say, Lindsay, I think she read the chapter in my book about the Triangle Fire and Francis Perkins. And she's trying to win over blue-collar workers and labor unions. She's trying to win over women and she's trying to win over people who care about social justice. And The Trying of Fire is such a, you know, iconic, tragic, you know, episode in American history that it's not, to me, at all surprising that she, you know, talked about that,

drew from that, and drew inspiration from it when she gave that, when she talked at the huge rally in Washington Square in New York, just, you know, two blocks from where the fire took place. And it clearly resonated with the crowd. You know, I watched the YouTube of it, and it was like, wow, people really still care about this incident, especially in New York, where we learn about it in elementary school. Do you think the legacy of the Triangle Fire and the unionization efforts thereafter have greater impact still today across the country? Yes, I do. Children learn about labor history in schools across the United States, you know, one of the key episodes they learn about is the horrendous Triangle Fire because it was such a signal disaster. You know, 146 innocent workers are killed, many of them women, many of them teenagers,

many of them immigrants. And I think it still registers with young people in school because they're reading about teenagers. They're reading about teenagers dying in a horrible fire. People think about how innocent those workers were. And they think what should be done to ensure that America's workplaces are safer. And some people, you know, I know that in some schools, they study the triangle fire, and then they studied these horrendous fires in Bangladesh a century later, where hundreds of people died. And they see that the fight for safer conditions, for decent conditions for garment workers is not over.

Maybe it's much better in the United States than it once was. But now, in countries like China and Bangladesh and Vietnam, there are still real safety problems for garment workers. Well, let's talk about American workers because clearly the garment industry has gone overseas. This is, although their troubles remain, as you indicate, we have our own troubles for our own workers, namely that the economy has shifted. And the gig economy plays a big role in your book. These are the Uber drivers, the TaskRabbit workers, people who work for any number of services on a contractual task-by-task basis. Describe to me what you think the rise of the gig economy means to the American worker. So I think a lot of employers, you know, in the gig economy want to, of course, make a lot of money. And part of that means trying to reduce the amount they pay their workers, the amount of loyalty and responsibility they to treat their workers as employees. They're trying to treat them as independent contractors.

And by doing that, employers often save 20% or 30% on what they pay in compensation. They don't have to pay workers' compensation in unemployment insurance taxes. They don't have to pay towards workers' Social Security pay. They don't have to worry about minimum wage or overtime, time and a half for overtime. So employers are trying to increasingly treat workers not as regular employees. They're trying to put them into this box called independent contractor, which really weakens workers' protections. And there's been a fight back against this. California passed a law recently that says

that Uber and Lyft drivers shall be considered employees and not as independent contractors. The state of New Jersey just fined Uber $653 million for treating its workers as independent contractors and not employees. So it's this real fight now where a lot of worker advocates and government officials are saying, you know, you've hired Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, you've hired tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. You're wrongly trying to put them into this independent contractor box, which really squeezes workers very badly and it distorts the law. And we're not going to let you do that anymore. We're going to try to force you to treat them as regular employees with the decades-long protections that traditional employees have, like you've got to pay them minimum wage, you've got to pay them time and a half when they work more than 40 hours a week.

They'd have the right to sue for racial discrimination or sex discrimination if you discriminate against them over their sex or their race, while independent contractors do not have those protections. Richard Bandler revolutionized the world of self-help all thanks to an approach he developed called neurolinguistic programming. Even though NLP worked for some, its methods have been criticized for being dangerous in the wrong hands. Throw in Richard's dark past as a cocaine addict and murder suspect, and you can't help but wonder what his true intentions were. I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. And we're the hosts of Scamfluencers, a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of the most infamous scams of all time, the impact on victims, and what's left once the facade falls away.

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Ah! I cannot believe it. Woo! Buy it now. Stream free on freebie and Prime Video. Well, without getting too deep into the employment law, let's describe the difference between an employee and an independent contractor? So an employee generally works directly for someone. The employer basically tells them what to do. The employee doesn't have a lot of entrepreneurial freedom to carry out their business. They generally go to the same workplace, do what the employer wants day after day. An independent contractor has much more freedom in theory. They kind of run their own business. They don't have to follow the employer's orders as much. They have more freedom in their hours and when they work, and they often bring

their own tools, and they could seek their own customers. And the thing with the Uber and Lyft drivers, many of them say, we should be considered employees because we have very little entrepreneurial freedom to run our own business. We can't get our own customers. We can't set our own rates. Yet Uber and Lyft say, well, our drivers should be considered independent contractors because they have the freedom to set their own hours. That's a big argument right now about whether Uber and Lyft drivers should be considered employees or independent contractors. And That's a big argument right now about whether Uber and Lyft drivers should be considered employees or independent contractors. And there's a lot of money at stake in that fight. I think you've described a gray area in the existing law that has probably been brought about

by these new information tools like cell phones and apps that allow companies to distribute their labor force. That wasn't even a consideration five, ten years ago. But they are a reality, and they are efficient. Gig work is probably here to stay, but is there a way to move it legislatively or socially or economically to make it a working good idea? Yes, I believe so, Lindsay. So, as I said, California recently enacted this law that states that Uber and Lyft drivers and DoorDash workers shall be considered employees with the full protections that employees have. That they're protected by minimum wage laws. They shall be paid time and a half when they work more than 40 hours.

They'll have workers' comp and unemployment insurance protections. They'll have disability protections. They'll be protected by anti-discrimination laws. So California was the first state that enacted that. And I see that other states are thinking of enacting similar laws. The companies Uber and Lyft are fighting very hard against that. They might put a referendum on a California ballot to try to repeal that. Now, here in New York City, I'm based in New York, there was huge concern that Uber and Lyft drivers generally make less than the minimum wage per hour. There was a study done in New York that showed that 95% make less than the minimum wage. So, New York City has a taxi and limousine commission, and seeing that many Uber and

Lyft drivers were driving 60 hours a week and were exhausted, which isn't great for their families and isn't great for the safety of pedestrians, the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission pushed through a rule that requires that Uber and Lyft drivers be paid at least $17.22 an hour after their expenses like gasoline and insurance. And that's another way that some states and cities are thinking, too many gig economy workers are not making enough money, too many are not making enough to support the families, and we have to think of ways to help them make a decent living.

So there are different strategies to do that. One is to enact a law saying they shall be considered employees. Another idea is to pass kind of a minimum pay law. And that minimum pay law enacted in New York City kind of ignores whether or not they should be, you know, put in the employee basket, in the independent contractor basket. The New York law basically says, whatever you consider them, they shall be paid a minimum of $17.22 an hour when they drive. Well, I think most of our listeners, myself included, have enjoyed the gig economy. You know, certainly the customer service, as you mentioned, has improved.

I can get all sorts of things done for me. But I'm not a gig economy participant. In the course of researching your book, did you hear from gig workers themselves? What do they think about this revolution? What I write in the book is that gig economy is great for consumers because it brings them more services faster and often cheaper. Gig economy is often great for corporations. They have a new source of gazillions of workers to work for them, whether in the United States or in India even. So I write about some gig workers. I write about an Uber driver in Los Angeles, John Billington.

And he said, you know, he was making a good living. He was making $2.50 per mile driven. And overnight, Uber changed the fares from $2.50 a mile to $1 a mile. And he said, that stinks. You know, I went from making a good living to a really bad living. I went from, you know, being able to live on working 40 hours a week to have to work 60, 70 hours a week to make ends meet. And he said, and, you know, they say I'm an independent contractor. They say I run my own business, but they just, you know, force this down my throat. I had no say in the matter. And I think that's why a lot of Uber

drivers are disgruntled. That's why in Seattle, they've passed to unionize. That's why in New York, they pushed for the $70.22 minimum pay. That's why in California, they pushed for this law saying they should be treated as employees. I also profile a mechanical Turk worker in my book. She said, on some days, I can make a decent living, maybe I can make $7 or $8 an hour, but other days I just make $2, $3, $4 an hour. There's a story on the front page of the New York Times today as we speak saying that the median wage for workers in this app owned by Amazon called Mechanical Turk where people do micro tasks is just $1.77 an hour, and only 4% of workers make more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

So I also talk to gig workers who say, I like Mechanical Turk. I like Uber. I'm not making enough money from my regular job, and I need the supplemental money to buy a car or to take my daughter to Disneyland. And they like the freedom and the ability to make more money. But I also found that a lot of gig workers who depend on it for 40 or 50 or 60 hours a week jobs, they say they're not treated well. They say they're not making enough money. And they want somehow to raise the pay and be treated more like regular employees with the protections

of regular employees. One of the largest arguments about almost any labor issue is, if you don't like the job, find another one. It seems like many people, though, are dependent on these apps and gig economies, and they choose not to, for whatever reason, to find another job. It seems that there's probably something preventing them from finding another job, even though unemployment may be low. Describe to me why these people feel trapped in these positions, why these gig economy jobs are the only ones that are attracted to them or capture them. That's a great question. I think part of it is that people think the devil you know is better than the devil out

there that you don't know. So it's scary to go to a new job. It might be worse. And maybe when you decide to quit this job and look for another job, you might find yourself without a job for three months or six months. I think another problem, and one of the big points I make in my book, is that unfortunately in the United States, the floor for jobs, the wage floor, the lack of basic benefits is very low. And so even if you have a job where you feel you're not paid well enough, where you don't get paid sick days or paid vacation and you want to switch to another job that's better, often that job will be no better. And one of the things I saw in researching my book is, you know, I would interview McDonald's workers and home care workers and janitors, and they'd often be said, they'd often be told, you know, stop complaining about that you want higher pay.

If you want higher pay, go to college. And, you know, these people told me that I'd love to go to college, but I have, you know, three kids to raise, and college costs a fortune, and I'm making $7.25 or $9.25 an hour. How in the world am I our 80-year-old grandparents, if all of them went to college, we'd still need millions of hamburger flippers and bedpan emptiers and janitors. And we shouldn't consign them to these terrible pay, whether they're in gig jobs or in regular jobs. I think in the United States, 50 million workers make less than $15 an hour. In many cities, whether New York or San Francisco or Seattle or Boston or Washington or Los Angeles, it's very hard to live if you're earning less than $15 an hour. You mentioned sick leave in that answer just then, and it reminded me of an anecdote in the beginning of your book, which sounded rather absurd to modern ears. A worker was

coughing and vomiting, had a fever, but was fired because she needed to stay at home and recover. She was sick. Now, paid sick leave aside, why do you think such severe punishment for what is such a common occurrence? I mean, literally getting sick, the common cold. That's a great question. And I write about this nurse in Colorado who was taking care of a paraplegic. She came down with pneumonia. And she said, I'm too sick to take care of him. I'm too sick to lift him and clean him. I need to take a day or two off. And her boss said, if you miss tomorrow, don't come back to work. You're gone. She was so sick. She didn't work the next day. She got fired. And she ended up getting evicted because she lost her job. It's hard to know why some employers are so tough and bullheaded.

I mean, it's like, you're not that way, I'm not that way, but clearly some people see their employees as tools to be bullied and kicked around. I'm sorry to speak so brutally about that, but I think, and I was a reporter for the New York Times in Europe for five years as a European economic correspondent, and I saw that generally employers in Europe treat their workers better than employees do in the United States. In Europe, in the 28 nations of the European Union, every worker is guaranteed at least four weeks paid vacation. The United States is the only industrial nation without a law guaranteeing workers paid vacation. We in South Korea are the only two industrial nations that don't guarantee

every worker paid sick days. So I don't know why the United States is so much worse than other industrial countries in many categories. But I think it's unfortunate that, you know, some employers feel,

hey, we have the freedom to fire someone because, you know, they were sick for, they were sick or they took a day off because their eight-year-old daughter was sick. We have the right to fire someone because, you know, they were sick or they took a day off because their eight-year-old daughter was sick. We have the right to fire someone because he or she came in, you know, two minutes late.

And I think, you know, again, one of the points in my book is that something is really out of whack, that worker power, worker voice, workers' ability to defend themselves and protect themselves is really far too weak compared to, you know, say, in Europe and Japan and other industrial nations. And that's why I think, you know, some employers feel they can act with impunity and just fire someone who's sick for a day. Are you in trouble with the law?

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from his luxury yacht in the Canary Islands. But it wasn't just his body that would come to the surface in the days that followed. It soon emerged that Robert's business was on the brink of collapse and behind his facade of wealth and success was a litany of bad investments, mounting debt, and multimillion dollar fraud.

Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show Business Movers. We tell the true stories of business leaders who risked it all, the critical moments that define their journey, and the ideas that transform the way we live our lives. In our latest series, a young refugee fleeing the Nazis arrives in Britain determined to make something of his life. Taking the name Robert Maxwell, he builds a publishing and newspaper empire that spans the globe. But ambition eventually

curdles into desperation, and Robert's determination to succeed turns into a willingness to do anything to get ahead. Follow Business Movers wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Well, I know that you said you don't know why it is, but I'm going to ask you to speculate. Why is America at the bottom of this list when it comes to worker guarantees? Why do European, Asian, other nations have better fundamental protections for their workers?

I think there's several reasons, Lindsay. One is, you know, the United States was founded by people who fled Europe. They were more individualistic, more entrepreneurial. And I think there was the streak among the people who found business in the United States who were like, we're not going to put up with unions. We're not going to look as kindly on worker rights. I think that's one reason. I've read some history books that said, you know, in Europe, the state became powerful before corporations became powerful. You know, think of Kaiser Wilhelm, who was very friendly to workers. And that in Europe, kind of traditions, norms were set that were more pro-worker, more friendly to workers, whereas in the United States, you know, these historians argue that corporations became very powerful before the United States governmental state became very powerful, say, under Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

And norms were established early on that were less pro-worker. Third, I read this interesting article by the sociologist Matthew Desmond talking about the legacy of slavery making American employers less friendly to workers. And Matthew Desmond said that many employers in the South were accustomed to treating their slaves very, very, very badly, of course. And even when slavery ended, they continued not treating their African-American workers well. And so African-American workers, how do they try to lift themselves? They tried to join unions. And in the South especially, there was fierce opposition to unions, and that attitude, I think, has spread around the United States.

So that's one reason I believe the United States is much more – American employers are much more anti-union than employers in Europe and Asia. And I think all those factors together help lead to a government that hasn't enacted some of the very basic pro-worker laws that are universal in other industrial countries, such as, you know, paid parental leave. We are, you know, we are the only industrial country without paid parental leave, without paid vacation. We in South Korea are the only ones without paid sick days. American workers generally work two, three hundred hours more a year than workers in France and Britain and Germany. So things are tougher for workers in America. I think a lot of people don't understand that, and that's one of the points I try to make in my book. Well, let's just take for granted that the power of the corporation is strong in America. Could you make a case to business owners and corporations why they should pay more attention to their workers?

What is the business case for unionization? I have a chapter in the book about a terrific labor management partnership, Kaiser Permanente, the biggest health care company in California. It's a nonprofit. And I interviewed many executives, bosses, supervisors, managers at Kaiser, and they say, we get very good suggestions from our employees as part of our partnership. We get very good suggestions about how to provide better service to patients. We get very good suggestions from them employees as part of our partnership. We get very good suggestions about how to provide better service to patients. We get very good suggestions from them about how to cut costs. And because we listen so much to our employees, because we have this partnership with them, we provide better service, we get better profits, and that enables us to pay better.

And it's a win-win-win for us, the company, for our customers, our patients, and for workers. And I write about Kaiser Permanente because it's such a good example of when corporations listen to their workers and treat them with fundamental respect and want to hear their ideas about how to make a more productive company while also improving things for workers. I think that can really improve things for companies in the United States. One of the crazy things is, so I've written a lot about unions and unionization,

unionization fights over the years, and all these American companies say, if we're unionized, it's going to force us out of business. We're going to become uncompetitive. Well, Toyota is unionized. Honda is unionized. BMW is unionized. Daimler-Benz is unionized.

Siemens is unionized. There are a lot of the best companies, finest companies, most respected companies in the world that are unionized and are doing very, very well. And I think there is this anti-union tradition in the United States, this individualistic tradition that we don't need unions. We don't need them impeding our manager or prerogatives and flexibility. We just want to run things the way we want. And there are examples, though, like Kaiser Permanente that show that when companies really work hand in hand with their workers, you know, and allow unions or don't fight unions, they can be just as efficient as non-union companies, and the workers will probably be happier at union companies than non-union companies because they feel they're being listened to and their pay is probably better. You quoted your mother in the book. She said,

when I was growing up, people used to say, look at the good wages and benefits that people in a union have. I want to join a union. Does that attitude toward unions persist today? Yes and no. I was in Wisconsin writing about the Republican effort to weaken government employee unions. And a lot of the Republican officials, the governor, were saying that government employees make too much, that government workers are the haves and private sector workers are the have-nots. And my mother commented upon it saying, when I was growing up, people would look at unions and say, oh, look at the great wages and benefits they have. I want that. And now many people say, look at the good wages and benefits unionized employees have.

We want to take some away from that. That was back in 2011 when I think the nation was still really suffering from the recession and there was greater resentment to government workers. But now I've seen a shift in the past eight years since my mother said that. I see there's greater concern about, you know, wage stagnation. There's continuing upset and frustration about years and years of income inequality with the rich doing so well and typical workers not doing so well. So I think there's more sympathy with unionized workers and their ability to get higher wages to help fight the wage stagnation that so many people have suffered. And when you look at the teacher strikes, Lindsay, whether in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, Los Angeles, Chicago,

there's been a surprising amount of public sympathy because I think people like their teachers. They respect their teachers. They see that in many states, teachers are not getting raises. And they also see that the teachers are saying, we're not just fighting for an extra 0.5% raise for us. We're fighting for you. We're fighting for smaller class sizes and more nurses and more social school social workers and money to buy newer textbooks, including good new history textbooks. And so I think there's more sympathy towards unions than there was just eight years ago during the recession. I think during the recession, many people are feeling really battered down, resenting that maybe others are doing better than they were. And I feel now there's a general sense that the stock market's at record levels, corporations,

corporate profits are at record levels, but we typical workers, blue-collar workers, white-collar workers, gig workers, we're not doing very well. And we will support other workers who are doing well. When I see union members, you know, getting that 3% raise, and, you know, when their corporation is making record profits, I think that's great for them, and I would like the same thing for myself. And finally, where do you think labor is going in America in the next eight years, for instance? That's a tough question. A lot depends on who's elected the next president. You know, one of, you know, so I've written about labor for nearly a quarter century, Lindsay. And, you know, in the 2016 campaign, there wasn't much talk about unions and labor and workers, at least not from Hillary Clinton.

But the big difference now is that among the Democratic candidates, they're really focusing much more on how to lift workers, how to strengthen unions. They talk about wanting to push workers, how to strengthen unions. They talk about wanting to push through laws that would strengthen unions. So it might make a big difference who is elected president in 2020. There might be a president who really wants to push unions and strengthen unions. Donald Trump has been fighting for workers on trade somewhat, but his administration has been working in many ways to weaken unions and make it harder to unionize. I turned in the manuscript to my book on February 19th, 2018.

And at that time, things were fairly quiet for unions. About the only thing that was really getting a lot of attention was the fight for 15 to raise pay, especially for fast food workers. But there wasn't much else happening in the union movement then. Three days later, February 22nd, 2018, there was this huge volcanic explosion in West Virginia where tens of thousands of teachers went on strike.

And since that date, February 22nd, 2018, there's been a huge burst of energy in the union movement that has created more optimism. We saw all these other teacher strikes. We saw the General Motors strike. We saw a big stop and shop grocery strike in New England. We saw a Marriott hotel worker strike in eight cities. And like unions are like,

where they're flexing their muscles. Like, you know, we're tired of wage stagnation and we're tired that, you know, with housing prices soaring in all these cities that our pay isn't keeping up. So there is more spirit energy in the labor movement. But whether that will translate into being to elect more worker-friendly candidates or being able to expand after years and years of declining in size, that's a very big question.

But I think many people are deeply unhappy with wage stagnation. They're deeply unhappy with income inequality. That's a big reason why a recent Gallup poll found that 64% of Americans approve of unions. That's nearly the highest level in 50 years. An MIT study last year found that nearly one in two workers say they would vote, non-union workers say they would vote to join a union if they can. So people are feeling better about unions. I think they're feeling that they're not getting, a lot of workers feel they're not getting treated fairly and they see unions as a way to improve things. But it's very hard to unionize in the United States because of intense opposition

from employers. So it's really unclear whether unions will be stronger in eight years or whether they'll continue their slow decline. Stephen, thank you so much for being here. My pleasure. Great to be here. That was my conversation with Stephen Greenhouse. His book, Beaten Down, Worked Up, The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor continues his 31 years of covering labor for the New York Times. You can find it wherever books are sold. Next on American History Tellers, a special introduction to my other history podcast, American Elections Wicked Game. It takes its title from John Adams, who in 1776 wrote that the silly and wicked game of presidential politics was something he wanted to avoid,

exhausting and driven by an accursed spirit which actuates the vast body of people. From Wondery, this is American History Tellers. If you like American History Tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. American History Tellers is hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsey Graham for Airship. Sound design by Derek Behrens. This episode was produced by Lee Hernandez.

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