Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Mini Show #16: Amazon Workers, Sarah Silverman, Dollar General, Teachers, and More!

Episode Date: December 19, 2021

Krystal and Saagar talk about Amazon putting workers' lives at risk, Sarah Silverman's feud with Joy Reid, Dollar General's war on unions, teachers scrambling for cash, and more!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Daily Poster: https://www.dailyposter.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. I went through while I was down in prison for two years. Through that process, learn, learn from. Check out this exclusive episode with Ja Rule on Rock Solid. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Rock Solid, and listen now. My name is Brendan Patrick Hughes, host of Divine Intervention. This is a story about radical nuns in combat boots and wild-haired priests trading blows with J. Edgar Hoover in a hell-bent effort to sabotage a war. J. Edgar Hoover was furious. He was out of his mind and he wanted to bring the Catholic left to its knees. You can now binge all 10 episodes of Divine Intervention on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You experienced dad guilt?

I hate it. She understands, but she's still prepared. She's like, dude. Happy Father's Day. This show may be called Good Moms, Bad Choices, but this show isn't just for moms. We keep it real about relationships and everything in between. And yes, men are more than welcome to listen in. I knew nothing about brunch.

She was a terrible girlfriend, but she put me on to brunch. To hear this and more, open your free iHeart app, search Good Moms, Bad Choices, and listen now. Joining us now for our weekly partnership segment with The Daily Poster is the founder of The Daily Poster himself, the one and only David Serrata. Great to see you, David. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. So we've been tracking on the show here damage from those deadly tornadoes, the fact that some of the worst damages were sustained at people's workplaces, a candle factory in Mayfield, Kentucky, where workers were not allowed to leave hours before when they wanted to,

and also at an Amazon distribution center in Illinois, where we have looked at the final text of a driver there who wanted to leave. Amazon wouldn't let him go, and ultimately it cost him his life. Talk to us about what you uncovered here in terms of Amazon lobbyists and the rights that workers have in their workplaces. So in Illinois, in the months before this disaster, there was a there's legislation in the in the Democratic controlled legislature to change Illinois laws to say that an employer has to have a just cause in order to terminate a worker. known as at-will employment. An employer can fire you for basically almost any reason other than reasons covered in the civil rights laws. But that means if your employer doesn't like the, let's say, the color of your tie, your employer can fire you. In Illinois, they were trying to change this to say that the employer has to have a just cause. Now, how does that connect to the situation in a disaster like we saw in Illinois?

Well, if a worker tries to leave their workplace, they can be threatened with firing under the current at-will employment laws. So, in other words, Amazon is empowered to fire its workers if they walk off the job under at-will laws. Amazon-linked lobbying groups, business lobby groups in Illinois, were lobbying against the just cause legislation in the lead-up to this disaster. Now, to be clear, we don't know in Illinois whether Amazon was trying to keep its workers there out of safety to try to get them to not go out into the tornado or not. But the point here is, the bottom line is, is that workers in Illinois and across the country essentially do not have, in almost every state, state protections to be able to leave the workplace or to be able to do anything to make themselves safe without fear of potentially being fired by their employer. And, you know,

it's really interesting, David. I was reading this and looking through, which is that I don't see any consideration of this within the media. I mean, why is it that you're the only person who can seemingly dig this stuff up? People died. I mean, the initial segment, of course, happened, and they reported the investigation. But this is just clear as day here. I mean, the initial segment, of course, happened and they reported the investigation. But this is just clear as day here. I mean, I think it's disgraceful. Yeah. I mean, look, people's employment situation is inherently linked to whether they can blow the whistle on safety problems in the workplace, whether they can leave their workplace in the middle of a natural disaster. I mean, think about how big a problem this is going to end up being. Climate change is intensifying these kinds of weather cataclysms. Workers are facing more and

more in the day-to-day, do I have to come to work during a flood? Do I have to come to work during a hurricane warning? Can I leave my workplace during a tornado warning, again, without fear of being fired. There were reports that in Kentucky, workers were told they might be fired if they walked off the job. Again, that connects directly to the at-will employment situation throughout the country. And you're right, the media doesn't talk about it because corporate media doesn't typically talk about things that the corporate lobby wants to keep in place. And the corporate lobby wants to keep in place. And the corporate lobby wants to keep in place a situation that employers can fire you for any reason at all.

Can we talk about your movie, David? Yeah, let's do it. Don't look up. You guys probably already know. The reviews have been amazing. Did you get to go to the film premiere? What has this personally been like for you, this little star turn? Hollywood elites, what are they like?

Yeah. The premiere was everything that you'd imagine a premiere to be. I got to walk the red carpet. I got to see all the stars walk the red carpet. It was a classic, one of those big spectacles. But there's one thing I think that I took away, one of the things I took away that was really great about it was all of the stars and the filmmaker Adam McKay, and in my own interviews on the red carpet, we used the opportunity to talk about the climate crisis and to talk about an even deeper crisis as well. The crisis of our media, as Sagar just mentioned, our media not focusing on the real issues. And ultimately, without giving away anything about this movie, that's what this

movie is about. It's about whether we as a society can take verifiable facts, have them be in a media discussion without them being frivolized, without them being suppressed, without them being turned into a partisan weapon. And the sad thing about our society right now is that almost every important fact is put into that media machine and then turned into either a partisan weapon, a culture war weapon, and not something that we are using to constructively build policies around. Well, and what I loved about, not all, but some of the coverage of the movie was it turned into rather than like,

oh, Adam McKay made this really important commentary on climate change and our inability as a society to like deal with any real threats that are facing us. And so their response to that was to dig into this like beef between Adam McKay and Will Ferrell, like just literally proving your, the point of the movie that all they care about are these like trivial personal feuds and reality TV type bullshit.

Adam and I have been going back and forth on text for like the last three weeks. Every single thing like that. We keep saying we're living inside the movie i feel like we're inside the actual movie and it's actually horrifying yeah that's amazing well david congratulations tell people where when they can watch the movie where all of that sure uh the movie is in theaters now it's in select theaters about 500 across the country and it'll be on Netflix starting on Christmas Eve.

And I hope everybody will watch it. I want to say one other thing. It is not a movie designed to make you feel comfortable. It's hilarious. It's fun. But I think the reactions are pretty intense because it's not a movie that wants to make you feel comfortable. Interesting.

Well, next week, maybe that segment, because that will post on Christmas Eve when the movie's coming out. Let's talk about the movie. Sagar and I will watch it if we're able. You can get us screeners or whatever we need to do there. So that we can just talk directly about the movie itself so that people can, you know, get a little reminder of it the day that it comes out. Fantastic. Looking forward to it.

Congrats. Yep. And thanks for all the great work you do. Thank you, David. Thanks to both of you. Our pleasure. Thank you guys. And thanks for all the great work you do. Thank you, David. Thanks to both of you. Our pleasure. Thank you guys for watching. We'll have more for you later. tremendous amount of backlash. First, it was Trevor Noah questioning the motivations of Moderna's CEO over booster shots. Now it's Sarah Silverman calling out MSNBC's Joy Reid. Of course, she was basically said that she was a racist and all of that. Here's her response. It's pretty

interesting. On side, we can't even critique anyone in your own party without punishment. One of the hosts of The View was like, what hubris for Sarah Silverman to accuse a black woman of not reading. Oy, Jesus H, what the, I fucking, I surrender. Good grief. I don't want any trouble. I cannot believe I need to say this, but I did not criticize Joy Ann because she's black. But because she's a Harvard-educated journalist with the responsibility, ideally, of showing the whole picture and not just a piece of a picture. That is quite a—that's a real coming to like realization. You can see the veil falling from the eyes. How did this happen to me? How did I find myself here? I can't believe I didn't have to say it. So for context, what happens, there's this whole story going around about how Ron DeSantis wants to reimplement a civilian military thing that 22 other states have. And everybody on Twitter

was like, oh my God, like Ron DeSantis is restarting the SS and all this other nonsense. And Joy Reid, of course, the dumbest woman on television, says, oh, y'all know this is fascist-y bananas, right? In her, you know, trademark form. And Sarah Silverman said, please read the article before you post this stuff. You're a news outlet.

The truth has to matter. Great. Thank you, Sarah. She got smacked by The View and many others saying, how dare you criticize Joanne Reed? She's a black woman. And as Sarah Silverman points out, she's like, I'm a freaking comedian. You're the Harvard-educated journalist with a large show. I'm just saying, don't freak people out for no reason.

Boom. Doesn't matter. The hubris of Sarah Silverman. Well, and that's actually Silverman's point is Jerry Reed is not stupid. Yes. She's, you know,

very well educated. She is a very intelligent person and so, and she has a very large platform and it's really important to use that in a responsible way.

So the Ron DeSantis thing, I mean, there were, I think, legitimate ways to criticize his move, like, okay, why are you doing this now? What are the intentions? All that stuff. But to paint it as like, this is literally fascism, when it's something that 22 other states do, I mean,

you just make yourself, it makes easy fodder for people to say, look at these people. They're ridiculous. Nobody can do anything without it being fascism these days. And so what Sarah Silverman replied to that Joy Reid tweet, she said, please read the article before you post this stuff. You're a news outlet.

The truth has to matter. That's what she said. Right. Which triggered this whole response. I didn't know the view ladies got involved, apparently. They were always mouthing off about something. But, you know, this is what comes when you accept the premise that a lot of liberals and a lot of people on the right, too, have accepted, which is that the truth actually doesn't matter. All that matters is you providing

talking points that are in service of your partisan team. And when you create existential stakes, you can understand how people start to think that way, that like, sure, it's not technically exactly accurate, or you're leaving out a lot of important other side context and information. But the threat over here is so grave that it justifies that type of spin lies misinformation because we have to fight back against this authoritarian threat over here. If you're MSNBC or if you're Fox News, it's, you know, the leftists coming to do communism or whatever they're afraid of over there. So because that threat is, you know, amplified to be such a grave and existential threat, then yeah, you just, you get into the service of whatever is going to further my team's

political future. And, you know, the truth be damned, that's not the most significant thing. The most significant thing is the political project of making sure my side wins. Of course, the end effect of that is no one trusts you. And so when you do have important information to convey, any sort of trust is gone. People very clearly see through what you're doing as just like partisan hackery and it doesn't even end up helping your people win when that was your goal to start with. And this is the thing, Sarah Silverman goes, where do I just get the plain old news? Well, Sarah, hasn't been out there for a long time.

We're out here, you're welcome, anytime. And she also says, more than I like her and more than I don't like him, I care about what is true and how it is presented by news outlets. I just feel like the far right is nuts, and I worry that anything beyond what's absolutely true dilutes the power of what is true.

Been trying to say that for quite a long time. This little dust-up, it's very revealing. You know, they'll eat your own. They'll go after you, criticize you. I mean, you know, call you racist, one of the worst things you can call somebody in American society. Yeah, so casual. And people always ask, like, what do you mean?

What I'm saying is that rightfully we have made it. We have recognized racism as a heinous, horrible thing in our society. And so when you call somebody that, it is one of the worst things that you can say about someone. And so you should be very judicious in how you use that terminology. And casually throwing it out in order for somebody questioning a completely false narrative is a ludicrous use of the term, dilutes it, dilutes the actual power of it, and makes it so that Joy Ann Reid and all of them can be some of the dumbest people in public discourse and not have any criticism and hide behind their race. That is actually an

insult to any real idea, definition, and experience of real racism. So, look, it's a pathetic instance, but it's very revealing in terms of how it all works today. Yeah. So, we'll see. Sarah Silverman has had her eyes open now or where she goes from here. Sarah, you're welcome on the show anytime. All right. There we go. Yeah. We'd love to talk about it. Sure. All right, guys. Thanks for watching. We'll have more for you later. The Washington Post has published a very revealing and detailed account of what happened when six workers at a Dollar General store attempted to form a union.

And they describe it as the most lopsided battle in the ongoing low-wage worker revolt. Let's go ahead and throw the tear sheet up on the screen. They say, the worker revolt comes to a Dollar General in Connecticut. A call to a union triggers one of the most lopsided battles of the ongoing low-wage worker revolt. What they track here is how these six workers, which it's kind of astonishing that a Dollar General is run by just six workers, but that is in fact the reality, at least of this store in Connecticut. These six workers were disgusted with a range of issues that they had in their store.

And mostly they just wanted to have more say and formalize channels where they could, you know, issue complaints, where they could push back against some of the things that were happening. And so at a particularly frustrated moment, one of those workers, a woman named Shelly Parson, who had had a lot of struggles in her life, she dealt with addiction, she dealt with physical abuse, but was doing really well. And she considered she really actually valued her dollar general job at $15.75. She was very afraid of losing it, but she was also completely fed up. So she dialed union representatives and started the process of, you know, formalizing, putting in a petition and being able to vote on a union. So when all of this happens, again, there's six workers at this little store in Connecticut, Dollar General headquarters executives went into overdrive. Very similar kind of tactics to what we saw with the Starbucks workers in Buffalo. They brought executives in. They brought in anti-union consultants, paid $2,000 plus a day to consult with them to try to fight back against this union. Sometimes

the executives that were in the store were basically there as spies to try to catch people wrongdoing so that they could have some fig leaf of a justification to fire them. One of the workers here who had been pro-union was terminated because he said a curse word one time in earshot of one of these executives, not even around a customer, but in earshot of one of these executives. So they were in direct touch, of course, with each one of the workers and just pressured the hell out of them. And the workers say that they went beyond what is even legal. And we know that the law allows for a lot and directly threatened these workers. And this is where it gets even more disgusting. So I think we've

mentioned on the show a couple of times that there was another Dollar General store in Missouri that had voted to unionize. And after exhausting all of their appeals and realizing that, oh, these workers are in fact going to get to join a union, Dollar General just shut the store down. So with these workers here that were trying to unionize, they told them, hey, you should look into what happened at that Missouri store and directly. And again, this would be illegal if it if it's proven directly threaten them with just closing the store altogether in an area where, you know, there may not be a lot of other employment and where these workers really needed the job. So in the end, narrowly, after all of those threats and coercion and the anti-union lawyers and the spying and all of that, the union effort narrowly fails. So it just shows you how stacked this process is and how much you're up against and what resources they will throw at you. Even when you're just, you know, six workers at one of their

stores in Connecticut, they will do everything it takes to keep you from ultimately joining the union. No, it's really remarkable. And the thing is how transparent they are. I mean, I was just looking for that particular quote where they asked Dollar General, why did you close this store weeks after the negotiation with union was ordered because they said based on, quote, assessment of the store's future profitability. So they didn't even blame the current metrics. They said the future profitability, which of course they might be able to tie to the Union, and they don't have to say anything else, period, boom, they can just close the store. Why does all of this matter? I mean, we've covered here previously

about how Dollar General plays a very specific role for a lot of rural towns in America who don't have any grocery stores. They are, outside of gas stations, the only place which actually sell frozen food, snacks, and canned goods. So it's made it so that it's actually inconvenienced everyone in this entire town, especially quote, elderly folks who can't get around really well. They really needed that Dollar General in order to get the most basic levels and types of food. This serves its role in a lot of places. That amount of power means that they can point to this to all future employees and say, hey, look, you want to unionize? Cool. Maybe we'll close the store. You want to be the reason that your neighbor or your

grandma has to drive 25 miles in order to go buy a frozen pizza? You want that on you? What about the mayors of these small towns? They're going to side with Dollar General every single time. They need them. That's the problem, the power imbalance that we have here. And, you know, I always get, what are these people fighting for? Like basic, like $15, $13. What do you mean?

Even out in Appalachia, like $12, $13. Yeah. Minimum wage, some time off. So you don't have to do a clopening shifts. It's like it's not a lot that people are asking for. But even then, it's an existential threat, and they'll just destroy you. Dollar General is one of the worst in terms of wages. Their wage is lower than Walmart.

Their median wage is lower than other stores in a similar category. And to your point about why this is so significant, Dollar General has absolutely flourished. There's actually more dollar stores than there are like Walmart, Starbucks, and McDonald's combined. So this has become incredibly significant. Yeah. In the U.S., there's more dollar stores, which includes Dollar Tree and Family Dollar and Dollar General, than all Walmart, Starbucks, and McDonald's locations combined. Dollar General is the biggest of them all. They pay low wages. And apparently, if you vote to union is not just the tactics, but the fact that their previous misdeeds of closing that store are then used to make as an example to scare workers out of any

at the any of the other stores of doing the same thing. And so, you know, I will say these workers, even though the union effort failed, they felt like conditions did marginally improve for them at their store. They felt like they were being heard more. They felt like some of the concerns that they had brought up during the union drive were actually addressed. So that is a good thing. But the message that was sent here from that Missouri store and that was used, weaponized, to prevent this shop from also unionizing

is pretty chilling. So it's interesting when they're able to do a deep dive and just show you just how stacked the deck is and why it is so incredibly difficult and why ultimately, you know, union rates, even though union favorability is near historic highs, there's a lot of sentiment in favor of it. If you ask people, they're very supportive. But then you see such low union density rates. Well, that's why. It's because the laws and the playing field are so incredibly uneven. Absolutely right.

All right, guys. Thanks so much for watching. We'll have more for you later. So a dystopian scene was played out at a recent hockey game in the state of South Dakota. So at halftime, teachers were brought out to scramble for $5,000 in cash, not even for themselves, but to be able to fund supplies for their classrooms. This is what that looked like. Of course, there are a million things that are dystopian and disturbing about this. Many comparisons made to Squid Games.

Also, a lot of people brought up the fact that South Dakota has one of the lowest teacher salaries Next to last, yeah. in the entire country. So what kind of a society do we live in that we cashly throw trillions of dollars at the military-industrial complex without blinking an eye and teachers have to debase themselves

just to get the very basics of what they need for their classrooms. Yeah, I don't even know what to say. This is really gross, dystopian stuff. And it was organized by a mortgage local lending company and the Sioux Falls stampede of the hockey league. I mean, I think it went viral because it was such a stark image. For those people who are just listening, I mean, they were on their knees, helmets,

trying to stuff cash inside of their jerseys frantically just to raise a few hundred extra dollars. Between $300 and $600 each. Yeah, it wasn't even that much cash in order to try and pay for classroom improvements. So first of all, the state of South Dakota is supposed to handle that. But second, I mean, I just think that it's a really gross, I don't know, just write a check to the teachers or something.

Why are you making people compete and scramble over cash for this? There's some other extra images of them counting out the $1 bills in order to see how much that they were able to get for their, yeah, to get for their school. I don't even know what to say. You know, we just had Freddie DeBoer on Crystal Kyle and Friends. He wrote a book called The Cult of Smart that we interviewed him about actually when we were on Rising as well. And part of what he argues and makes really clear is teachers oftentimes shoulder the blame for, like, everything else that's failing in society. Totally. So it's such an—they're such easy scapegoats. If a school isn't doing well, if a community isn't doing well, if a kid isn't succeeding, well, you can just blame the teacher. And of course, we've seen over years the way that education funding has been stripped and stripped and stripped, such that you had massive teacher strike wave that predominantly

actually hit red states. It wasn't an accident because those are the states where the funding had been cut the most. So I think it went viral to your point because it is so emblematic of the sick priorities that we have as a country just like all these quote unquote heartwarming stories of like you know the kid who raises money for their classmates cancer treatment or whatever and it's like terrible why is just a thing why do you have to have a go fund me so that you can get basic medical care. This is a similar situation. It's like, why do you want to? Who would ever think it was a good idea to force teachers to have to scramble for cash on the ice as an entire stadium or what do they call it, arena,

of spectators looks on. Very disturbing. Very disturbing statement on where we are. It's just one of those things where you just watch that and you're like what the hell is happening here

I'm sure they were well-intentioned I'm sure it was well-intentioned that's the worst part the fact that anyone would think this was like you know a good idea

or the way to to go about things and again this wasn't even money like for themselves for them to be able to just have basic supplies

in their classrooms yeah that's right. Unbelievable. All right, guys. Thanks for watching. A lot more for you later. What up, y'all? This your main man Memphis Bleak right here.

Host of Rock Solid Podcast. June is Black Music Month. So what better way to celebrate than listening to my exclusive conversation with my bro, Ja Rule. The one thing that can't stop you or take away from you is knowledge. So whatever I went through while I was down in prison for two years, through that process, learn, learn from. Check out this exclusive episode with Ja Rule on Rock Solid. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Rock Solid, and listen now.

My name is Brendan Patrick Hughes, host of Divine Intervention. This is a story about radical nuns in combat boots and wild-haired priests trading blows with J. Edgar Hoover in a hell-bent effort to sabotage a war. J. Edgar Hoover was furious. He was out of his mind, and he wanted to bring the Catholic left to its knees. You can now binge all 10 episodes of Divine Intervention on the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts you experience dad guilt i hate it

she understands but she still be pissed she likes it happy father's day the show may be called good mom's bad choices but this show isn't just for moms we keep it real about relationships and everything in between and yes yes, men are more than welcome to listen in. I knew nothing about brunch. She was a terrible girlfriend, but she put me on to brunch. To hear this and more, open your free iHeart app, search Good Moms, Bad Choices, and listen now. This is an iHeart podcast.