Factually! with Adam Conover - The Great Resignation and the Rebirth of American Labor with Hamilton Nolan

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

As we head into the third year of the pandemic, US workers are organizing and unionizing like it’s the early days of the Industrial Revolution. But can they reverse decades of labor erosion in America? On the show to answer that question is labor reporter Hamilton Nolan, who joins Adam to talk about how the pandemic has changed the labor movement and what the future might hold. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's alright. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me on the show once again. Thank you to everybody who has supported me and the show on Patreon. If you want to join their ranks, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover for bonus podcast episodes, including my new interview with Emily Axford and a follow-up interview with Celeste Kidd and our live community book club. Celeste Kidd and our live community book club. This month and next month, we are reading Four Lost Cities by Annalie Newitz. And then Annalie themselves is joining us on the Patreon for a live discussion about it. It's going to be a blast. But let's get to today's episode. Today, we're talking about the labor movement. That's right. Workers banding together, fighting for a better reality and a better future and coming up with some sick slogans to write on

signs. Now look, workers have been pissed and unhappy with their working conditions from time immemorial. I mean, just as an example, building the pyramids, I think, really sucked. There were not a lot of breaks and workplace safety wasn't great. But honestly, the pyramids had nothing on the industrial revolution in which workers were subjected to endless backbreaking work to feed the machine of capitalism. Now, in the U.S., the response to that was the formation of the labor movement in the second half of the 19th century. And let me tell you something. It was not an easy fight. There were bombings, bloody battles, protests, strikes. In Homestead,

Pennsylvania, a strike by Carnegie steelworkers led to a literal battle between them and hired Pinkerton detectives. Detectives who were sent there to brutalize and kill the workers. Of course, he didn't need to be whacked on the head with a truncheon to die for the labor movement. Unsafe working conditions led to the deaths of 150 women in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in New York, an event that arguably jumpstarted the modern labor movement, but at the cost of all those women's lives. A coal miner strike in Ludlow, Colorado, led to the massacre of 13 women and children by an anti-strike militia. But through all of that, through all of that violence and resistance and death, working people kept fighting for their rights, for better wages,

for better working conditions, and for real power, power that they could use as a counterweight to the incredible power of the wealthy capitalist class. And guess what? They won it. In America, labor became a powerful political force that was able to exert real leverage to improve lives. And the results were incredible. It brought us things like the 40-hour work week, the five-day work week, basic safety regulations, and child labor laws. That's right.

Thank the labor movement for the fact that you weren't sewing together textiles at the age of eight. These victories transformed the workplace in this country from a death factory to a relatively boring place where workers could finish up after an eight-hour day, go home, and enjoy a baseball game with their kids. They had eight hours of work, eight hours of sleep,

and eight hours for what we will in the common labor slogan. But since the 60s, that power and those gains have eroded. The power that workers earned has been slowly retaken by the owners with the help of politicians of both parties. In the years after World War II, nearly a third of workers were in unions. But by 1983, that number was down to 20%. And in 2021, it was at 10%. In my lifetime, unionization in this country has literally fallen to half of what it once was. I mean, think about that. In my lifetime, the labor movement in this country has literally shrunken in half. And the result of that is that less unionization has led to shittier working conditions, decades of stagnating wages, and rising inequality. But there's a bright side. I swear I'm getting to

it. Despite these low rates of unionization in recent years, we've seen a resurgence of workers attempting to organize. The pandemic has given people reason to evaluate their working conditions. Workers suddenly realized that they were essential. And if they were essential, if the rest of us literally need them in order to survive, that gives them power, that gives them leverage that they can use to better their conditions. Despite the fact that the labor movement is still smaller than it has been in decades. Labor actions from workers at places like Kellogg's, John Deere, the New York Times' Wirecutter Vertical, and even Starbucks have had success and captured the public imagination.

And public support for unions is higher than it's been at any time since the 60s. So are these rumblings the birth of a new, energized, growing labor movement? Or are they a last gasp that's soon to roll out again on the tide? Well, to talk about all things labor, we have today on the show one of the foremost and frankly, one of my favorite labor journalists working in America today. His name is Hamilton Nolan. He's a reporter at In These Times Magazine, and I am so thrilled to have him on the show. Please welcome Hamilton Nolan. Hamilton, thank you so much for being on the show.

Thank you for having me. Excited to be here. Well, so I'm excited to have you because you're one of my favorite reporters and writers on labor in America. It's safe to say we've had a pretty crazy year in the labor world. What, I mean, what have you seen? What characterized 2021 for you as far as American workers go? Well, I mean, that's a pretty big question. I would say since I would say since the beginning of the pandemic, which was, you know, March of 2020. I mean, you could say 2021 was kind of a continuation of 2020 in a lot of ways, unfortunately, although we all hope that it wouldn't be. But I mean, since the beginning of the pandemic, one thing that happened was kind of the whole world turned into a labor story, which was kind of a moment for the 20 labor reporters in America who are out here working. That few. Yeah.

And basically, it was like there were basically two stories throughout the entire country. And one story was I've been laid off and I've lost my job in this pandemic and I'm in a crisis. And then the other story was, I've been forced to continue to work through this pandemic and I'm in a crisis because of that. So it was almost like virtually the whole country was facing one type of workplace crisis or another, except for that part of the country like us who can work from home. And it was such a two-tier, you know, it's just such a clarifying moment, I think, for so many working people in America. The pandemic has shown them how little this country

and the system of employment really cares about them. And I think that's one thing that's kind of driving what you did see in 2021, which was a big sort of upswell of activism and energy and radicalism in the labor movement. I also have to say, I think it woke up. I think it made the sort of two-tier system that we already had in America a lot more visible, because if you were as lucky as I was to be working from home delivery place. I'll get some delivery food. You can't help, but go, hold on a second. The people who brought me the food are still working out in public. They're still working around people and I don't have to, they're a lot more precarious. They're a lot more precariously employed than I am. Holy shit. I'm very, that at least was my experience. So there's a lot of

people who didn't, who didn't have that awakening, but I think it, that became a lot more visible to folks. Yeah. I mean, you know, hopefully some people on the lucky side of things had that awakening, like when, when we were working at home and getting delivery and stuff. But I think without question, millions of people on the unlucky side of that had the awakening, the people who were called essential workers and then turn around and were like, what am I getting out of this? You know, what did all the essential workers get out of being asked to risk their life and work through this pandemic for two years? And the vast majority of them are saying, I didn't get anything. I mean, very little,

you know, I wrote a, I wrote a story about grocery workers last year, just about the workers at one grocery store through the pandemic, you know, and you can multiply that across the whole country. And, you know, many grocery workers got quote unquote hero pay, which was like a dollar or $2 an hour raise for something like a few months. And then they got that clawed back. I mean, they ended that and the pandemic continued and they got nothing. So, you know, the people who were called essential workers and who we all leaned on to keep this country going, that's where I think you really seeing people waking up and saying, you know, we need a safety net. We need more than we got. Yeah. People saying, hold on a second. You're calling me an essential worker. That's why I have to be here. But where's my pay?

Where's my sick leave? Where's my mask? Like, where's my basic protections in a lot of cases? Yeah. I mean, people were, you know, and and I mean, to be fair, I guess, like, to some extent, the whole country was pulling this out of their ass as the pandemic hit. But, you know, it did really show, I mean, meatpacking workers who were dying, dying on the line to, you know, continue giving us chicken nuggets and teachers today. And, and I mean, everybody, delivery workers and, and paramedics and, and healthcare workers. I mean, all these people that we said to them as a society, you know, you all have to keep working. We didn't give them anything for the

most part. And, you know, I think that there is a light bulb going on with a lot of those people saying the only way that we're going to get something for any of this is if we organize, you know. Yeah. And it's crazy just to say the number of jobs that suddenly became very dangerous. I mean, meatpacking was always a dangerous occupation, but the death rates in meatpacking among even government employees, USDA inspectors were like dying at really high rates in getting sick and dying in meatpacking plants very early in the pandemic. I remember there was a point at which, you know, grocery stores here in Los Angeles started to become like epicenters of

infection about a year ago. It was wild. So let me ask, though, when you look at, let's take it back into 2020, was there an event, there have been so many, you know, strikes, protests, all of these, you know, mass mobilizations of workers or organizing. Was there one that made you say, okay, hold on a second, something is happening here? Man, it's a good question. You know, for me as a labor reporter and somebody who, you know, follows these things more or less full time, I mean, what I saw at the beginning of the pandemic was really many, many symbols of what happens when the labor movement is weak. You know, and grocery workers are a great example of that, because if you think back to the early days of the pandemic, when the shutdowns really started, the amount of leverage that grocery workers had at that moment in time was infinite.

You know, grocery workers could have asked for anything at that point and been like, we want five dollar an hour raise. And they would have given it to them because if they had started shutting down grocery stores, everybody would have panicked. And they didn't do that because fundamentally, you know, even though a lot of them do have unions, the labor movement itself is not well organized and strategic and powerful enough to put together demands like that and to execute them. So, you know, I saw for a lot of 2020, I really saw the weaknesses coming through. And then, you know, when you got into 2021 and you did start to see a lot more widespread, not just, you know, big strikes like the IATSE non-strike, but, you know, nurses went on strike, the mine workers in Alabama have been on strike and continue to be on strike.

That was a big one. You know, you started to see a lot of I think the ones that struck me the most were the bakery workers union and the strikers at Frito-Lay and at Kellogg's because those people who went on strike and stayed on strike and fought hard on strike. They didn't just strike for like a few days. I mean, they struck for weeks and weeks and weeks. And those are the very people whose jobs have kind of been tossed onto the fire over the last 30 years of America. I mean, neoliberalism targeted jobs just like that. You know, you're an American factory worker and you're a manufacturing worker. Like, yeah yeah you make a fucking cornflakes yeah yeah but they you know the fact that those people felt strong enough and empowered enough to go out and have those hard hard strikes um that really is a sign to me that that people are feeling more powerful than they have in the past and correct me if i wrong, those workers also like voted down contracts. And for the, for those who don't know the way it'll work is when you're on strike, the, the union then goes to the management and, you know, negotiates a contract and they bring it back to

the workers and they vote on whether or not they liked the contract. Am I right that the Kellogg workers voted down a contract or two? Yeah, absolutely. I mean the, that, you know, which, which goes to show the workers themselves were like more hardcore. I mean, the, that, you know, which, which goes to show the workers themselves were like more hardcore than the union functionaries. I mean, they were, yeah. And, you know, and there, and if people don't know, I mean, they're suffering, like it's hard to go on strike because you stop getting paid. So these are people who are not rich people in the first place who were out there suffering economically. And one of their biggest issues was saying, we don't want two tier contracts, meaning we don't want, you know, new people to get screwed to benefit the more senior people. And that's like the kind of solidarity you love to see in the labor movement. And they really went for it man yeah and that's i mean it's really impressive to have a a job that's pretty precarious like you said that gets shipped shipped to mexico

every day in america and to be on strike to be going without pay and you know your union negotiates a contract and i say do you want this or not and you say nah fuck this this isn't good enough we're gonna stay on strike that's like resolve and solidarity. That's what started to wake me up and say, okay, I feel like we're moving into something a little bit new here. Yeah. And, you know, the nurses, the St. Vincent nurses in Massachusetts who were on strike for months and months and months over, you know, the conditions that they worked under during the pandemic and the mine workers in Alabama, the members of the United Mine Workers at Warrior Met Coal who are still on strike, which is, I think, is the longest ongoing strike in America now, if I'm not mistaken.

Wow. Again, those are people who have hard, hard, dirty, dangerous jobs, who have traditionally been at the mercy of big companies and they are really, they're going for it. You know, there's a million reasons to give up on a strike, especially once it goes on for a while. I mean, people can be very gung-ho at the beginning of a strike and have all this energy and we're going to strike. But once it gets into weeks and weeks and months and months and the attention goes down and it gets cold and you're broke, you know, the people that continue those strikes for a long time, I mean, that really, really does say something. Yeah. Well, let's I want to talk a little bit

more about you said that early on you saw signs of the weakness of American labor. And tell me more about what you mean by that and why these kinds of strikes are kind of a departure or a surprise given that weakness. Yeah, I mean, you know, the big picture of unions in America and organized labor in America is like after World War II, unions in America were at their peak. There was a time in the 1950s when one out of every three workers in America was a union member. And unions really created what people think of as the American dream. I mean, the idea that you can have a one wage earning family that can live a middle class lifestyle and buy a house and send your kids to college. I mean, that is to a large extent, a result of really widespread unionization America that pushed up the wages for

everybody else. And, you know, so that was kind of the high point. And then starting in the seventies and particularly starting with Ronald Reagan and deregulation and neoliberalism, with Ronald Reagan and deregulation and neoliberalism, the decline of unions has been really sharp and steady since then. And today, we're at a point where it's about one in 10 workers in America are union members now, as compared to one in three. So, I mean, it's a 70-year long decline, but it's really a post-Regan era decline that kind of has been a big factor in the rise of inequality in America itself. I mean, the decline of unions and the rise of economic inequality are two sides of the same coin in America. And so, you know, when you think about the latent power of organized labor and

what it could be doing, and then you compare it to the reality of organized labor power in America today, it's a little depressing, you know, it's very easy to look at it and see the potential for what unions could do in America if we got our shit together. Yeah. Versus the kind of paltry reality of what unions are able to pull off, you know? Yeah. And, you know, you say a 70 year decline. I also know we had Stephen Greenhouse, another labor reporter on the show over a year ago. Now, we were mostly talking about the history of American unions. We talked about how it was like a 70 year fight to get to that point in World War Two, starting in like the late 19th century of strikes and battles and violence,

you know, like police attacking labor organizers and, you know, private security killing people and like fighting to get laws put in place to, to, you know, protect the rights of workers. And so it was like, oh, you know, over a half century to get to that point. And now we've been backsliding for nearly as long. That's the kind of scope of history that'll really depress you after a while and say, oh my God, the weight of history is like on our necks here. Yeah. And, you know, it's funny because in the United States of America, people don't learn labor history in school. I mean, you don't, you can graduate from high school and not really know anything about any of this labor history. But the reality is like

those battles, those labor battles in the first half of the 20th century. Those are the things, again, that set the stage for like the whole idea that you can have a middle class in America and that regular people can be empowered to live decent lives and have jobs that will provide middle class incomes. All that came from, as you said, really, really bloody, bloody, brutal labor battles in the first half of the century. You know, I remember I one time I did a story in West Virginia and I I went and did did some reporting on the mine wars, which were the you know, the the mine workers in West

Virginia in the early part of the 20th century had really rough labor battles with the mine owners who treated them as like indentured servants, basically. And there was one strike where the miners went on strike. And so they all lived in company towns. The mining company owned all their houses because they built the company town. So they evicted everybody from all their houses. They all had to go live down by the railroad tracks in tents. They were still on strike. They continued the strike. They all had to go live down by the railroad tracks and tents. We're still on strike. They continue the strike. They all moved into tents by the railroad tracks. And then the company would send trains down the tracks with guys with machine guns who would

shoot the tents by the side of the track. And so the miners would put all their cookware and cast iron pots along the side of their tent to catch the machine gun bullets, you know. And that's like the level of fight that people were willing to have to get a union. Yeah. In America. You know, so like when you think about that, you're like, we can do it. You know, if my grandpa if my grandpa literally was putting up like cast iron Kevlar on his tent in order to, in order to win this, I can like maybe, uh, you know, have a meeting with some coworkers to try to, to try to get organized. Uh, well tell me more about, you said that the workers at, at Kellogg's were like maybe ahead of their own union leadership. Um, and this

is something that like, I think a lot of people don't realize that like, you know, unions can be led by different kinds of leaders. They can have different kinds of makeup. You know, the union itself can be more or less positioned to go on a strike or really fight for its workers. You know, tell me more about that piece of it. Do you see that as a change? How have unions changed over that time? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and, you know, this is not to say that the college workers don't have good union leaders, but it's a pretty common phenomenon, actually. In the sense that, you know, in a union, you have all the union members who are the workers who are working in the place and doing the work, and they're the members of the union. who are working in the place and doing the work, and they're the members of the union. And then there's the kind of usually elected leaders of the union who are full-time union staffers who kind of lead the union. And the elected leaders of the union work for the members. I mean, that's what union democracy means. But in many cases, and this is, you know, for many, many decades,

this has happened in a lot of different fields. The people that lead the unions will become friendlier with the employers than the workers do. And they will be more moderate than the actual workers, you know. is sort of the term for union leadership that sees itself as there to kind of work as a partner with the employers more than it sees itself as like a radical opposition force to the employers. And so, you know, a good example of that is there was a big wave of teacher strikes in America several years ago. You remember when the West Virginia teachers went on strike and Arizona teachers went on strike and it was kind of this national teacher strike wave. Here in LA, we had one too.

Absolutely. Yeah. And many of those teacher strikes were illegal because in a lot of states, because teachers are public employees, they're not allowed to go on strike by law. And so, you had, you know, the union leadership being like, sorry, you can't strike. And then all the teachers were like, we don't care. We're going on strike. And they were like dragging the union leaders behind them. And so, that kind of phenomenon is what you see when like the conditions on the grounds get so bad that the actual workers are like, we got to do something. And the union leaders feel like they're in handcuffs a little bit.

Yeah. I mean, that's, is that an encouraging development for you when you see that? It, yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, it would be encouraging if union leadership was always ahead. It was always able to lead the charge. That's what you want.

Yeah, you want that. That's what you want. Yeah, it's not always going to be the case, you know. And on a national level, you know, if you look, if you pull back and kind of look at the really big picture of like all of the labor movement in America and you think about the AFL-CIO, which is the biggest, you know, coalition of labor unions in America. You want to see like leadership from the top, you know, you, what I want to see is like leadership from the top of the labor movement saying, we've had this 50 year decline and we are at a crisis point. You know, we are at a point where it's extremely important for the future of America to revive organized labor and to give all these millions of people that say they want unions the opportunity to be in unions. And we need to act with urgency. You know, it always reminds me of climate change in a sense where it's like you want to see the urgency.

You know, you want to see the recognition that this is a really important problem and we have to act with urgency. You know, you want to see the recognition that this is a really important problem and we have to act with urgency. And if we have to be radical, we got to be radical. And that's what you don't really see from the top of the labor movement so much, but you do see more and more from the grassroots. Yeah. And, you know, it's really this dichotomy between, you know, a worker powered union and a business oriented union, like you say, is like so visible to me. I'm a member of two unions. If I were both, you're a member of the Writers Guild East, right? I'm a member of the Writers Guild West. And so I'm a member of two unions. I know there's differences between unions. And what I'm wondering is, you know, if this uprising with these workers who are sending back the contracts, if this has a chance of pulling some of those business oriented unions in more of a democratic direction, you know, maybe some of those members say, all right, well, hey, now that I'm active, maybe I'll run for president or, you know, participate in the democracy a little bit more. Do you think we could see that?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, everything you said is true. I bet I can guess which union is which, but I won't do that right now. But, you know, it's true that like, I mean, yes, what you're saying is it's already happening, actually. I mean, the United Auto Workers, for example, just had a big referendum inside their union to make their voting process more democratic. The Teamsters just tossed out their leadership for kind of the same reason. You know, you're seeing these like old line unions that got very institutional are kind of getting shaken up by the grassroots, you know. And, you know, IATSE last year, IATSE built to a big strike threat last year. It would have been the biggest strike

of the year. I think it was 60,000 workers in IATSE. They held a strike authorization vote that was, I believe, close to 99% yes. So, 99% of the people said, yes, we are willing to go on strike, go in there. And then the union leadership went in there and brought back to the workers a contract, which I'm not an IATSE member. And so I don't have an opinion on whether it was a good contract or not, but the voting process and the way that IATSE does the votes, actually part of the union actually voted against the contracts and yet because they use this weird electoral college style ratification system they end up ratifying the contracts so you know as you as you also know as a union member like i mean it's the it's the blessing

and the curse i think unions are probably the only democratic, actual democratic institutions that a lot of people will ever be in in their life because there's not a lot of actual democracy in America. So it's great. And it's awesome to be in a democratic union and see that process. And at the same time, you can see what a pain in the ass democracy is. It's like the worst pain in the ass you will ever participate in. So many meetings. Just to talk about before we go to break, I want to talk about one more big organizing drive we've seen lately. The Starbucks workers organizing in Buffalo and starting to organize elsewhere around the country. It got a ton of news, first of all, because Starbucks is a big national brand that people, you know, interact with on a daily basis. So I understand why it would be in the news,

but it also struck people, I think is like, especially unlikely. And, you know, we ended up being national news. The fact that a Starbucks of what, like 15 employees or something like that ended up unionizing, that was like, you know, front page news. Why was that so such a big deal? Yeah, it's it's really interesting. I mean, it a Starbucks, a really great campaign. I mean, it's the union is called Workers United. They're very kind of democratic grassroots union. And they what they did was they they were like, okay, we want to unionize Starbucks. What should we do? Should we try to, you know, get a hundred Starbucks together and organize them at the same time? And maybe this campaign will take 10 years of organizing and

maybe it will succeed or fail. No, they were like, we're going to organize one store at a time and we're going to hold union elections at individual Starbucks stores, which makes a ton of sense. And so now they have in fact unionized multiple Starbucks stores and is spreading all over the country. Something that I really say a lot when I talk to union people is that a lot of organizing is just trying. It's just trying because there's nothing inherently special about these Starbucks workers. You know, I was a reporter at a website called Gawker and Gawker unionized in 2015 and we were the first kind of online media, big online media company to unionize. And it got a lot of attention because of that. And after we unionized, everybody would come to

us and be like, what were all the factors and the strategic factors that enabled you to be the place that unionized? And like, the truth was, a union organizer came and knocked on our door and was like, we're here to organize. And we did it. And so a lot of it is like, we need organizers everywhere knocking on everybody's door, asking them to organize. And you're going to see things like the Starbucks campaign multiplied by a thousand if we can just be in enough people's faces. by a thousand if we can just be in enough people's faces. Yeah. I mean, the cool thing about organizing is like, it's hard. It takes a long time, but there's no like big secret to it. Like you're, if you're listening, you can, you know, take, take steps to organize your workplace. You know, you can do that as a worker. You can, or if an organizer comes to you, you know, they

can help you out with it, but it's just something that like we need to put the time and effort into to do it, which is very cool. But it also means there's no like magic bullet to make it happen all at once. we need a ton more resources from the labor movement invested in organizing. I mean, the labor movement will talk about, we want to have a revival and stuff, and we want to turn around this decline of union membership. But the reality of that is we need thousands and thousands of labor organizers in this country to be out there everywhere to enable people to unionize their workplaces because nobody can spontaneously unionize their workplace. The process is, I don't want to say nobody, but it's a process that requires a little guidance. Yeah. That guidance comes from unions and from union organizers. And what you don't see from the top of the labor movement is any plan to create the situation where everybody could have access to a union organizer. I mean, people email me all

the time, constantly asking me just like, hey, I work at, you know, a Best Buy in Colorado, and I want to unionize, what do I do? And I try to like, I try to find them people to talk to and I try to find them organizers and it's not easy. It's hard. And I'm a labor reporter. So for the average person, there are millions and millions of people in America who would unionize if they had the opportunity and we have to build that infrastructure for them. Yeah. Well, that's a great note to take us to break. I want to talk right after we get back about some of the national changes we've seen, especially with the new presidential administration in and where that makes a difference. But we've got to take a quick break. We'll be right back with more Hamilton Nolan.

I don't know anything Okay, we're back with Hamilton Nolan. We've been talking about what the labor movement needs to do to have a resurgence in America. One thing I'm curious about is how the new presidential administration changes things, if at all, because like you said, since Reagan, we've had a very hostile government towards labor organizing. I mean, Reagan especially, but even through Clinton

and Obama, it wasn't a lot of lip service given to unions and not a lot of actual support. Very famously in the case of the Obama administration making a lot of pledges to the labor movement and when they got in, not actually implementing them. I have to say, when the Biden administration came in, it did seem like there might be a difference. You know, we had Marty Walsh, who seemed like a like a very labor, you know, came out of the labor movement as a secretary of labor. And then Biden actually made a statement in support of the workers at Bessemer who were trying to organize with Amazon, which is a whole other story that we could talk about what happened with that story. But, you know, there seemed to be a lot of energy. And I'm wondering if, you know, you feel that that has made a difference, if we've seen any new policy come out of the Labor Department or the National Labor Relations Board, or if we're still in the same spot we were 10 years ago?

Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely true that Biden is for sure the most pro-union president, you know, of either of our lifetimes, I think. As you said, it's also totally true that the dynamic, you know, ever since Reagan, at least, has been Republicans basically want to eradicate unions off the face of the earth. Democrats are like, we don't want to eradicate you off the face of the earth, but we're not going to do anything for you. We like your money, but that's it. Give us money and we won't murder you like the other guys. And that's basically it. Give us money and we won't murder you like the other guys. And that's basically it.

So, you know, Biden, to his credit, does seem to be genuinely interested in taking like affirmative steps to help unions. And the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB in particular, I think there's been a lot of really good changes there. Jennifer Abruzzo, who's the top lawyer at the NLRB, is a union person who really has very strong set of plans that she is very busy implementing to make labor regulations better. So she's like a bright spot. Marty Walsh is not the most inspiring guy I've ever seen in my life.

But, you know, he's certainly union friendly. I mean, the in terms of legislative stuff, there's a big bill called the Pro Act, which was basically the bill that has everything the unions want in it. It would revolutionize America's horrible anti-worker labor laws. And the PRO Act, like many other good things in the Biden administration, can't pass because of the existence of the filibuster. And it will not pass, you know. And so the labor movement spent a lot of time kind of putting all its eggs in the basket of like, we need to pass the pro acts and okay. You gave it a shot, but as long as the filibuster exists, the pro act will not pass. This is like a bill that like Joe mansion supports this bill. He likes the bill, but he still won't overturn the filibuster to get it passed. Um, and it's like, it's all done. The bill's all written up. It's got a name. Everybody knows what's in it. It could get passed except for this one thing.

Yeah. It's, it's tantalizingly close. Yeah. I mean, if anybody is like on the fence about the filibuster, like at this point, basically wanting to preserve the filibuster is the same thing as being against every good part of the democratic agenda like that's the reality yeah and you know some parts of the pro-act got into the build back better bill which now also may or may not be dead um so it you know it it's a very strong possibility that we will get through the entire biden administration and none of those laws uh will have actually passed and all we will get through the entire Biden administration and none of those laws will have actually passed. And all we will have is a lot of goodwill from Joe Biden and some good stuff from the NLRB and not much else. Yeah. Well, talking about the NLRB, I mean, the big news out of Bessemer was that, you know, there's hugely publicized union election at the Amazon warehouse

or I guess distribution facility there. That was like a really hard fought battle. I feel like I was seeing like videos from that organization, more perfect union on my timeline every single day about like, here's what the workers are saying, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. They ended up losing, but the NLRB just recently ruled against Amazon that Amazon had basically tampered with the election and that they have to rerun it, which is like, that's a significant victory. And that is something that only wouldn't have happened if there had not been a regime change at the White House, right?

Yeah, that's true. And I mean, for, you know, the NLRB, for people that don't know, is basically a regulatory board that, you know, its job is to administer union elections and make sure stuff is fair and enforce labor law, you know, in America. And under every Republican president, Republicans immediately appoint people to the NLRB who hate unions. So the NLRB becomes like almost an anti-union organization. And then under democratic presidents, they'll appoint pro-union people. So it'll like serve its purpose again. So yeah, I mean, the Amazon thing was good. They're still going to

have a really hard time winning that election just because of how hard it is to organize a warehouse that has 150% turnover every year. And, you know, it's hard to build a long-term union campaign when everybody's leaving. And Amazon is spending infinity amount of money on anti-union consultants to tell everybody all the scary, horrible things that are going to happen, you know. so it's uphill battle. But in the long run, Amazon has to get unionized because they are the company that's doing the most to change work in America, unfortunately. And if we don't unionize, Amazon is going to have so many horrible trickle down effects on the American workplace that I don't even want to think about it. Yeah. And the really frightening thing is the way that these companies now sort of purposefully arrange their businesses in order to reduce worker power and reduce the chance to

organize. So like you said, Amazon, they have a factory with 150% turnover or a warehouse. So they had an election, what year ago now and now uh you know a year and a half later if they have the same election again it's entirely new people like it's a brand those people who were there before saying yeah we got to vote yes all those people are gone and there's new people in which is crazy or if you look at i mean uber and lyft and and sort of gig companies are specifically structured around making sure that workers have the least amount of work, have the least amount of power possible. Workers for those companies can't even talk to each other. They don't even know who else is driving for Uber unless they

go on some message board that like 0.01% of Uber drivers go on. And so those are the, you know, if we allow those practices to sort of calcify and become par for the course. It's like, they'll, they'll be with us for a long, long time. The battle really is right now. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean the, you know, what's called the gig economy, which is a very friendly name for something that's really an incredibly pernicious practice, which is basically the destruction of full-time employment in America. And I mean, so people

who I know, like everybody doesn't follow labor issues that closely necessarily, but I mean, people should really be conscious of the fact that all of these companies out here that call themselves gig companies and gig work, and we provide flexibility for your side hustle and blah, blah, blah. Like the underlying idea of all of those companies is that in the past, you know, if you wanted to run a taxi company, you had to hire taxi drivers and you're a taxi driver. And the idea of Uber is we'll be a taxi company with no employees. And if the company doesn't have any employees, they don't have to follow a whole set of labor laws that apply to employees.

Gig workers are legally prohibited from unionizing. You cannot unionize in America by law if you are not a full-time employee. So their workforce cannot unionize. They don't get benefits. They don't get workplace protections. And all the money can flow then to the investors and management. So, I mean, the whole existence of the gig economy is anti-labor, anti-worker, and the underlying idea is to destroy whatever social safety net has been built in America over the past century in connection to being an employee of a company. Yep. And that's what led to the passage of AB5 here in California and Proposition 22 that we have done multiple episodes about on this show. Folks want to go back and listen to the archive. We don't need to get into it too deeply, but obviously it really is a really present issue

here. Okay. So, but there are so many like labor issues in the news that I want to talk about. I want to make sure we get to, before we run out of time, we have to talk about what's going on in education right now with teachers who are saying, okay, hold on a second. You know, we don't want to necessarily go back to school if the schools are full of COVID that's been a huge uprising over the last couple of days. What does that look like from your perspective? Yeah, I mean, from my perspective, it looks like a workplace safety issue.

And I think that people should understand that the main reason why teachers unions are such villains among right-wing politicians and the right wing media, you know, teachers unions, teachers unions, you hear more about teachers unions as sort of this villainous class than many other kinds of unions. And a basic reason for that is that a lot of teachers are unionized. I mean, they have strong union density, which means that they can actually wield power in ways that a lot of other workers cannot. So, you know, I mean, teachers, unions are being villainized for saying, we don't want to get COVID. And we don't want your kids to get COVID. You know, that's essentially what this comes down to. And it's like, oh my gosh,

these horrible people shutting down the city. I mean, there are massive governmental failures that have gone along with this pandemic. The government has not successfully pulled off a public health campaign. It hasn't spent the money necessary to make it safe to run schools in America. And instead of doing that, they villainized teachers unions. And so I really salute, you know, the teachers unions like in Chicago,

which is an incredibly strong and really well-organized democratic union that has been able to get results, you know, and to say we're not going to just go in and give everybody COVID because the government has failed to do what is necessary to make it safe to go to school. You know, so I hope people are applauding these teachers and not villainizing them. Yeah, so do I. I mean, you know, we've been villainizing teachers unions for so long. I even remember up until like a couple of years ago, you know, there was talk about there was, you know, that movie waiting for Superman. There was, you know, I remember listening to a This American Life piece about like the rubber room in like New York where they would like send teachers who couldn't be fired, but they didn't

want to have in classrooms anymore. And it was sort of depicted as like, oh, it's kind of this weird thing that wastes money that they have to because of the teachers union. There's just a lot of like ambient, you know, negative media about teachers unions. And then teachers unions started like really using their power in a different way where they started uh you know hitting the streets going on strike and telling everybody we're doing this to build a better education system for your kids uh like for not just for us because we need more pay but we need smaller class sizes we need you know better classrooms all these sorts of things and that's made a huge difference in like people's opinions of

teachers unions in Chicago here in Los Angeles, when the teachers union went on strike, they had the support of the whole city. And that's why it was a short strike. And they got most of what they wanted was people were driving by the strike lines, honking their horn saying, you know, where we stand with you. And it was a, it was a big moment. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Chicago and LA that you named two of the strongest teachers unions in America and the most progressive teachers unions. And they did. You know, the Chicago teachers went on strike a few years ago. And it was for exactly what you said.

I mean, they weren't going on strike to all make six-figure salaries and get 100 days of vacation. They were going on strike for smaller class sizes, you know, a nurse in school, things like that. Basic things that have been eroded by the right-wing attack on public education. You know, these are, it's such a good example of how It's such a good example of how organized labor can take on a big, electoral political system breaks down and has failed to address them for many, many years. You know, you see the direct power of organized labor to actually get results in ways that telling people to go vote, go vote, go vote. You know, people vote and it doesn't change. So unions and labor can get results from direct power. And that's the kind of thing that I hope people look at those things and get excited about the idea that all of us have a million problems in our mind that we would like to see fixed.

And also frustration with all these politicians who don't fix them. How do you do it? Unionize and you can you can wield that power directly. Dan, that would have been an amazing note to end on, but I want to talk to you for another like 10 minutes at least. So we'll we'll have to get to those inspiring heights again in about like 10, 15 minutes. But I want to ask you about a recent piece of yours that I read that really blew my mind about the conditions faced by returning to supermarket workers at Kroger Supermarkets, which is a conglomerate that owns a bunch of different supermarkets all across the country. It's the biggest grocery chain in the country, right? And their workers are like facing astonishing conditions. Can you tell me about that? Yeah, this was a study of retail workers done in modern times and thousands and thousands of

responses from Kroger workers, which as you said, Kroger, next to Walmart, Kroger is the biggest grocery chain in America. And they found, you know, some things that they found were 14% of these workers said that they had experienced homelessness in the past year. Wow. And these are people who are employed. These are current employees at Kroger, one of the biggest companies in America. A huge percentage of them said they didn't have enough money to buy food and feed their family. So even though they work at a grocery store, the company gives them, I think, a 10% discount on store brands. You know, you had these workers who cannot buy food, cannot pay their bills, and in many cases,

experience homelessness. And it was such a clarifying look at, you know, what we accept for, for a huge number of retail workers in America. I mean, this whole country runs on a workforce of people that are not the, you know, stereotypical welfare queen, too lazy to work, blah, blah. We're talking about people who bust their ass and work hard, super hard and cannot pay the bills. And this I think it was it was a taste of a much, much larger problem. Yeah. I mean, 15 percent of their workers experienced homelessness in the last year. percent of their workers experienced homelessness in the last year like were homeless at some point at the very least sleeping in their car while working full-time at Kroger potentially full-time I mean that's unbelievable to me but it's it's sadly believable but it's it you know it's one

of those numbers that really does not lose its ability to shock. Yeah. And, you know, it's like who's I mean, as a society, who who is responsible for this? Whose problem is this? I mean, is it Kroger's problem? Because in that case, Kroger needs to give ten dollar an hour raises to their whole workforce. Is it the government's problem? If it's the government's problem, we need a huge expansion of the social safety net to prevent these things from happening. But, you know, I think the real answer to what America, the American power structure thinks is that it's their problem. You know, it's your problem. If you work 38 hours a week for Kroger and sleep in your car, we don't care. And that's the reality of the way that America you're reporting covered that kroger knew this about like about his workers that there's like a fucking powerpoint that they presented the executives hey just so you know a whole bunch of our workers are basically homeless need government's assistance

of food stamps to survive and uh you know that's that's like actually bad for business it's like not great and they just kept doing it anyway it's like shocking um and yeah yeah i mean this this study was commissioned by by uh union correct so hopefully i don't know they'll be able to to do something about this and i mean unfortunate what what's kind of sad about it is that all the people who were surveyed are union members also Also, all of these workers are members of the UFCW, the union that has a lot of the Kroger workers. And so these numbers are probably better than what you would see at a lot of other grocery stores that don't have unions. It points to the need to anybody who thinks things are too radical. need to, anybody who thinks things are too radical, I mean, it clearly, we need to be more radical because this is, this is the situation that we're dealing with today.

Well, and things are getting more radical. We've talked about all these different uprisings, strikes, near strikes, new people organizing. There's like a huge, it feels like a wave is happening. And I'm curious what you think about the prospects for that wave, because, you know, often when you're in the middle of it, you don't see the backlash that's coming. You don't see the ebb. You don't see how things are changing. And so since so much of this is powered by the pandemic, my worry is that, you know, two years from now when, you know, God willing, the pandemic is much less at the forefront of our minds and hurting and killing a lot less people that, you know, we may start to see the pendulum swing in the other direction too soon.

And yeah, I'm curious what you think about the future. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what we can say for sure is that we are currently living in a moment where the majority of American workers say that they would like to have a union if they could, that people are pissed, that people are going on strikes, that organized labor is visible in the, I think, in the public mind and in the media in a way that it hasn't been for decades. There's a ton of, there's more energy behind organized labor and enthusiasm. All the ingredients are in place to really have a resurgence of organized labor. And the question to me is, is the labor movement itself capable of harnessing that energy? I mean, when we talk about reviving the labor movement and bringing

back unions, we need to unionize tens of millions of people. I mean, conservatively, we should be unionizing millions of people a year to see the trend going in the right direction. We don't see the resources or the infrastructure or the plan from the union side that would make that possible. 2022 is going to be a year where we see if the labor movement itself is capable of rising to this challenge, or as you said, moments pass. Moments always pass, and the pendulum always swings. And so we're either going to grab the opportunity, or it's going to be a tragedy. opportunity or it's going to be a tragedy. And I'm writing a book about it this year. So buy that book in a couple of years. We'll find out. Incredible. What's the book going to be called? The book is called Year of the Hammer.

That's a badass title, dude. Thank you. So so look, that's what that's you know, we've talked a lot about what the union leadership needs to do in order to help, you know, create this wave and help help create this resurgence. But for folks listening who are like, well, hold on a second. I want to be a part of this and I'm not in the union right now. You know, that that person who's maybe thinking about, you know, DMing you on Twitter and saying, hey, Hamilton, where do how do I organize my workplace? What do I do? What do you tell those people?

Why don't you hit some of those answers right now and let us know what's step one, two, and three? Yeah, I mean, the short version is that if you are interested in organizing your workplace, talk to a few people at work that you trust that are not gonna run their mouth a lot. Try to see if you can get a small amount of interest together. People are interested in organizing. Talk to people about why you're interested in organizing. Talk to people about why you think this is necessary, why you think this could help you out at work.

Get a little bit of interest going and then get in touch with a union organizer and get yourself and maybe a few people that you work with in touch with a union organizer and start talking about the actual process of organizing your workplace. You can also just look up unions in your area, ask people you know that are in unions if they can refer you to somebody, or you can always DM me on Twitter if you find anything else to do, but somebody we're going to find you and organize or talk to one way or the other. Incredible. Hamilton, man, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show. Where can people find your reporting on labor? I assume they can follow you on twitter but where can they find your your work yeah i'm a labor reporter for in these times magazine in these times.com a great uh lefty politics and

labor magazine that i hope people will subscribe to and uh i'm at hamilton nolan on twitter and uh gonna be writing that book so check that out a couple years down the road hell yeah thank you so much for coming on man it. It's been great having you. Thanks. I really appreciate it. Good Writers Guild member, Adam Conover. That's all I want to hear. Thanks so much. Well, thank you once again to Hamilton Nolan for coming on the show. I hope you loved that conversation as much as I did. And that is it for me this week on Factually.

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