Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/14/23 FULL PARTNER ROUNDUP: FTC, Nursing Strike, Uber Strike, Kroger Lawsuit, Obesity Crisis and MORE!

Episode Date: January 14, 2023

All the best recent segments from our amazing partners on Breaking Points including recent FTC actions, nursing/Uber strike footage, the obesity crisis, and an important Kroger lawsuit.Timestamps: FTC (Matt Stoller): (0:00 - 13:09)Nursing Strike (Status Coup): (13:10 - 22:17)Uber Strike (Status Coup): (22:18 - 29:39)Obesity (James Li): (29:40 - 40:39)Kroger Lawsuit (Max Alvarez): (40:40 - 1:10:43)AUSTIN LIVE SHOW FEB 3RDTickets https://tickets.austintheatre.org/9053/9054Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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BreakingPoints.com. Hi, I'm Matt Stoller, author of Monopoly-focused newsletter, Big, and an antitrust policy analyst. I have a great segment for you today on this big breakdown. So this one's about something that antitrust enforcers just did to help you get a higher paycheck or make it easier for you to get a new and better job. Also, what I've noticed is that a lot of you like to get involved in politics in a meaningful way. So I actually have an action that you can take, and I'll have instructions in this video on how to do so to strengthen the law and help your liberty. Okay, so let's start at the beginning because this one has to do with the workplace. From slavery and indentured servitude to minimum wages and unionization,

the relationship between work and control have always been core questions in American history, and frankly, all human history. But I live here in America, so that's what I'm going to talk about. All right, so today we're in a modern society. In one way, we ask these same questions about work and control is by talking about employment contracts, the agreements between workers and their employers. Now, we've come a long way. Generally, you don't see the kinds of abuses that used to be common in American history anymore. And I'm not just talking about slavery and segregation and all that stuff. For example, in 1907, more than 3,000 workers died in coal mine accidents. And that was pretty normal. Railroads, it was a total mess. In the 1920s,

the brother of the Secretary of the Treasury was caught saying that you couldn't run a coal mine without machine guns. So things have gotten a lot better today, but that doesn't mean that they are perfect. Today, 40 million Americans are bound to something called a non-compete agreement, which is a provision of an employment contract that stops people from leaving their job and going to work for someone else. It's a pretty good chance that some of you watching this video, many of you, actually are bound by a non-compete contract. So a lot of people are bound by these things, and it's a weird restriction that is relatively new. I mean, it's called a non-compete. How is that even legal, right? Non-compete. Non-competes are not totally new. They've actually been around for centuries,

but traditionally they've been pretty rare. In the 20th century, non-competes applied to high-level executives, the proverbial CEO with access to Coca-Cola's secret recipe. But over the last 20 years, this has changed. Let's take a listen to the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan, who is the enforcer that took the action that I'm talking about on this video with regards to non-competes. These clauses may have started in the boardroom, but today what we see is that they've proliferated across sectors and across income levels. So we're talking about nurses, we're talking about fast food workers, janitors, but also physicians and engineers. And we've now seen that in the aggregate,

these clauses can really restrict competition, both in labor markets, but also in product markets. And so our economists calculated that collectively American workers are earning around $300 billion less because of these non-competes and that on the whole, innovation and entrepreneurship are suffering. Okay, so what happened? Why did these things become more common? Well, the reason that it was the lack of usage back in the day was simple. Employment contracts themselves were rare. Contracts were expensive to produce and not really worth it. Today, putting forward employment contracts is as simple as copying and pasting text from a model contract found online. There are computers. At the same time, stricter arbitration laws

made written employment contracts more attractive to employers. So today, as Cherikon noted, these agreements are now in almost every industry. Finance, medicine, printing, floor installation, title and escrow work, software, NASA contracting, computer, antivirus research, video game production, etc., etc. 30% of hairstylists work under a non-compete, as do 45% of family physicians. Okay, now there are some limits. The first is geographical. Let's take a look at a map. These contracts are already unenforceable or restricted in many states like California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Washington. And a lot of non-competes are never enforced and barely

noticed by the employer or employee. They're boilerplate in the contract and no one pays attention. But that's not always the case. And being bound by a non-compete can be awful, especially if you live in a certain place and you have a very unique skill set. These contracts are written under the assumption that an employee and employer are bargaining in a relatively equal position over the terms of work. But it's usually the case that the employer has a lot more power. Sometimes employees don't even know they're signing or aren't in a position to refuse. You agree to a job, and then on your first day, you get a big packet of stuff to sign, and in there is a non-compete. You can't say no at that point. Now, in some states where non-competes are legally unenforceable, employers still use them. They

threaten employees who don't know any better. So one former employment lawyer told the FTC in a comment, employers routinely use the burden of litigation to intimidate employees or seek revenge for the employee's perceived personal disloyalty rather than to protect any legitimate employer interest. It's not all employers who do this, it's just some of them, but it's still really bad for people who have to deal with that. A lot of people are stuck at jobs where they're sexually harassed. Doctors are constantly complaining that they're forced to work in a bad practice but cannot move because their family is rooted in a particular area. Economists increasingly agree that non-competes are bad.

For instance, this is Florian Ederer, who's an economist at Yale. But there's a ton of economic research at this point showing how bad it is. One study, for example, showed that when Hawaii stopped enforcing non-compete clauses for high-tech workers, earnings of new hires increased by about 4%. But there's lots of studies like that showing kind of across the board. It's not just wages. Non-competes also prevent would-be entrepreneurs from starting companies or recruiting different towns. You hear from a lot of small businesses, I can't hire people because the people I would hire have non-competes. And we have a historical example of how useful these bans on non-competes can be. So California has not allowed the enforcement of non-competes since the 19th

century. And that is one of the key reasons historians think for the fostering of Silicon Valley. Without that state's ban on non-competes, for instance, top semiconductor engineers could never have left their original employment at the legendary company Shockley Semiconductor to formed Fairchild Semiconductor or Intel. Now, there is a real argument for non-competes. It goes like this. If you're a business, why would you train someone if they can just leave your firm and take that special knowledge and customer list with them? And this is not an outlandish point. However, these kinds of possibilities are better covered with non-solicitation agreements that prevent you from stealing customers or trade secrets law that prevent you from telling

secret stuff to anyone but your existing employer. Now, other practices like paying employees more over time or treating them better can stop people from leaving to go to competitors or reduce them from leaving to go to competitors or setting up shop on their own. As for the idea that non-competes would reduce investment in knowledge-based industries because companies wouldn't want to train people anymore, well, that's just empirically not true. California exists. Silicon Valley is in California because we doesn't allow non-competes. And so that kind of undercuts that claim. Also, and this is kind of like a special thing that I think is pretty amusing, non-competes are banned among lawyers because they are considered unethical in the legal profession. And lawyers, that's a healthy knowledge-based industry. Imagine that. Lawyers writing special rules exemptions for themselves, but not for everyone

else. Two weeks ago, the government acted. This is a picture of the Federal Trade Commission, the regulator that is supposed to police markets and ensure fair competition. I love this building. Now, the FTC just said that non-compete contracts will soon be illegal. Under their proposed rule, all non-competes would be unenforceable. Existing non-competes must be canceled andforceable. Existing non-competes must be cancelled and employers have to tell employees those agreements are null. Moreover, attempts to get around this rule by using non-disclosure agreements or other similar kind of agreements that basically make it impossible for people to leave are also banned. So this is a huge deal. And politically, the reaction

to this rulemaking was overwhelmingly positive. People across industries noted how helpful this change will be. And it's not just a pro-worker initiative. A lot of business people were very happy about this change. I'm going to pick a random standard industry. There's lots of chatter across industries. But here's shipping. This is Steve Cox, who is the president of Steam Logistics, talking about what it will mean for his industry. I think it's unbelievable for our industry, for our young people in the industry to retain talent in logistics specifically. We see a lot of 22-year-old kids signing things that they don't know they're signing. And a couple of years later, they want to go after a better opportunity, more money, and improve themselves. And they can't do that, frankly. And then they have to spend a couple of years out of the industry and they're gone.

They're in another industry making a living there and we never get them back. So talent wise, we'd love to keep and retain people in logistics. So I love it. I absolutely love it. Really, what this rule is doing is it's getting at a philosophical question about how you're supposed to do business, whether business is about controlling people or whether business is about having the liberty to trade and make better products and services. And politically, it resonated widely. The president and the vice president chimed in. So did a bunch of senators from both parties, a lot of business people, workers, doctors. But, of course, there were opponents too. The big business lobbyists at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce were hostile, and the Wall Street Journal called it Lena Kahn's

non-compete favor to big labor. And they will no doubt litigate in the courts to try to get judges, conservative judges in their estimation, to strike down the rule for a variety of procedural reasons. And the pro-monopoly representative at the Federal Trade Commission, who's a Republican commissioner, Christine Wilson, I'm not saying all Republicans believe this, but Christine Wilson does, she opposed the rule and laid out the basic legal arguments that are going to be used against it. Essentially, the FTC doesn't have this authority to write a rule like this, a regulatory overreach. And also, she said the quote-unquote scientific data isn't conclusive about the effects of non-competes, All sort of procedural stuff that's refusing to take the arguments on the merits about whether non-competes are good or not.

Essentially, what she said is a long diatribe that was, how dare you change something? But the thing is, Christine Wilson, Chamber of Commerce, Wall Street Journal editorial page, they're not in charge. Lena Kahn is. So what happens now? Well, at this point, it's just a proposed rule. And when an agency accident proposes a rule, there's a window of time, in this case 60 days, where anyone from the public can tell the government what they think. And the government has to take their feedback into account before finalizing the rule. So you should do that. You should tell the government what you think.

A lot of corporate lobbyists are. And we've set up a site that can help you do that. It's called BannedNonCompetes.com. And that should make it easier. We'll just show you how to do it. But you can also go to the government site at regulation.gov and do it there. You do it anonymously if you want. Both links are in the description of this video. There's already about a thousand comments, even though the links just became live yesterday. And there's going to be a lot more. Tell the FTC what your experience is with non-competes or just whatever you think about them and they'll take your comment into account, they'll finalize the

rule, and then 180 days after the rule is finalized and voted on by the commissioners, it'll go into effect. And when the rule kicks in, it'll have impacts immediately because thousands of employment lawyers will be explaining to their clients how to comply when the rule kicks in, it'll have impacts immediately because thousands of employment lawyers will be explaining to their clients how to comply with the rule. Standardized contracts that include non-compete sections by default will be edited to remove them. And business leaders will start to recognize that non-competes are no longer lawful. As the rule kicks in, the fight will head to the courts. And that's a fight for another day. There's lots of other stuff that's going to happen as well that I can go into. But this is the beginning of a big fight

about whether non-competes are going to be in our economy or not. Now, it's important to take a step back and recognize what Chair Lena Kahn, along with fellow commissioners named Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, who voted for the proposed rule, just did. They took a blatantly unfair practice that affects tens of millions of people and they banned it. That is governing. That is wielding power in service of the public. They also took the idea that employers are allowed enormous control over their employees and contractors and said that's not how we do business in America. The government no longer allows it. The government's job, our government, the job is to ensure liberty from coercion in all its forms. And for the first time in a very long time, the Federal Trade Commission acted like it. Thanks for watching this big

breakdown on the Breaking Points channel. If you'd like to know more about big business and how our economy really works, you can sign up below for my market power focus newsletter, Big, in the description. Thanks and have a good one. 7,000 nurses have been out on strike in New York over chronic, massive understaffing that is putting the nurses themselves and also obviously the patients at risk. We do have some breaking news this morning that a tentative deal has been struck. Of course, the nurses themselves will have to then vote to approve that deal. So we'll see whether they ultimately do that. But in the meantime, we've been very fortunate. Two of our partners here at Breaking Points have done phenomenal reporting on

this story. Let's go ahead and start with the lever and put this report up on the screen. This is from Matthew Cunningham Cook, fantastic reporter there. His headline is, as nurses strike, hospital CEOs pocket millions. And just to give you some of the details here, you know, these hospitals that nurses were striking at, these are technically nonprofits, but they operate as if they are gigantic corporations. And as Matthew points out, their CEOs are making millions. So Mount Sinai CEO Kenneth Davis made $5.6 million in 2019. Montefiore CEO Philip Ozua made $7.4 million in 2020. They also provide first-class airfare, chauffeured limos. So the work, so the idea that these hospitals, which have been making huge profits in which, by the way, we the taxpayers shipped a lot of money to during covid, that they could not provide additional salaries or staffing for these nurses was always preposterous.

At the same time, we had Jordan Sheridan of Status Quo, one of our other great partners, on the ground talking to the workers themselves. Let's throw it to Jordan, who can give you a preview of what he was able to learn. Hey, it's Jordan with Status Quo News. Right now, there's over 7,000 nurses on strike in New York City at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. They're on strike for a lot of the same reasons nurses across the country have gone on strike in recent years. They are being flooded by double, triple the amount of patients, but no staffing increases. On Monday, we went out on the ground to Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, where we spoke with nurses who talked about a toxic environment in their hospital, where they are in many cases out of beds and treating patients in the hallway. They also spoke about normally they might treat one to three patients on their floors,

but in the most recent years have been treating seven to nine patients. They spoke about not being able to go on break. They talked about having to apologize to their patients for the lack of quality care because they are overwhelmed and don't have the proper amount of staffing. Here is our reporting from Mount Sinai Hospital. Safe staffing now! Safe staffing now! Safe staffing now! Safe staffing now! Safe staffing now! Safe staffing now! Safe staffing now!

I've been working here for about three and a half years. And every year, essentially, I always say that I'd rather work during the pandemic than now because we are severely understaffed more now than we were in the pandemic. And so much so that we're taking double, if not triple, the amount of patients that we're supposed to be getting. And we have over 500 vacancies at this hospital alone. And that's just unacceptable to take caring of New York City residents. Yeah, so on my floor, we're supposed to have one to three, but we can go up to one to six, one to seven. And it's just unbearable. It's's unfair for the patients, and it's unfair for us. And more importantly, it just leads to catastrophic results.

I say union, you say town. Union! Town! Union! Town! Union! Town! My name is Kamani Williams. I'm the public advocate for C.D.B. York. And I'm more than proud to stand here with you while you fight for what's right. And to all the higher-ups in Mount Sinai who are talking about the patients, the patients, that's what they've been talking about for all these years. They've been saying the same thing. And what we have known is that the higher-ups who don't want to make the most basic concessions have been abusing the love that these nurses have for their patients for far too long.

So if you clap the pot, if you call them a hero, if you say thanks, just show them some money. That's all. They deserve it. They carry this through this pandemic, and we're not over yet. We're in a tridemic right now. We're in a tridemic yet right now. We're in a tridemic right now. Mount Sinai, there are people making lots of money off of health care in this hospital. All we're saying is share a little bit with some of the people who make this place run, who make people feel better, who get people healthy.

Why do they have to be out here right now in the middle of a tridemic? There's so many other hospitals who made sure that we didn't get here. I want the media to make sure when you tell the tale that it is the higher-ups on Mount Sinai that we're standing in right now, not because of these nurses. These nurses helped us for many, many years. They risked their lives for many, many years. When we didn't know what the hell was going on with COVID, they were in there risking themselves, risking their families, pleading because they only can get one mask, begging and pleading for masks. And now you have to make them stand in the street for a contract in the cold?

That ain't right. Shame on you, Mount Sinai. Shame on you, Mount Sinai. I work in the labor and delivery unit as well as the postpartum unit. And our staffing conditions fluctuate depending on the day. At some points we are completely full, patients don't have beds to go to and we're running around you know in unsafe working conditions and then there's other days where everything's okay and we have we can we can give the care so I think the biggest thing is that I understand the difference of safe staffing versus not safe staffing because when we are in those days

where we cannot provide the care, when we are stretched to our limits, we feel that we are doing our patients a disservice. And we have the days that are good, we know that we can provide that care and we see the difference in our patients, we see the difference in what we can provide. Safe staffing now!

Safe staffing now! Safe staffing now! Stop it now! Go nurses! Go nurses! Go nurses! Music Get a contract! Can't stop, won't stop! Till we get a contract! Can't stop, won't stop! Till we get a contract! I mean, chronically understaffed every shift. We're protesting every assignment and there's no repercussions for management. No breaks.

I am a nurse with seven months experience and I'm already exhausted. We want safe staffing and we just want to make the same wages and benefits that the other hospitals have. And this hospital does not have that compared to the other hospitals in this area. That's why we're striking and we need safer conditions for patients so that we can spend time with them, attend to lots of things happening at once. We're pulled in a million directions so we want safe patient care. Somebody was telling me that California has the grid where they have to have the same amount of nurses for the patients. How come New York City doesn't provide that?

I have no idea. I think that's why this is not being finalized because they don't want to agree to something that if they don't meet the grids, they'll get penalized in some way. So I think that's why we're striking because the last contract, they had this whole action plan. They had this whole thing in action, but nothing to make it actually work. So they said, we'll have these grids, we'll meet these whatever, we have these ratios, but we fill out process of assignments every week and what happens to it? We fill out the paperwork and nothing happens. It goes nowhere and it's just, it's a lost cause. I would really just love for everyone to know that nurses really do become, we become nurses because we love people, we care about people, especially labor and delivery. It's not about the money. They offered us the money. If it was about the money. They offered us

the money. If it was about the money, we wouldn't be out here. We'd be in there. We would be working. It's not about the money. We want to take care of our patients. We want to be able to give our patients the care that they deserve. It's a 12 hour shift. It's not right that we work for 12 hours straight. You can't sit down to eat. You can't go to the bathroom. It's just not right. Hey, it's Jordan with Status Quo News. Make sure to subscribe to our channel on YouTube. Recently, as part of our partnership with Breaking Points, we went out to cover a protest among hundreds of Uber drivers after

the company successfully sued to block a wage increase, the first increase in wages in many years for Uber drivers. Let me give you a little bit of the back story. This was in New York City. Uber filed suit against the city's taxi and limousine commission seeking to halt a new rule that would raise driver pay from 2019 rates by 7.42% per minute and 23.93% per mile. The company claimed the increase set to take effect in late December would have forced it to shell out an additional $21 to $23 million per month and raise rider shares by 10% amid the holiday season. Big picture, Uber's revenue is up 72% in the third quarter of 2022 compared to the prior year. So obviously, this is a company making plenty of money and could probably afford to increase its drivers wages.

But we went out to cover the protest. We heard really powerful stories from drivers, some of whom were driving 13 to 14 hours straight, many of whom were working extra jobs on top of Uber or Lyft and were struggling under the weight of inflation. Here is our on the ground reporting from the Uber strike. I'm a driver advocate. The mayor knows who we are. We got a petition to reform the Taxi Limousine Commission. Many council members signed that petition, including Eric Adams, including Jumaane Williams. We keep inviting them, we text them, we email them and they're not out here. They don't show up. Somebody's gotta ask those questions. Why are they not here?

We're two weeks away from Christmas and look at what Uber's doing. Taxi Limousine Commission approved a minuscule raise for the drivers. And here comes Uber trying to stop it. We didn't even get 25 cents. It's around 23 cents, 24 cents. It's an additional 22 cents on the per mile and about 5 cents on the per minute. We didn't hit 25 cents. And the reason they do this, we can't blame them. They're smart. They're being proactive because this is going to affect future raises. Understand?

So it could have been a nickel that we're fighting over. Uber still would have sued. Because know, because for them it translates into millions. For us, it only translates into pennies or a few dollars. But we gave the TLC a proposal in 2020 to give drivers $2.50 a mile and $ cents a minute the problem with the driver in new york is that people think that we're like uh like a kmart job like a like a 15 an hour job a minimum wage job no we're small business owners just like the bodega the pizza shop the bakery we are small business owners the only thing that our storefront is on a set of wheels. But many people come into our storefront and we're all over the city. We're essential workers.

I myself worked throughout the pandemic. Instead of doing 25 trips a day, I was doing three trips a day. And I still went to the hospital. Was not afraid to go to the hospital. I got COVID two times. And that's, it's, they would not do that to any other working class people. They wouldn't do it. There's just so many immigrant workers in this business that, and there's a language barrier.

It's so easy to get over on them. It's very easy. Do you feel like they're using and exploiting you guys? Oh, of course, of course. This is not the, this is not boo-hoo the poor taxi driver. Oh, boo-hoo, we need more money. It has nothing to do with greed.. Has nothing to do with greed. Has nothing to do with greed.

This is New York City. I'll tell you what. The Seattle Uber driver. The Seattle Uber driver is making more money right now than the New York driver, including if we get that raise. So the Seattle Uber driver is making $1 dollar 38 a mile and 59 cents a minute the new york driver right now is getting 116 a mile and 52 cents a minute if we get the raise though the per mile is going to go to 134 and the permit is going to go to about 56 now why is it not the same

across that's that's that's the that's the thing that we the country? That's the thing that boggles the mind. It boggles the mind. Anybody could do the math. It's mind-boggling. We'll get back and fight them. Because we got the power, we got the strength, we got the faith. So we want them to see us. We're here to let them know we need respect and they should give it to us. And we will get our respect. We will. At the end, we will.

Because we are families. We should be able to spend time with our families, get vacation with our kids. Because you go out there every single day to make that happen. We want to take our kids to college, give them education they need in the near future. That's why this fight is for us, for all drivers across the country. Right. That's right. So Uber, we're here in front of your office to let them know that we're here to get what we need and what we deserve.

Good afternoon, folks. It is almost hour 14 of this Uber strike. My name is Jisleen. I worked very hard with the New York Taxi Workers Alliance to get our taxi medallion debt forgiveness program won. But it's time our Uber drivers get the money that they are owed and deserve. That's right. Not just because it's the holiday season,

but the labor that our drivers provide is essential and necessary not only to keep the city functioning, but to keep mega corporations like Uber functioning and wealthy. We see time and time again corporations like Uber boast about record profits every single year. But we know that record profits are just stolen wages from the working class of our city and our state. It is essential that Uber makes good on the promise and the work that the Taxi Workers Alliance has done to win this raise that the city has already approved too. Every hour that Uber does not approve these wages

is another hour that these drivers spend in the cold, in dangerous climates, sitting in rain, in snow, in traffic for hours just to feed their families, get their children to college, and make an honest living. There's no reason why anyone should be driving or working any job for 15 to 20 years and still be struggling to make the rent. There's no reason for that. So I have shut off my Uber app today. I will continue to keep it shut off until this race is won. I'm proud to stand with the union members here today and ensure that we win the race for all and get our Uber drivers the money that they deserve. Hey there, my name is James Lee.

Welcome to another segment of 5149 on Breaking Points. It is my first video of 2023, and I want to take a few minutes to revisit a topic that I'm very passionate about, which is health and nutrition. To start, let's examine a few data points. Rates of obesity in America have skyrocketed over the past 50, 60 years, up to a point now where over 30% of adults are considered obese, and another 30 plus percent are overweight, meaning that all in all, more than

two thirds of adults in the United States are either overweight or obese. Now we all know obesity is linked to a bunch of different chronic illnesses, one of them being type 2 diabetes. So probably not surprising, the rate of diabetes in the U.S. has also skyrocketed over the past 50 to 60 years. If you look at this chart, diabetes extremely rare back in the 50s and 60s, but now we're talking about disturbing numbers like roughly 10% or more of Americans today are diabetic and even more are considered pre-diabetic. So is there something about nutrition, the food that we are eating that is severely impacting our health and causing us to be fatter and sicker than we've ever been in history?

This right here is a dead man who's about to change the world. Dennis Burkett was a world-renowned scientist that liked to study poo. He would study different types of poo. He would weigh it, he would measure it. He learned everything he could possibly learn about poo. He noticed that the people's poop in Europe and the United States was very, very different

than the people's poop in Africa. The poop in the US and Europe often looked like this or like this, or like this. It was lumpy and hard. Whereas the people in Africa had poop that looked more like this, and it was a lot smoother and softer. The people in high-income countries,

like the United States and Europe, had a bunch of health problems that the people in Africa simply didn't have. After living in Africa and studying this phenomenon for more than 20 years, Burkitt came up with a hypothesis as to why western countries are getting so sick. Burkitt attributed these diseases to the small quantities of dietary fiber consumed in high

income countries due mainly to the over processing of natural foods. Burkitt figured out that in high income countries we have severely fiber deficient diets. One of the first signs and symptoms is constipation. Long term fiber deficient diet can lead to colon cancer, diverticulosis, appendicitis, varicose veins, diabetes, obesity, allergies, breast cancer, prostate cancer, IBD, lots of problems. We sure have talked an awful lot about science over the past several years. This, however, is probably some of the most fascinating research I've come across. But for some reason, it gets almost no coverage and we have to wonder why.

Nonetheless, I did find this on the NIH website. in 1993. His hypothesis has been verified and extended by large-scale epidemiological studies, which have reported that fiber deficiency increases the risk of colon, liver, and breast cancer and increases all cancer mortality and death from cardiovascular, infectious, and respiratory diseases, diabetes, and all non-cardiovascular, non-cancer causes. So we know for sure that fiber intake has a huge impact on our overall health and well-being. More proof, this is from the Mayo Clinic, benefits of a high-fiber diet.

It normalizes bowel movements, helps maintain bowel health, lowers cholesterol levels, helps control blood sugar levels, aids in achieving healthy weight, helps you live longer. So once again, if fiber has so many health benefits, why are we removing it from all of our favorite foods? Everyone in the world is familiar with white rice. What most people don't know is that rice actually looks like this. Around a grain of rice is something called bran. That's the fiber. The white part is called the endosperm. We only eat the endosperm.

Now let's look at wheat. Wheat looks like this. This is the wheat bran or fiber that we take off the wheat so that we can make products like this. Show me any carbohydrate in nature, and I will show you that God and Mother Nature intended that carbohydrate to be covered in fiber. When you take fiber out of food, it makes it much, much hard to fill up. So you eat and eat and eat and never get full and buy more of the product. Those are literally all of my favorite foods.

Rice, for obvious reasons, but also corn, bread, sugar. For some reason, they're nothing at all like they appear in nature. We have been duped. It's profitable to sell food that is fatty and sugary and salty and addictive. It's much less profitable to sell food that is wholesome, that is high in fiber and is minimally processed. So what's driving the obesity epidemic? It's corporate profit. Is it not extremely

frustrating that so many solvable problems in our society stem from the fact that solving that problem would necessarily disrupt a very profitable financial scheme? Quote, many of these ultra processed foods are almost pre-chewed for us. They melt in your mouth immediately. There's no protein, there's no water, there's no fiber slowing them down. It's going to hit your taste buds and light up your reward and motivation centers of the brain immediately. Then there is a secondary hit of dopamine when it gets absorbed into the body. That doesn't even sound like they're talking about food anymore. It's like they're describing some kind of super drug that they genetically modified to hack our brains. Ultra-processed foods have something else in common with nicotine.

Some of the biggest producers of processed foods were, from the 1980s to the end of the 2000s, known as big tobacco. for $4.9 billion, and Philip Morris acquired General Foods in a $5.75 billion deal that was then the largest takeover in U.S. history outside of the oil industry. Philip Morris added Kraft to its portfolio in 1988 and rebranded itself as Altria in 2003. By the time Big Tobacco began acquiring food companies, they had decades of experience studying and optimizing the speed with which their products delivered nicotine to the brain. They continued to harness that science in their food products. This is really some story of American business ingenuity, using science, using the might of big tobacco to turn our foods into another addictive drug. What an engineering marvel. In 2010, Michelle Obama launched a campaign against child obesity.

The first lady lent her sassy sachet to move your body, aiming to set healthier standards for food served in school lunchrooms. We send our kids to school. We have a right to expect that they won't be eating the kind of fatty, salty, sugary foods that we're trying to keep from them when they're at home. Unfortunately, you know, Michelle Obama was on the right track right from the beginning. And then I think she got derailed by a mixture of bad advisers and by bringing in the food, the food companies. And they were able to dilute her very powerful message down to something where, you know, it's just her on television encouraging people to move that way rather than let's move together, you know, as a movement

to be able to transform the food system. Eat better became move more. Not saying moving more is not a good thing, but this example, I think, perfectly encapsulates the Obama legacy, does it not? It seems to always start with perhaps the best of intentions, promising to stand up for people, to right what's wrong, but for some reason they just could not escape the temptation of corporate grift, which ultimately doomed any real chance of them actually challenging entrenched power. But the FDA, as a lot of us already know, is in large part funded by the biopharmaceutical

industry. 54%, 3.3 billion comes from the federal government, but the other 46%, 2.8 billion dollars come from user industry fees. This is based on the latest available data that we have. Just think about that incentive structure we have in place. The FDA, who are supposed to advocate on behalf of consumers, is itself in large part funded by big pharma. And big pharma's profit streams are necessarily predicated on the existence of sick patients. So wouldn't it be great if one-third, half, two-thirds of Americans were quote-unquote sick? CNBC. Analysts love Eli Lilly for its potential blockbuster obesity drug. And we do too.

Diabetes. The U.S. accounts for nearly half of global diabetes drug sales. Could there be some sort of global conspiracy of food and pharmaceutical executives and regulators and dark rooms devising ways to make people sick? I cannot say. But what I can say is there's so much money to be made here. And in order to make this money, people must first be sick, be obese, be diabetic. Whatever the case is, I do not think we can refute that there is a certain economic benefit of normalizing something like obesity. Companies, they aren't promoting body positivity because they desire a more healthy society. They are doing it because it is very financially lucrative to do so. So lots of momentum across various industries and sectors,

private and public, to sit idly by and watch all the fiber be quietly removed from our diet. One final fact about fiber, just for a point of comparison, according to Duke University's Global Health Institute, a hunter-gatherer group, the HADSA, for example, typically take in approximately 100 grams of fiber per day, about five times more than an American adult usually gets. But hey, I think you should eat whatever you want to eat. My point, my goal for today and for 2023 is to just provide you with important information about what I think is really going on

by following the money in the food industry, in the regulatory environment, in big pharma, wherever else, to empower you to make the best decision for you. And that is all for me today. I hope this segment was helpful in terms of connecting the dots between something like the proliferation of low-fiber foods

with the underlying desire of big food to maximize profit at the expense of public health. If you did find this helpful, I would encourage you to check out my YouTube channel, 5149 with James Lee. Tons of videos on there, breakdowns on many different topics like this one. The link will be in the description below. Of course, don't forget to subscribe to Breaking Points. And thank you so much for your time today. See you in the next one. I'm Maximilian Alvarez. I'm the editor-in-chief of the Real News Network and host of the podcast Working People, and this is the art of class war on Breaking Points. I want to start off this segment by wishing everyone out there a safe, restful, and love-filled holiday season. To borrow a phrase from the great Kurt Vonnegut,

I hope each and every one of you is able to take some time back over the holidays to be with the people and do the things that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy. I also want to give viewers and listeners a warning up top that today's segment deals with the topics of bullying, harassment, and even suicide. If you are unable to continue with this segment, I completely understand. If you are able, however, I want to ask you to help us spread the word because this story is important and more people need to know about it. A year and a half ago on my podcast, Working People, we published an interview with the family of Evan Seyfried, which was to this day, the hardest interview that I've ever recorded.

I spoke with Evan's mother, Linda, his father, and his brother Eric about his life, about the beautiful person and hard worker that he was, and I spoke to them about the tragic and unforgivable events that led to Evan's death. As anyone who knew him can attest, Evan was a loving son, brother, and friend, and a dedicated worker. For 19 years, with a virtually spotless record, Evan worked at a local Kroger grocery store in Milford, Ohio, where he eventually became the dairy department manager. From October 2020 to March 2021, however, Evan suffered a torturous litany of bullying, harassment, and sabotage, according to a lawsuit

filed against Kroger by the Seyfried family. As the lawsuit alleges, it was this treatment, which was the result of a conspiracy involving numerous actors, including management level supervisors Shannon Frazee and Joseph Pig at the Milford store that caused Evan to eventually suffer a transient episodic break and take his own life. For the Seyfried family, nothing can ever replace the loss of their son, Evan. And as always, I want to send them my love and solidarity and I want to thank them for sharing their story with me so openly and bravely, even though it was incredibly hard and painful to do so. While the Seyfrieds fight to pick up the pieces, and while their lawsuit against Kroger is moving through the courts very

slowly, a group of volunteers, family friends, and community members have come together to honor Evan's life, to hold Kroger accountable for his death, and to fight the scourge of workplace bullying, which affects millions of workers around the U.S. and beyond. Through my podcast, Working People, through my work at The Real News, and even here on Breaking Points. I've done my best to cover the story of Evan's tragic death and to lift up the valiant struggle of the Seyfrieds and the Justice for Evan Coalition to make sure that Evan's name isn't forgotten and that no one has to go through what Evan and his loved ones have had to go through. And I'll be honest, it's been a real struggle to get the story out there. But because the Seyfrieds and their supporters have refused to give up,

because they have kept pushing over these two years, that may be changing. While Kroger continues to stay unforgivably silent, asserting that it can't comment on ongoing litigation. A recent cover article about Evan Seyfried for the Cincinnati Inquirer, which was syndicated across the country, including for USA Today, has given Evan's family and the Justice for Evan Coalition a renewed sense of hope that they will secure the justice and accountability that they have been fighting so tirelessly for. To talk about all of this, I'm honored to be joined today by Jana Murphy and Erica Erskine, the two founders and co-organizers of the Justice for Evan Coalition.

Jana, Erica, thank you so much for joining us today on Breaking Points. Well, thank you so much, Max, for having us. And we just appreciate your listeners so much tuning in today. Well, it's a real honor to have you both on the call. And just to sort of make sure that the Breaking Points viewers and listeners have all the essential information from the jump. I wanted to build on my introduction and ask if you guys could first tell folks a little more about yourselves and how you got involved in the Justice for Evan fight, and if you could help walk us through the events that led to Evan's death and the long fight to hold Kroger, Shannon Frazee, and Joseph

Pig accountable. So, Jana, why don't we start with you? Max, back in the winter of 2021, the Seyfrieds were living a normal life here in Cincinnati, Ohio. Eric Seyfried is a close friend of mine and I am a close friend of the Seyfried family. On the night of March the 9th, after Eric and I had spoken briefly on the phone and everything was completely normal, and I woke up the next day to many messages from my friend as he was on his way from Portland, Oregon, to be with his mother and father after his little brother, Evan Seyfried, had taken his life.

I'll jump to what family found out in the days following from Evan's co-workers at the Milford Kroger. Family was contacted by Evan's friends at K the relentless, fierce, horrible, unbelievable, it's unbelievable what Shannon Frazee and Joseph Pig, the campaign that they started against Evan. Evan was a diligent, loyal 19-year Kroger employee. He was the dairy manager at the mill for Kroger. He had an impeccable record, and that record stayed completely impeccable, not only on paper,

but also with Evan's loyalty to Kroger. And when Shannon Fraser became his manager at that Kroger, everything went to hell, literally. And your listeners and viewers can see the entire 31-page lawsuit on Scripps.com, and we highly encourage them to read the lawsuit, because due to our segment here at the time, we don't have a lot of time to talk about all the details. So in my mind, all the details are running.

I'm trying to narrate it as much as possible. Months after this bullying campaign started with Shannon, some female employees, Evan was a whistleblower and female employees knew that he could help them when they had been sexually harassed by Joseph Figg. They had reported that at this time they came to Evan as a leader and asked for his help. He did help them file reports. And Joseph Pig then verbally, in person, threatened Evan that his information would be given out because Joseph Pig was the security manager at Kroger. And Evan's personal information indeed was given out. And he was sent messages to his phone.

He was sent child pornography to his phone. He took his phone to his dad to take to a lawyer. And as they were going downtown, they had an episodic break. This is a man with no prior history of mental illness. And he went to his parents' home after. He took his life in his childhood room and Ken Seyfried found him and and

then in the days following when the Kroger employees came out and told the family what had happened, then the family filed a lawsuit against Kroger. Thank you so much, Jana, with the Seyfrieds, with Erica, where we give a lot more of that essential background to the campaign of terror that Evan's managers waged on him for months, isolating him, bullying him, sabotaging him, according to the lawsuit filed by the family, which as Jana mentioned, you can read the full text of online. And it's just fair warning. It's horrifying stuff. Again, Evan worked at this Milford, Ohio Kroger for nearly 20 years, had a spotless record,

had become the dairy manager. And then when he got this new manager, his life became a living hell. And he, according to the lawsuit, was bullied and harassed and targeted viciously. Even while Evan was standing up for his coworkers who were filing sexual harassment complaints, Evan himself was getting bullied and harassed by management. He was not getting the help that he needed from his union or from Kroger HR. And so again, you can go check out all the details there. And Erica, I wanted to bring you in as well and ask if you could sort of talk about how you got involved in this campaign and I guess what happened with the campaign after, you know, the Seyfrieds learned about what their son had gone through before he took his own life and filed the lawsuit with Kroger? What happened then as far as you and Jana and Justice for Evan is concerned? Well, our paths crossed, Jana and myself, after I read the very first article that really came out,

I think it was by the Washington Post back in July of 2021, after the Cypress had filed a lawsuit against Kroger. So that's how I came to be a part of Justice for Evan. And myself being an employee of Kroger for over 20 years. It just struck a nerve with me and something just was telling me like you got to help these people and because it's not just helping the family but it's really helping the Kroger workers across the country overall in dealing with this nonsense of mistreatment and bullying and organizational mobbing that is running rampant through this company. So, yeah, I mean, to say I had some skill sets that I felt would be very, very useful. And that's how I came to be one of the co-founders of Justice for Evan.

And I mean, since then, the, you know, the online campaign to build, you know, the Justice for Evan Facebook page. And, you know, that has grown by leaps and bounds. I know that there have been demonstrations, you know, in cities around the country while the Seyfried's lawsuit against Kroger is slowly moving through the courts. And I just sort of wanted to ask, in the midst of all of that, how are the Seyfrieds doing? How are you both and the other members of the Justice for Evan Coalition holding up throughout all of this? And, you know, as you mentioned, Erica, like, you know, the Washington Post did cover this initially. And, you know, there have been a couple of stories here and there. But by and large, it's been, you know, working people. It's

been great shows like the Retail War Zone, you know, that have helped kind of keep this story alive. But then we got sort of a blockbuster moment this past month where the Cincinnati Inquirer did a front page story on Evan's case, and that was nationally syndicated. So what has that meant for you all, the Seyfrieds and the Justice for Evan coalition? So how are folks holding up, and what does the publication of this new story by the Enquirer mean for the fight for justice for Evan? Thank you, Max. Also, I want to go back briefly and mention that Evan did go through all the proper channels when he reported, and he was completely ignored by the entire organization of Kroger. And I really want to reiterate that to listeners. Evan Seifried did exactly what he was supposed to do.

He always did. He was a highly ethical, beautiful human being. And he was put under people who were his superiors were not any of the caliber of near of a person that he was, nor any of the Seyfried family. And the Seyfried family, Eric, Ken, and Linda are suffering. Heaven was a tremendous loss, not only to the world, to this small, beautiful, wonderful family. They're just the nicest people. And anybody who could possibly judge what happened to Evan by saying anything negative ever about him, then I really want to encourage listeners to stand up to those people and say read the lawsuit you know look at what this this look at what really truly happened and the Seyfrieds

are suffering I mean they they Kroger has not said boo to the Seyfried family. I mean, this is unjust punishment to a family by the largest corporation in the tri-state area that they loved and supported for many, many years and that their son dedicated his work life to. And this corporation doesn't have enough heart in it to even say one thing to the family, not even to say, we know that we're going through litigation, but here's a, like, we are, we are sorry. And we know that we know we need to change. I mean, they

know this happened. They know this happened and they don't have the courage to even come to the family. This family's been waiting since the summer of 2021 to hear something from Cogirl, to hear anything and there's been nothing. This family is suffering. You know, this is another Christmas, another Thanksgiving. It's like when Ken and Linda are out in Oregon with Eric. They're a very close family. They're getting ready to celebrate another Christmas without Evan. Amy, Evan's girlfriend, is here in Cincinnati getting ready to celebrate another Christmas without Evan. I mean, I use the word celebrate extremely loosely. They're grieving. All these people are grieving. And the fact that the Cincinnati Inquirer and an amazing journalist named Alex Kulitz spent so much time creating this

beautiful, amazing article and piece and the research that that good human being did and the ethical standard that the Cincinnati Enquirer has shown is impeccable. It's amazing. And Evan would be so happy with the people that we have encountered through this entire journey since we started Justice for Evan. And I encourage our listeners to get on the Justice for Evan Facebook page and look at the link tree that Erica has created, and they can see all of the events that Justice for Evan and all of our supporters and all of the help from all of the good people, including you, Max, and your amazing team, all the people who've done podcasts with us, all the people who've come out for the protests, all the people who helped us get through the national protests March 9th and through the

shareholder meeting last June, which was a monumental event because Ronnie McMullen actually read a prepared statement. He knew that he was going to be forced to do that. He did it. That was huge for the family. And then when the Cincinnati Inquirer article came out two weeks ago, how that came out first was Ken Seifried did a long interview with the Cincinnati Inquirer. And I get very emotional because I know the behind the scenes and how hard that was for him and how important that it was for him not only to tell the personal story about what he and Candace went through that night and what they have been going through but also to how important that it is for people to know what's going on at Kroger and these corporate workers they don't know what's going on at Kroger they have no clue what's happening at the stores and it is our mission to get that out there to the public, what's going on in the stores. This can never happen to another employee again. It's not going

to happen on my watch. It's not going to happen on Erica's watch. And by God, we're going to make sure that these employees are protected at Kroger. And there are many good people at Kroger, many, many, many good people who work on the floor. Eric works at Kroger. Amy works at Kroger. I know lots of great people who work at Kroger. But the people who are at the top at Kroger, it has been shown to us that they really don't give a crap about what's happening with the people on the floors. They don't give a crap. And we know that those corporate workers, they don't give a crap about what's happening with the people on the floors. They don't give a crap. And we know that those corporate workers, they don't even know that the employees weren't even getting paychecks.

And I would really like to come back and do another podcast with you, Max, for Erica to do a lot more education to your listeners on like that about the paycheck issue and so many other issues that are going on at Kroger so that we can just continue to broaden our microphone, get our microphone louder. And so that because to the to how we are doing it, Justice for Evan, we are getting angrier as more time goes on. Are we are not getting tired. And that's what, and we've told COVID this since the very beginning. If you think we're going away, do you see us going away? We were front page on the USA Today at 3 p.m. on Friday when that article came out as the lead story on USA Today with Evan's face looking down at his mother's cat, you know, that beautiful face.

At 3 p.m., over 7,000 Americans were reading that story at the same time. After midnight that night, still over 300 Americans were still reading that story. And then it came out on the front page of the Sunday Cincinnati Inquirer and the Kentucky Inquirer of Evan's girlfriend Amy crying on the front page and you open it up and there is the biggest article ever in the Inquirer the full two-page centerfold pictures of Evan and that and an incredible piece that Alex Coolidge did so we're not getting getting tired. Our fight is just starting. We're never going away. We are anxiously awaiting the day that Kroger is going to sit down at the table

and admit this. And when they look at Ken Seyfried and Eric Seyfried and say, we know we were accountable for Evan's death and that's the only reason why he died there's a victory well and Erica I guess by way of closing us out I think

Jana did a brilliant job kind of laying out the importance of the publication of that piece as you mentioned Jana folks can go to the Justice for Evan Facebook page if they want to keep up to date with this, see how the movement's growing, get updates on future demonstrations that are going to be held. You can also find them on Twitter. And Erica, I know that as you mentioned, as someone who is an employee of the Kroger Corporation, which extends into so many different areas, employee of the Kroger Corporation, which extends into so many different areas, right? Because Kroger's bought up basically every other grocery

store chain in this country, like King Soopers, where workers were going on strike in Colorado earlier this year. I know that that's been a big part of this campaign's evolution as well, right? Like connecting what Evan went through at the hands of Kroger management and everyone down the line from Kroger HR to all the way to the CEO Rodney McMullen. Everyone failed Evan. And you guys are doing important work to sort of connect that to the ongoing struggles of Kroger employees around the country. So I wanted to just ask if you could say a little bit about that and what folks can do to get involved in that effort by way of closing us out. Yeah, I kind of feel that we're, you know, more in the loop than, you know, Kroger corporate and HR is half the time because, you know, it seems like they really do not have a clue what goes on on a daily basis at the store level.

That's where all the, quote, magic happens, as we say. And they just don't have a clue. It's that they're just so detached from reality. And it's seemingly more so as like the years go on, um, and especially lately. And, you know, you mentioned the, uh, uh, uh, buying up stores with, you know, the recent merger, um, like with, uh, proposal with, with Albertsons and, you know, with, with the way things have been, um, at Kroger, um, for a while, but especially since the onset of the pandemic, they don't have any business acquiring any more stores and thousands more employees whose lives

they could potentially ruin if they don't get this stuff in check. So yeah, I do feel that, you know, we're not a lot not like me personally, I don't feel like I'm only doing my job, my full time job, plus theirs. And really, all it takes is they just need to open their eyes and their ears and realize that there's, there's some things, there's a lot of things that need to be fixed. And we are more than willing to, we're at the table. We've been sitting at the table. And the only way to create this change is to literally directly sit across from the table with people like Rodney McMullin and, you know, some of the key players in the head office.

But moving forward, our current project is our billboard campaign that we're currently crowdfunding for to continue to raise public awareness. And this time we're literally going to raise public awareness right in downtown Cincinnati, right in Kroger's face, literally. So it's just an extension of Alex Coolidge's article in The Inquirer, which has had us busy responding to messages. We've gotten emails with even more people, employees in particular, coming out of the woodwork and saying, yeah, you know, I experienced similar things. I'm so sorry for, you know, the Cypherides loss. If there's anything I can do to help, just please let me know. So we, you know, we're growing in numbers and it's not going to stop. So it's, Kroger just needs to surrender, basically, and just start listening to their employees. Because as Jana has reiterated many times, we're not going away and we're not tired. And we'll do this until the end of time, basically. So, and I, you know, I just,

this work never gets easier, but it does bring a, to me at least, a sense of reward knowing that I'm helping so many fellow coworkers across the country who have had nowhere to turn, who have gone through the proper channels like Evan did, have been turned away, have been ignored, most have either quit or been terminated. And that can't continue to happen.

You know, people need paychecks. People have to live. People have to eat. And it's very ironic that, you know, in the grocery business, a lot of employees can't even afford to eat because they don't even make a living wage. So there's, there's a lot of things wrong with Kroger that needs to be fixed. But I do believe they have it in them. I really do. They have it in them. There are a lot of good people within the Kroger enterprise. There's a lot of good people and those people need to

start coming out of the woodwork also. Well, and you know, I can't thank you and Jana for being two of those good people fighting as hard as you have for the Seyfrieds and for Kroger workers everywhere. It's really an honor to be in this struggle with both of you. And I just wanted to underline something that both Erica and Jana said for viewers and listeners. When I interviewed Ken, you know, Evan's father, Linda, Evan's mother, and Eric, Evan's brother, on that first episode of Working People, they explicitly pointed to Kroger's corporate policy as the reason for their son's death. They said that once, that Evan himself even told them that once Rodney McMullin

took over as CEO, things changed at Kroger. It was all about the bottom line. Relationships with management really changed. It was about how much you could increase store sales at the cost of everything else. Ken Seyfried told me point blank, it is because of this sort of relentless corporate policy that my son did not get the help that he was asking for, that corporate didn't care about the treatment and that he was receiving the complaints that they were hearing about that treatment because the store sales were up. So the family is drawing a direct line between kind of Kroger's corporate policy and the hell that workers like Evan are having to endure at locations across the country. And so, again, I can't thank you both enough for being part of this struggle and doing everything that you can to fight,

to hold Kroger accountable and to make sure that workers like Evan never have to endure this kind of thing again. So for Breaking Points, this is Maximilian Alvarez signing off and Jana Murphy, Erica Erskine, two founders and co-organizers of the Justice for Evan Coalition. Thank you so much for joining us today on Breaking Points. Thank you for watching this segment with Breaking Points, and be sure to subscribe to my news outlet, The Real News, with links in the description. See you soon for the next edition of The Art of Class War. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other.

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