Factually! with Adam Conover - Unionizing the Skies with Sara Nelson

Episode Date: August 9, 2023

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Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me once again as I talk to an incredible expert about all the amazing things that they know that I don't know and that you might not know. I am so excited for this week's episode because if you haven't noticed, it is hot labor summer. Workers are fired up and not just because the bosses at Universal Studios cut down the trees shading our picket lines. Workers in unions across the country are getting loud and taking action. 340,000 UPS workers flexed their muscles with the Teamsters union to win a new tentative contract. And this follows high-profile efforts by Starbucks workers to organize stores across the country and Amazon workers to

organize those big oppressive warehouses. And the best part is that as opposed to a couple decades ago when workers would be castigated in the press and basically spit on in the street for exercising their labor rights, there is now greater public support for unions in this country than at any time in decades. On our picket line, we spend all day, every day getting honked at by supportive members of the public. And I can tell you that it is deafening and beautiful. And let me just say that one of my favorite parts about this labor uprising is getting to meet other workers in other unions who visit our picket line and gaining an appreciation, not just for the work that they do, but how our fights are all the same. Whether you're a teacher, a truck driver, an actor, or a barista,

all you want is to be able to make a living and support your family in the face of massive corporate power trying to push down your wages and working conditions. And that means if you stand up for your fellow worker, you make the boulder easier to lift for all of us. There's a word for this common cause and support, solidarity. But you don't have to go to the picket line to find that solidarity. You can see it in everyday life. For instance, one of the occupations I am most amazed by is our nation's flight attendants. Not only are they highly disciplined members of the flight crew who keep a metal tube full

of hundreds of idiots safe at 100,000 feet, they're also some of the staunchest, strongest, most inspiring union members in America. On my old show, Adam Ruins Everything, and in a past episode of this podcast with the journalist Nell McShane-Wolfehart, we covered how the first flight attendants to unionize transformed not just air traffic, but the entire labor movement for the better. Well, today on the show, we're continuing that story and telling the story of this revolutionary moment in American labor with an absolutely incredible guest. She started her career as a flight attendant, but she's now the president of their largest union and is without question one of the most significant labor leaders in America today. Her name is Sarah Nelson. She's the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, and I am beyond thrilled to have her on the show. But before we get to the interview, I just want to remind you that if you want to support the show,

you can do so on Patreon. Just five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show ad-free. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. We'd love to see you there. And if you like stand-up comedy, please come see me on tour. I'm doing shows all across the country. Head to Adam Conover dot net for tickets and tour dates. And now let's get to my interview with the incredible Sarah Nelson. Sarah, thank you so much for being on the show. Oh, my God, I'm so excited. I'm incredibly thrilled to have you. You're coming to our picket line for the Writers Guild tomorrow. You're literally wearing Writers Guild merch before you even got there. I had to because tomorrow I'm going to be in my union's T-shirt to make it very clear

the flight attendants are out there with you. Well, the show of solidarity is incredibly appreciated. And I was really thrilled because you DM'd me just so you're saying I'm coming through Los Angeles because I want to join the picket line. Why, as the leader of a flight attendant union, would you make such a point to come to, you know, a very different industry, right? I mean, people in Hollywood fly in planes a lot, sure. But, you know, it's a different industry. Why come and show support?

Well, look, I have been a union flight attendant for 27 years. And for the last 25 years, very involved in our union. And after 9-11, we went through all these bankruptcies in the airline industry. And we you know, I got a front row seat to how this country really works and how capitalism works. And it's been about squeezing workers every single day for the last 40 years, essentially since Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers and told corporations it was open season on unions. And so it's been about squeezing all of us. Right. And you may call it different things in different industries, but, you know, basically we don't have control of our time. We don't have access to the benefits that we need. They want to move the cost of health care to us. They want to steal our labor.

They want to make us work harder for less. It's the same thing everywhere. And so if we're not coming out for each other and understanding this is a working class fight across the board, then I'm not going to be able to do the things that flight attendants want me to do. I mean, we just spent since we organized in 1945, it took until right around the time that I was a flight attendant that we had finally beat through a lot of the discrimination. But even during my career that kept us on the ground or grounded, if you got married or pregnant or if you became over the age of 32.

And you had to step on a weight scale until 1993. I still had to wear two inch heels when I started this work. I had to go to a day of learning how to wear makeup and the boys got the day off and the boys were only there because the union fought for the boys to have the right to have the job as a flight attendant too. If I may say so myself, we fought for equal rights for have the right to have the job as a flight attendant too if i if i may say so myself we yeah we fought for equal rights for men on the job um and uh so i mean what what just what a strange world to be and that was not so long ago yeah not so long ago and then you know our world was turned upside down with 9-11 and and the and what we didn't realize is that I was Boston-based. And so I lost my friends on Flight 175 that crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. And it's the flight you

can imagine because you've seen it from every angle because it was the second flight to hit after the American Airlines Flight 11. It hit 17 minutes earlier. So I know the exact minute that my friends died and that changed everything. And so while we're mourning the loss of our friends and then the immediate furloughs that came and the absolute crisis that ensued, from that moment, there were crisis capitalists who were planning how to reset the terms for a flight attendant career, for a pilot career, For a flight attendant career, for a pilot career, for a mechanic career. And so I learned, you know, in a very hard way which side we're on and that in a structure that is capitalism. And I'm not saying that I'm opposed to capitalism, but unchecked capitalism is really bad. And the only countervailing force is organized labor and the destruction of labor over the last 40 years, especially down to just 66 percent in the private sector means that we're seeing massive inequality. And now we're seeing, you know, going back to what we won 100 years ago, you know, kids don't have to go to work in factories and poultry plants and uh you know lose their lives and lose

their limbs and um and the eight hour day you know that's an applause line for for uh politicians to say this is labor brought you the weekend and brought you the eight hour day well who the hell has their weekends anymore who the hell has an eight hour day we're fighting them for the same things we're answering emails at 9 p.m yeah so so that's a long way of saying adam i'm getting out on the picket line with you because united Airlines needs to see me on the picket line with you. Alaska Airlines needs to see me on the picket line with you. American Airlines. And frankly, every other corporate pig out there needs to see me on the picket line with you.

Oh, my God. We are like five minutes in this interview and I am jazzed right now. I have such high energy. I mean, I was so grateful for you coming out. And I think that, look, so many workers have joined us on our picket line and it's been powerful to meet them and hear their stories. You know, folks from our industry who are trying to unionize, we, you know, we have non-union music supervisors, production workers, people like that who are coming out in their

t-shirt saying we're trying to win union recognition. And that's meaningful because now every single writer they talk to knows about their struggle and will fight for them as well. In addition to them gaining that visibility, it's like, you know, if we if we join each other's struggles, it really does sort of exponentially grow the movement. But I want to find out how you got involved in the layer movement in the beginning. Was it that 9-11 moment or how did you go from being a rank and file flight attendant to doing what you do now? Well, oftentimes the companies are the best organizers. So when I started out, it was actually exactly 27 years ago and I had just finished school. ago. And I had just finished school. I had studied, become a high school English teacher. And I was looking at teaching in inner city St. Louis, actually, and working four jobs at the time. So I finished my teaching degree in the middle of the year and it was substitute teaching,

working in a home store so that I could get a discount for a few things in my apartment that I was trying to pull together. And I was also working in a temp job for an insurance company and filing these files of people who had put claims in, denied, denied, denied, and they had to keep appealing. And I would see it literally. I would file them and then the name would come through again and I would file it again, denied. And then finally it would be approved. But they were making these people who were getting cancer treatments, having to go through all this and then also waiting tables. And actually, I waited tables because I had it in my head a first year teacher on on very low pay and no support for the kids in the classroom. You know, I was going to spend my own money to do that. And I was I was just I was already I was 23 and already dead tired. And my girlfriend had become a flight attendant at the end on a fluke at the

end of our college career. And she had done house sitting for someone who was a United Airlines family and they were taking their their kids on a worldwide tour as airline employees. And they said, hey, you know, I was hiring. You should go interview. Anyway, she calls me on this terrible, awful, cold day in February and says, I have my feet in the sand in Miami Beach. I'm on a leave or United's paying for me to be here. And, you know, it was rousing me. And then and then she said, but actually, Sarah, this is no joke. And and she described the pay and the flexibility and health care and the pension. She talked about the pension where you could retire at age 50 and at 23 being dead tired. I'm

like, I'm getting in my car tomorrow. She was telling you about the union benefits. She was telling me she didn't put it in those terms, but she was describing the union contract. Yeah. And so that's what made me jump in my car, drive from St. Louis to Chicago the next day, interview with United Airlines. And then, you know, it wasn't too long before I was in training and they sent me to Boston to go work. And I got an apartment in Boston's an incredibly expensive city to live in, much like L.A. and New York and Chicago. And so there were seven of us in this little apartment, two subway stops. We call the T in Boston from from the airport.

And we so we were working about two or three weeks and everybody got their paycheck. And I was so excited. I called up and I had $12 in my bank account because we didn't get paid for training. So, and I used, I used a loan that I got from the new credit union that I signed up for to get my apartment and everything. So rent was going to be due in a couple of weeks and I needed to eat and $12 there. So went into the airline office and I said, somebody's got to help me. I didn't get my first paycheck. And they said, oh, you get your first paycheck at different times for different reasons. We're sure you get it next time. I'm like, okay. I mean, in my head, I'm screaming, but I remember them telling me in training, you know, you're on probation. You

got to watch your P's and Q's. If you got a hair out of line, you may get fired. And so I said, okay. And tried to make it through the next couple of weeks, prayed for assignments. Cause when you're new, you sit by the phone and wait to get an assignment. You're filling in for either a misconnect or somebody who called in sick or something. And so that I could eat plain food. A couple of times I might've had a few dates. I worked first class. I was 23, you know. But you were excited to eat plain food because you could get a square meal. Yeah. I mean, it was better than the top ramen at the apartment, you know, which at the time

I could get for a dime, a package of top ramen. So I stretched those $12 as much as I could. But I got to that last day before the next paycheck was going to drop. And in Boston, you want to talk about worker solidarity. When we came in, we would fly a flight home to Boston. And a lot of times we'd be working with another crew from out of town. And so they'd go to the hotel and the hotel van drivers would take them to the hotel and then they would take the local people home to our homes. How cool is that? Anyway, so it was customary to give the van driver a dollar for taking your bag off the van. And he drops me off. I'm the last person that's getting dropped off. And I reach in my pocket and all I have is a quarter. And I'm like,

I'm so sorry. All I have is a quarter. And he doesn't believe me at all he's like whatever I'm mortified and I go into the apartment nobody none of my other roommates were there there's nothing in the cupboards so the next morning while I was waiting for the paycheck to drop because this is you know 20 27 years ago it didn't happen at midnight um I jump seated we call it uh taking the the flight attendant jump seat to chicago and back so i could eat some more plane food and when i wait you took a flight to chicago and back just so you could eat the plane food oh yeah i mean also like on a friday night later on like we'd we'd take a flight to la so we could have dinner and a movie you know oh my god this is what an incredible i mean this is a story of hardship but also also like 20 times, but that's pretty, that's pretty fucking cool. But anyway, so I actually had a date flight by where we did on the, anyway, I mean like,

you know, sometimes as a comedian, I go to a place, I can get like a free, I don't know, get a free soda at the comedy club or whatever. You're like, I'll just hop, just pop by the airport and like get on the plane and like get some free like mashed potatoes and pot roast. And then like I head back and have a have a whiskey or two or something. Incredible. Exactly. Wow. So anyway, so I get back to Boston by about noon and check my bank account. And I'm like, OK, what's it going to be? And it's zero. The big goose egg. So I'm right there. I go right down into the office and I, you know, same thing. So I didn't get my first paycheck. And and the person behind the desk says, oh, yeah, well, you get first paycheck different times for different reasons.

I mean, the same rigmarole. And all of a sudden, Adam, I grew up in a small town in Oregon. And, you know, if you had a problem, you could go to the source and get it fixed, especially if you're a strong-willed woman with a strong sense of justice, right? But it was the first time in my life that I learned what it was like to be a number in an HR file that they don't give a shit about, you know? And so I was feeling pretty desperate and the tears started to roll and I got a little more excited than someone on probation probably should. And all of a sudden I had this tap on the shoulder and I turned around and there's someone standing there who looks a lot like me, but I'd never seen her before. But she's wearing the same uniform, and I remember her union pin shining above her wings. Wow.

And she's holding her checkbook and asking me how to spell my name. She hands me a check for $800, and she says, number one, you go take care of yourself. And number two, you call our union. And I still get choked up about this, because that was really everything I needed to know about being in the union. Yeah. Because we, as union members, understand each other,

care about each other, and through our union, we can be organized about that and get the most out of it. And I did get my paycheck the next day when I called the union. And then they called me back the week later and said, hey, do you want to get involved? And I was like, sure, I'll do the new hire presentations. This shouldn't happen to anybody else. And I had no idea.

People said no. And I was so honored they asked me. And then we negotiated a contract about a year later that I thought stunk. And so I became a real union dissonant. I see this happen to people all the time in our union where they get involved, they get all excited about it. And then there's something they disagree with and like, hold on a second. I think I need to run because I'm a little bit annoyed about this. I think there's something that needs to get done here.

Yes. Yeah. And you know what? It's so awesome. At the time, I was just like, this has to change. But, you know, with a little perspective, you see, wow, if I didn't have a union there, I wouldn't have the right to gripe. I wouldn't have the right to change things. And actually take that answer from that from that bureaucrat who told, you know.

Yeah, right. Yeah. right to change things and actually take that answer from that from that bureaucrat who told you no yeah right yeah and and actually it was it was all these women who came before me who were like hell no we're not gonna accept this we're not gonna accept that we have to leave we're not gonna accept that you're gonna try to ask us to trade sex for schedules we're not gonna accept any of this bullshit and and so um you know they created this incredibly democratic union and put it in my hands and here i was like i think of myself as a little chihuahua like you know barking at it and um uh the the amazing thing was that it was this strong group of women who who formed our

union and and fought through all those discriminatory practices but think about it like they didn't get married. They didn't have kids for the most part. They didn't do any of those. They did everything. And the people then who were able to have careers trusted them. And the only flaw in the plan was that nobody thought that at some time they were going to retire or die. And so there was this gap in mentoring new people.

And here I was. You were the new generation. And by the way, we covered on an episode we did of Adam Ruins, everything called Adam Ruins Flying. We covered that unionization campaign. We spoke with some of the women who led that campaign. It's one of the most inspiring stories in American labor and activism. And so that must have been incredibly cool to get to, you know, take on that torch and to say, hold on a second, you guys need a little bit of new blood. Let me, let me continue this. And then to get mentored by them. So, you know, after I finished yelling, you know, and got in there and then to, to have, to get this real education from these women who had not taken shit off of anyone. Yeah.

And they were the first people to take on big tobacco and win in our workplace, our little union that could, you know, by, by what? Getting a smoking, smoking off the planes. That's our union that did that. You know, that wasn't, that wasn't out of the, is that really true? Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah so and a lot of things that you experience in flying in the cabin is because our union fought for it yeah um we stopped the spraying of poisonous pesticides so you're not getting sick on there okay fda approval of the food we serve you epa approval the water that's on the planes yeah the the list goes on and on.

And we're still fighting for safety standards right now. Actually, we're fighting for a temperature standard because you may have heard it wasn't that long ago that a Delta Airlines flight sat out on the tarmac in Las Vegas for six hours and people were taken off with heat stroke to the hospital. Yep. So, you know, we're still fighting on all these safety issues. Incredible. And, you know, what you said about just getting that call with your friend listing the union benefits, right, makes so much sense to me because, you know, as as a stand up comic, right, who want to be a TV

writer, I had this sense that, well, TV writing is one of the only ways you can have stability as a comedian in America, especially if you're a stand up comic, getting a job for one of the only ways you can have stability as a comedian in America, especially if you're a standup comic. Getting a job for one of the late night shows, right, is like one of the only stable jobs you can get. And you know what comes with it. Retirement plan, great health plan, you know, good weekly pay. And you just have this sense of, you know, it's not even, oh, everyone's rich in Hollywood. It's like that's a really good middle class job that you can have as a comedian. You can just do the thing and you, and the, all of those things are because of the union. It's only because, you know, the writer's gold is founded by a bunch of writers almost

exactly 90 years ago. They periodically went on strike. You know I know that I lived through the, the 2007 strike. I wasn't in the union, but I was like watching it as like a little baby comedy writer. I knew it was for coverage of the Internet when I created a show for Netflix. I was like, the only reason I have union coverage for that show is because of these writers who went on strike. And now I actually have had the same experience where I now get to sit on committees with the writers who waged that strike and flipped us into a more militant union in the year before to make it a, to make it that it's such a powerful,

I don't know. It's such a powerful organization to join and to participate in. It really gets you excited, you know, about, about the potential. Cause you're like, holy shit.

People, these are people who actually made the world better. Yeah. Cause they thought something was fucked up and they did something about it yeah oh and i can do it too yeah listen your your video from very early on in the strike i show it at all of our union meetings now the one the one where you're saying like yeah you know i didn't really want to go on strike like i got things to do i've got my career to think about i want to do the i want to do the podcast i want to do all these things i want to you know pitch a new show um but then you

know i realized like this is the way you can come out and change some of the fucked up shit in america just by holding the sign there on the line and it is it is it was like the most beautiful thing that i had ever seen from a picket line and And so, yeah, so we, we show it at all of our union trainings. Now we had a big like contract, uh, bargaining seminar and yeah, you're, you're, you're on our big screen, Adam. I'm blown away by that. I, I don't, I don't really even really know how to respond to that. That moves me so much. Uh, it was just a spur of the moment, uh, interview. It's what I believe. It's what I believe. And you captured it so perfectly because, you know, it's really true. Like you tell people it's really important you vote and it is important

that people vote. OK, I don't mean to undermine that. But, you know, when you vote and vote and vote and you get the same result because money is controlling our politics. And so even the wildly popular things that everybody wants, you can't get through Congress because it's bought and paid for. Then we have to recognize that where do you attack that? You attack that where the money is. And actually, that's where we work. And, you know, they would be nothing if it were not for us. So if we understand that, we really take that in. We can change things quickly. And so I think that the energy around unions right now,

we can thank Karen Lewis from the Chicago teachers in 2012, who said the word strike and talked about bargaining for the common good and got the community involved in that. And now that teachers union has some, the mayor's office, you know, one of their negotiators and one of their activists is now the mayor of Chicago just 10 years later. And that strike then inspired the West Virginia teachers to go out on strike when they didn't have, they didn't have collective bargaining rights, let alone the right to strike. But there, you know, as, as we know, I don't know who originally said this, but there are no illegal strikes.

There are only unsuccessful ones, which means that if we really understand our power as working people, we can we can really, as you said, change some shit in America just by getting out here and holding a sign and doing it together. of what I feel like I have learned over the last 27 years of being a union member and fighting through a lot of of bullshit and a lot of really mean spirited crap where, you know, the people who don't care and revel in the fact that the people that I represent, a lot of them lost their homes or, you know, couldn't send their kids to the school they wanted to go to or the summer camp or or they lost their marriages because the financial strain was so great. And it made it so difficult on the family. And that isn't something that you can retroactively fix. And it's not something that people forget.

And so Wall Street thinks that they permanently reset the market rate of all of our jobs. And the standards. And no, we're people and we may sometimes look like a lot of cats, but when we come together in contract negotiations and define our common interests, you know, it doesn't matter what our background was or what we look like or whether we're a man or a woman or we identify in some other spectrum of gender. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who we love, any of it.

All those differences are actually our strengths when we come together around these common interests and common demands with management and we can get shit done. And it takes a lot of hard work, as you know, being on the negotiating committee. This thing doesn't just happen overnight, right? And you got to do all the mobilization strike preparation all that stuff but what america saw was hey the teachers were out on strike for a day and they got shit that they said wasn't even possible you know wasn't even in the state budget wasn't even and uh and the gm workers were out on strike for three weeks and they got you know these huge raises double digit raises and nabisco workers the same and um and people for three weeks and they got, you know, these huge raises, double digit raises and Nabisco workers the same.

And and people were seeing this and they're seeing, oh, I get it. Like, yeah, this is how we can get some things done. I know because people feel so hopeless in this country about, you know, OK, let's vote and let's donate. Things are never going to change. Let's vote and let's donate. Things are never going to change. And unions are one of the very few ways that we have where we actually marshal actual power, like not just abstract. Oh, yeah.

You have the power. You have the power to change the world. No, like literal power, literal power, like literal power where the other side says, fuck you. We don't want to do it. And you say, I don't it doesn't even matter what I say to you because I'm just going to make you. We don't want to do it. And you say, I don't, it doesn't even matter what I say to you, cause I'm just gonna make you. Um, and we're going to do that together. Um, that where you, and it's such a, an incredible moment to realize that you have that power, that you, that you can actually make somebody who doesn't want it, who hates you do what you want and need them to do and what your colleagues need them to do and what your colleagues need.

Well, and they want us to think that we hate each other, right? Yeah. But actually what you find out is you don't get to choose who the other union members are. Like the boss decides who the other union members are. Yeah, they hire and fire them. And so, you know, it's the last non-self-selecting place in America where people come together. The workplace.

And so you are forced to work with people that you might think you disagree with, that that today they want to divide us by political ideologies to just as much as race or sex or anything else. Right. And so that but but you can you can work through that and see, oh, we're not that different. Yep. And one of the amazing things about our union is that we have a lot of folks in it who are on opposite political sides of the political spectrum. I mean, like people imagine everyone in Hollywood feels the same way. It's not true. And there's folks who, you know, I work alongside who I feel very different about politics with. And we know that. And I'm not saying, oh, we put aside our differences and blah, blah, blah. Like we're some on some sort of like centrist talk show or whatever. Like we discuss it. No, we just actually have more in common than we have different.

And and it actually doesn't matter that we might vote differently on something. And it's so that's so powerful, you know, and being on the picket line has been really powerful for us to come and see each other. Sometimes it even changes minds, too. Yeah. Sometimes we understand each other a little bit better. And, you know, that that leads, frankly, to better decisions across the board, because one of the biggest problems is we're not talking to each other. Right? Yeah.

So when you come together, especially on the picket line, everybody's there for the same reason. And you start talking to people that maybe you didn't even talk to in the workplace because you didn't think you had anything in common with them. Yeah. And so, I mean, this is the way to heal. And this is the way to push through all the bullshit union busting that has gone on for centuries, which I call the four D's of union busting, divide, delay, distract and demoralize.

Yeah. And and and when we can push through that and call bullshit on that, the government shutdown in late 2018 going into 2019. Yes. You know, we we called I called for the labor movement to talk about a general strike. And yeah, you made massive headlines. And by the way, a lot of people on the left will just occasionally say, you know, let's have a general strike. Why not? And they sort of try to you know what I mean? Hey, get the word out, guys. It's very different for a national labor leader to call for a general strike is. I mean, a lot of people were blown away by that by that call. Tell me about that. Well, I mean, look, so we are always concerned with the government shutdown as flight attendants, because that means that all the people who support the people on the front lines.

So the TSA officers who are doing the screening, you know, a lot of people will say, oh, that's theater. Well, it's not just theater, but also what happens behind the scenes is all the work. The FBI agents are doing DHS cybersecurity,

all this, they're putting all the pieces together and they're actually getting briefings for these people every day about what to be looking for. And there's, there's a lot and there's background checks and there's all kinds of things happening behind the scenes. None of that was happening. And then the people who

wear the blue uniforms at the airports were still forced to come to work because technically you cannot go into the secure area without getting screened by these TSA agents. So they were deemed

essential employees, had to come to work without getting a paycheck. Wow. And the Trump administration was handing down memos to all the departments saying, federal employees are forbidden from talking about having a hard time without getting a paycheck.

They're forbidden. And it was only because there were federal workers unions that actually said, well, no, screw that. We're going to talk about what's happening with these people that then, you know, they weren't just nameless, faceless bureaucrats in the in the government. And so but every day that that shutdown went on and we were always concerned about this and we're concerned about the FAA bill, by the way, that's going to expire on September 30th this year, because, as you know, it's chaotic flying right now.

We don't have a national transportation system that can support the demand of the American public. Part of that is that we had extensions and shutdowns, shorter shutdowns than this big one. But but for the last 20 years. And so we haven't been able to do the proper staffing or build up the infrastructure or anything. So when these things happen, every time that there's a threat of a shutdown or an extension, well, all the departments have to stop what they're doing, put together a shutdown list so they stop prepping on putting in next-gen equipment or doing training on the new equipment or training new people who are supposed to be getting these jobs and learning how to do the jobs and have enough staffing to run our entire system.

And so every day that went on and think of air traffic controllers, that that is such a stressful job. You work mostly in the dark by yourself. You're not even allowed to take your phone in. No distractions. Right. And you have to retire at age 56 because it's so stressful that they're like, you're not going to last beyond age. Wow. I didn't know that.

Oh, yeah. So if they, you know, most people, if you get 99% right at your job every single day or 99.9% right, you're getting an award, right? Like people are celebrating you. An air traffic controller, that's several aircraft accidents a day. Think about that.

Like that is not okay. Yeah. So people not getting a paycheck what could be more distracting to someone um doing this job than not getting a paycheck not knowing how they're going to pay the mortgage how they're going to take their care of their family and all that so every day that this went on not only did we not have those people in the background doing the work that i was talking about that's so essential for the people that you see on the front lines to be able to do the work that they do for safety

and security. But the people who were there and were forced to come to work were also driving Ubers at night to try to make things work. Really? Oh, yeah. Wow. They weren't getting paid. They're federal employees driving Uber at night because of a needless government

shutdown over, I don't even fucking remember what it was about. Well, supposedly it was over the Southern border wall that Trump wanted to build. Oh, sure. Yeah, supposedly. Although it really had nothing to do with that. I realized when this went on twice as long as any government shutdown in history before,

I suddenly realized, oh my God, okay, that is a frickin distraction. And also, it's just about trying to, you know, divide the country with racist fearmongering and xenophobia and everything else. But that's not really what this is about. This is really what the GOP has been trying to get for 50 years, which is to privatize all functions of government because um if three things happen if there's a if there's a terrorist attack um then power accrues to the

executives to say oh I'll fix it you know oh yeah no we're gonna privatize everything again well we'll fix it or if there is an aircraft accident same deal or if nothing happens they get to say see we didn't need all this bureaucracy let's tear down government and get rid of it. So once I realized, oh, my God, there's no political solution here. First of all, even if they give him the ability to build his wall, that's not even what he wants. Right. And the the deal that had been voted on by Congress before the new year, before the new Congress was the same deal they were trying to vote on just to reopen the government. And so it's Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell here with Trump being completely risk averse at these things because he knows all power is going to accrue to his office to do whatever

the hell he wants if something goes wrong. So when I realized that, I said, all right, you know, number one, this is getting less and less safe for our members this is a humanitarian crisis because we have 800 000 people out of work or forced to come to work without pay another million contract workers federal contract workers who were just out of work with no notice the largest employer in the country the federal government that's right so two million people and and this was just a small government shutdown, actually, by the way. So it was only two million people. So but but this was this was a crisis.

And so and and the people that I represent were going to get hurt. And I remember actually my staff at one at one point during the process, they were kind of joking around. They were they're creative people. This was my comm staff. And I went running into him and I'm like, stop it right now. You need to get serious. People are going to die. And it's good that they laugh now about this. But but but I was I mean, like I was very, very, very concerned. And so I had our legal staff working up a memo for me about conducting a safety strike.

So we were getting ready to strike ourselves. The flight attendants were getting ready to strike and we were talking to the federal workers every day and they couldn't do it. There were op-eds written by lefties saying, oh, this thing would be over if the air traffic controllers just walked off the job. And it's like, hello, you know, Ronald Reagan put people in jail for that. And Trump is over in the White House saying Ronald Reagan did it in four days. I'll do it in four hours. Yeah. So that was not a solution. We have you got to rush to the people who are in trouble. You got it. That's why. That's why I'm here, Adam. That's why I'm here coming out on your ticket line. You got to rush to their side and help them because, you know, an injury to one really is an injury to all. And in this case, we were directly tied

to this, too. so we we knew we had to define the problem um and we had to set our demands open the government and i refused to say trump by the way the entire time would only refer to mcconnell about getting this done um and um said you know uh mcconnell if you don't get this done then we're gonna call on the conscientious members of your caucus to do it for you. And the next day when the federal workers had missed their second paycheck and the day that they voted again not to open up the government, then on the 35th day, those flights started to cancel in LaGuardia because 10 air traffic controllers said, I can't I can no longer safely do my job. Wow. Just 10. And, and so these

flights started to cancel in LaGuardia and, and we put out a press release right away, Mr. McConnell, can you hear us now? You know? Yeah. And, and we had already defined and called for the general strike. So we'd really defined that workers were taking control here. Yeah. And, and it was like a rainy day in LaGuardia. I mean, it wasn't anything more than that. The flight cancellations, no big deal. But there was a deal to end that longest government shutdown in history on day 35 after a few hours because they could not stand labor getting a taste of our power. And we were about to fully taste our power. And that would have changed everything because you were about to like seize the situation and like actually like it because it had that gone any longer like so

many federal employees those unions would have really started rising up and well i think i think everyone would have and i know for a fact we our union was going to strike i mean we weren't how can we when we go to work we have to know it's safe we have to know it's secure because we're putting our lives on the line with the passengers and frankly it's my job to make sure that the passengers are safe and secure and so i'm not doing my job i can't tell people come take this flight if i know it's not safe right so that's and that is like the essence of, of like bargaining for the public good as a union saying like, we are not like,

this is not safe for the public. Like we, this is not teacher saying this is not safe for students to have these kinds of class sizes, air traffic controller saying this is not, I'm not able to do my job safely. Yeah. We have to take a break.

Oh no. I know, but it's going to be so quick. When we get back, I want to ask you about what you are doing right now. We'll be right back. Yeah, right after this. Okay, we're back with Sarah Nelson. You just told us about how you and other workers rose up during the federal shutdown in order to put pressure on the federal

government, help end that stalemate. What are the challenges that you're taking on now? You're leading a massive organizing campaign right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, look, we're coming off of the pandemic where there are a lot of challenges there. But and just very briefly, you know, learning what we did after the bankruptcies and after September 11th, we also said we were going to set the agenda. And we were the only industry to get a payroll support program, which required the federal government to give the money to the airlines, but told them exactly how they had to spend it. That had never been done in history before. As opposed to the PPP loan where it's like, hey, you get the money, you can do whatever you want with it. Correct. So this was a totally transparent process.

And a lot of people will call it a bailout. No, a bailout was the $81 billion they took from us after September 11th in bankruptcies from the workers with our pensions and pay cuts and everything. This was $54 billion over 16 months to help cover the costs of the paychecks of the flight attendants and other aviation workers, which then created other jobs too, kept us paying our taxes. We continued to have our health care. It was also like a very streamlined system. I mean, the federal government didn't have to become the HR solution for the aviation industry. They just used these airlines that were already in place to continue the paychecks and make sure that everybody had what they needed, even if the work wasn't there. So that was really important to keep things stable. But in 2020, we were all supposed to be going back into bargaining for the first time since

those bankruptcies and the consolidation that happened after that. We had just barely caught up with where we were if adjusted for inflation in 2001 with, with all of our jobs. So we have, we, you know, just because of that recession in the airline industry, I mean, 20 years essentially of just going backward in the airline industry where you were forced to take cuts in your pension, your healthcare because of, oh, everything is so bad after September 11th that, uh that you need to take the hit and all these airlines are going to merge. It's chaos.

It's total chaos. And then, you know, we all got squeezed. And I know you use the airline analogy all the time for the inequities in America. I do the same thing. Yeah. You know, and people come on the plane and they walk through first class and then they walk to maybe, you know, the economy plus class or whatever it's called on each airline, you know, where the seats are a little bit further apart.

And then as they go back, the seats get closer together, smaller, you know, and by the time you're in the back, there's no room for your bag or anything. And you're just like, you know, you feel like total shit. And it's the it's the experience of inequality in America as you just walk through an airplane cabin. Not to mention the fact that we're all crammed together, too. There's no room to breathe. So they figured out. There's no solidarity back there. That's the other side.

Yeah, no, no, no. In the back. Absolutely. So, oh, back to that shutdown, though. The one thing that I want to note is, you know, we've had all this violence on our planes and everything that we have had to fight against. Yes. But, you know, it's a few bad actors, actually. And this is another example of people wanting us to believe that we're all, you know, fighting with each other. The fact of the matter is the vast majority of people who come to the door of our plane just want a safe, uneventful flight. Yeah. They're good people who are going to help,

you know, the older woman get her get her bag up in the overhead bin. They're good people who are going to help, you know, the, the older woman get her, get her bag up in the overhead bin. They're going to look out for each other. They're going to say, Oh, you, you've, you've got a tight connection. Sure. You go first. I mean, that's what we see every day. That's really the spirit of Americans. And that's the truth. The guy who gets out of a seat. Cause I need to pee for the fourth time on a two hour flight. And he's like, dude, don't worry about it, man. We've all been there. Right. I'm only, that guy's going to be so mad at me. I'm in the middle seat and he and he gets up yet again. It's like, oh, it restores my faith in humanity.

And that makes me so happy because otherwise you're sitting there holding it until the seatbelt sign comes on with turbulence. And now it's even worse. Right. Anyway. So. comes on with turbulence and now it's even worse right anyway yeah so um but what we saw during the shutdown actually was the tsa officer said to us you know there if it weren't for the fact that we were coming to work without a paycheck life had never been better because people knew we had it bad and they were coming to our security checkpoints and instead of like grumbling about having to take all their clothes off and you know have us rummage through their their things um they were saying thank you and And they were offering help. And that was universal.

And so we have to remember that. We really are all in this together. And people really just want to help. But anyway, so getting through COVID, now we're getting back to the bargaining. So bargaining is happening across the industry. We're going to see a big day of action with Alaska flight attendants on August 15th. They're down to economics. They're really hitting it home here and can be filing for mediation in September, which leads us on the road to the strike deadline under the Rail labor act united airlines um needs to get a contract done we've been in contract negotiations since 2021 uh setting aside the fact that things slowed down during covid okay yeah but

but it's time like this has been forever and people can't keep up with inflation and so there's going to be big contract fights american flight attendants i know you fly american all the time which is so cool um they why is that cool no cool? No, it's cool because I love American flight attendants. It's cool because American Airlines was the airline that brought us together. The CEO of American Airlines called me, actually, and we came together. And I told all the CEOs how it was going to go. Like, you guys aren't going to get it. The public hates you.

You know, you're not going to get what you want from this federal money. We're going to do it on our terms. And, and he helped get that done and stuck with it and came to DC, unlike any of the other CEOs. So, and also,

and also once I left my Nintendo switch in the backseat pocket and I filed a lost claim and they found it within 24 hours and they mailed it back to pocket and I filed a lost claim and they found it within 24 hours and they mailed it back to me and I had to pay $15 for the shipping, but you know what? It was worth it to have my Zelda save. Um, so,

and I was like, okay, that's like, that's my airline. No, no, no. You gotta love it then because like that doesn't happen.

And maybe it would have happened on another, on another airline. But the fact that it happened on that one, I was like, that's what I'm sticking with. You know what I mean? If the lost and found system works. And once I flew Delta and I did not get my Kindle back. And so you remember those things. That's not an endorsement.

The flight attendants are fighters. Yes, they are. So this is not about the executives. And they're about to take a strike authorization vote. They are taking a strike authorization vote right now. The American flight attendants. about the executives they're about to take a strike authorization they're taking a strike authorization vote right now um and they are you know they are really um getting getting ready um to one of my favorite things to do is uh one of my favorite things about joining the labor movement

is now what i know about these things last time i was flying back from a gig in buffalo i said to the flight attendants as i was leaving congrats not congratulations good luck on your strike authorization vote and they were like oh oh oh oh, oh, thank you. Like, you know, they were just a little bit, they're like, oh, oh, oh, you know about, oh, they couldn't believe you knew it. I was like, yeah, I'm a, I mean, I'm a writer. I'm like, oh, great. And I was like getting off. It was like very, very brief, but you know, it's just like knowing, looking at another person and knowing what their struggle is and being in solidarity with it is such a better relationship to have with someone you know it's a it's a service relationship i'm trapped in a seat

they're bringing me shit yeah but it's i i know them as a person i see them as a worker we have a relationship that transcends you know can i have more ginger ale can i have a v8 you know um and that's and that's incredibly just enriching to the experience of like moving throughout America. Yes. Yes. So they're all coming to your picket line tomorrow. Oh, my God. And we're doing another one in New York on the 17th.

Flight attendant sponsored picket line for WGA. Wow. Yeah. I'm so grateful for that. So anyway, very, very cool. But so I'm I'm just happy that you have that connection, frankly. Yeah. I'm so grateful for that. So anyway, very, very cool. But so I'm just happy that you have that connection, frankly. Yeah. But so all this contract bargaining is going on, but the one place it's not going on is at Delta Airlines.

I want you to tell me about this because that is the only it's one of the is the biggest non-union flight attendant. It's the last legacy carrier that does not have a union for flight attendants. And in fact, every other airline is 85% union. And Delta is 23% union because the pilots are unionized. And they've been unionized since the 1930s. So Delta has been incredibly anti-union for a very long time. And what you're describing, actually, you know, a lot of people will say to me, oh, God, I'm sorry I flew Delta.

And I'm like, no, we want you to fly Delta. You know, go to our website, deltaafa.org, and sign up to be a supporter. We'll send you buttons. We'll send you stickers. We'll send you, you know, you can get a T-shirt and little business cards that say, hey, I support your union organizing. And Delta has tried for all these years to say that, you know, you can't say union on the property. They've tried to make people believe that they're going to get in trouble if they say union. So I can't tell you what it has meant.

In fact, actually, the day that we announced our campaign back in 2019, right before COVID. And then, you know, it wasn't so hot for a while. But anyway, the day that we announced that i was on a delta flight and i introduced myself and they were all like a little sheepish with me and i'm like oh this is a little bit frosty here you know but then um during the flight each one of them came by and goes i support the union um i you know and they're like can i have a card to sign and so because you are running a campaign now to to unionize. Yes. Yes. So each one of them. So after the flight, I stayed on the jet bridge and they're all looking at me like, don't don't like don't wrap me out.

Don't wrap me up. And I said, you got after all the passengers have left. I said, you guys, every single one of you told me that you support the union. And they're like, oh, my God. And so actually, it's been really helpful to have passengers on board supporting us. And then we're also in league with the Teamsters who are organizing the mechanics and the machinists who are organizing the ramp workers. And so in total, it's 50,000 workers at Delta, 27,000 flight attendants. And under the Railway Labor Act, we have to get over a majority of signed authorization cards that are only good for a year. Wow.

Physically signed. So there's no electronic signature. You have to get 51% of Delta airline flight attendants who sign a physical card within 365 days of each other. Yes. That is quite an organizing challenge. It is, especially when we don't get a contact list. So we don't have contact information for 8,000 people. But I bet you everywhere I go, in fact, I was at a mine worker event in Alabama at a park deep in the woods. There was no reception there. And at the end of

the event, I said, hey, does anyone here know a Delta flight attendant? And two hands go up. I'm like, all right. So there was a niece and there was a cousin and I'm like, all right, go talk to them. But that's organizing, right? I mean, you don't get the contact list. You just have to make your own list of, I mean, sometimes people come to me and they say, and I've never done this, but they're like, I want to form a union. How do I do it? And I'm like, oh, first of all, I've never done it. Like, so you're doing the hard part. Like I was lucky enough to, you know, join a union that was formed in the thirties. But the first thing you have to do is like get the email address of, of like almost everybody who does the job. And then you have to get in touch with them. And that's just like, it's a big job, but that is like literally it.

But if you do that, that's enormously powerful. Yes. If you do that, it's enormously powerful. And the more people that we have working on this, the better, because our workplace is not like you can't just go to a building site and find everyone. I mean, it's very much like like the writers, too. But but the flight attendants can be anywhere in the world at any given time. And in fact, actually, usually at any given time,

there's anywhere between five and 10% of the people who are not even at work because they're out for a long-term disability or they got hurt on the job or there's a sick leave or they've got something else going, a maternity leave. And they all count in that 51% too. So you got to get a hold of everybody. Not to mention the fact that management will usually try to stuff the list with management

people too at the last minute. So yeah, it's a really big job. But it's happening. And what's really exciting about it is that in the past with organizing drives, it's been all about trying to get really high percentages outside of Atlanta where one third of the flight attendants are based and where the company headquarters is. And now there's a real campaign in Atlanta with community support and mostly being led by this next generation who are coming out of Delta training that is like, you know, seven weeks of immersion and union busting and coming out and contacting us and

say, Hey, I want to sign a union card. And that's because of what's in the water. I mean, I got to give credit to the Starbucks workers who are, are just killing it out there, giving inspiration to the entire country. Oh, I get, I get so worried. I believe in this stuff so much. No, the Starbucks, I mean, the Starbucks workers, like you see their TikToks of just like,

what's happened at a store in Buffalo, you know? And these like kids are like presenting a legal paper to like a store manager and saying like, we have a right to do this and et cetera. A couple of them have come to my shows and it's just like, and they've come to our picket line. Yeah. And,

and it's just, it's, it's so inspiring what they're doing to see them stand up and like exercise this fundamental American right. That's enshrined in law that just, we allowed ourselves to be tricked into forgetting for a couple of decades that we, that we all can do this.

Starbucks workers were just going to organize in Buffalo. They were going to organize all the stores in Buffalo and have a coffee union monopoly. Yeah. And when they did it, it sparked this national campaign because people were just ready. And so they were actually surprised by it. But, you know, people in places that we want to forget, right, that we think that, oh, there's no sense in going there and talking to anyone like South Carolina or Texas or, you know, or Alabama for that matter. But, you know, everybody's hurting everywhere. Everybody

has a common story here. And so they gave a common a common story to tell. And they're inspiring people everywhere else. I mean, there's Delta workers who are inspired. There's the, Oh, I got to tell you this too. So we have, you know, we have a president who likes to talk about unions.

Right. Right. Yeah. He's the most pro labor president in history is what he is. What he has said. Listen, I don't give a shit about titles, but I do.

I do appreciate the fact that he has actually walked his cabinet through people you know who've come from mckenzie and other other places don't have any concept of what it means to uh be in a union or even collectively bargain with a union i mean this is like a lost art that's part of the problem actually that you're dealing with here the people who run our industry have forgotten how to do it like you need to talk to a union and just like make a fucking deal. And they're like, what? Exactly. So, you know, the president's a really good guy and the president is a union guy.

But, you know, he he can't help but have people around him and his administration who have had no exposure to this. So the first thing he did was make all of his cabinet go through this process of um having this labor task force and they were all required to participate in it yeah yeah so kudos um because otherwise they would never be forced to think about the the labor uh issue and it's not perfect okay it is not perfect let me tell you i and plenty of complaints but um but what I will say is in Atlanta, I had a flight attendant walk up to me who said, I'm a 30 year Delta flight attendant. I've always been against the union, but I'm a Democrat. And my president says I should sign a union card. So mean, that's why. So from that to the Starbucks workers who are frankly inspiring these new hires who are coming out of training and saying, hey, I want to work at a place that has a union. And hey, every other flight attendant in the industry has a union. We should probably have one, too. You know, it's it's it's in the water. It's the most popular thing in Americaica right now and if we don't make the most out of this and it takes takes strikes takes winning those strikes getting these contracts inspiring people doing this new

organizing but we got to organize right now in the tens of millions in order to actually shift uh the dynamics here and actually have the counter the only countervailing force that works against unchecked unchecked capitalism let's talk about the those big picture things first i'm curious why do you think that it is in the water right now like i know little wins lead to big ones right something sparks but you know this is not the 90s right where people are like why just to give an example writers guild went on strike in 2007 and the entire country said what the fuck are they doing and thank god they did because it was to get coverage of streaming which you know is now the entire entertainment industry is very prescient right but they did it in in opposition of the national mood yeah now we're

with the national mood literally you're going to come down to the netflix picket line tomorrow you're not gonna be able to hear yourself talk because of all the people honking right because it like literally trucks go by which is beautiful because you can look up and you can see the Netflix people in the building being annoyed by the honks. They're like, God, yeah, yeah. And I feel a little bad for them, but I don't, hopefully Ted Sarandos goes in there

and he gets annoyed too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But so the support has, it's been a 180 in 15 years. Yeah. Why do you think that is? Well, it's because people are hurting so badly yeah that uh they you know that i i was talking about this actually for quite a while um in 2014 15 16 about you know people are hurting and they're looking around for answers and we

have it for them and they they had to see it a little bit. They had to see those strikes on the front end of COVID that I say started with Karen Lewis, with the Chicago teachers, um, and then sparked to all the red for ed strikes, um, in, uh, 2017, 2018, um, all across the country, uh, the GM strike, you know, and, and so people saw that and they're like, oh, and I heard a story of a tech worker in Portland, Oregon, who actually knocked on her neighbor's door because she heard he was a union organizer and she knocked to find out about a union. It's hilarious. You know, the worker knocking on the union organizer's door rather than the other way around. Yeah. But people people are they they know that, you know, this generation has it worse off than their parents. Yeah. And it's only going in the wrong direction. We have existential threats coming at us where we're not moving quickly enough to get it done.

And I think that, you know, people are saying like the the establishment has failed us, you know, it's not. And so they're getting that. has failed us, you know? Yeah. It's not, and so they're getting that. And I think, you know, it was extraordinary actually to watch Fran Tresher's speech that went viral. Yeah. But she came out of those discussions

and most of what was not played on the front end, I watched the whole six and a half minutes of it, on the front end, she was like, I cannot believe that they couldn't be rational with us. And that is what most people believe. Most people believe if two rational people sit down, have a conversation, you can talk through it, you can come to a solution. That is not the dynamic here. And the corporate America has gotten lazy and they're saying the quiet part out loud now. They're saying, oh no, loud now. They're saying,

oh no, we're going to hold out, wait till people lose their homes and then maybe we'll go back to the bargaining table. They wouldn't have said that in the 90s because they would have still had people around telling them how to do this and how to try to hoodwink people into thinking that the union members who were out on strike are the bad ones. They're the ones who are screwing things up. You know, this UPS contract negotiations that Sean O'Brien led as the Teamster president, that was the most beautiful contract campaign I have ever seen. I mean, first of all, bringing more people to the bargaining table, being so open about bargaining, about what they're demanding from the beginning, telling the members what they were winning along the way, making it very clear to UPS from the beginning, I don't give a shit if we're at the top of the industry because we're the union and we've made it that way with our contract, you're going to pay because you haven't paid enough. And it's

been about concessions and this time is going to be different. And, you know, they set that line and then they showed it and they backed it up when they did their just practicing for a just contract. I mean, people came out like it already was a strike, right? It couldn't have been more clear to UPS. And when they got the word from the White House that the White House wasn't going to interfere, you know, UPS caved and got that deal done done and so the strike is really about encouraging oh wait now i'm coming back to this because you saw so many people saying why would the ups workers want to take down the entire economy why would they want to hurt all of us which is what the narrative was in the 90s yeah but with no one pushing back right this time people are saying

bullshit it's the ups executives who are choosing to take down the economy. They're the ones who workers have the right. That's right. That's right. And how else are we going to get people to be reasonable here? Yes. And so it's not about getting to, you know, I often say and I got in trouble one time because a GOP member, Scott Perry, actually came after me in a congressional hearing that had nothing to do with labor was about aviation, but came after me because of this quote. I said, you know, sometimes you got to beat it out of them and sometimes they got to remember the beating they're going to take in order to deal with us fairly. I don't know who could have a problem with that beautiful quote. I think it's a wonderful quote. And so he came after me, he's like, are like, are you in favor of violence, Ms. Nelson?

Oh, my God. And I'm like, no, but the corporations who are forcing people into hot workspaces that are too hot for them to breathe and who are willing to pay them a wage that doesn't allow them to live and doesn't allow them to actually pay rent and have a roof over their head. You know, I went to flight attendant training and they taught us survival training. The first thing they said is if you if you land in the middle of a forest and no one is around to rescue you, first thing you got to do is get shelter. Second thing is water. Well, you know, if you're if you're expecting people to come to work and they can't even get shelter and water for their families, clean water for their families, then it doesn't work. Like that's basic human needs. And you think that we're going to give you our labor for not even getting that? The hell.

We deserve a hell of a lot more. We deserve what they said a hundred years ago. Eight hours of rest or eight hours of work. I like to start with the rest. Eight hours of work, eight hours of rest, eight hours for what we will. And we've lost that. But we're making the demands now. We got to organize so we have more power so people can tell their stories, get that out and we can identify with each other. We can identify as a working class to stand up for each other, spread this solidarity. That is natural in Americans. It is natural. And all we're doing is allowing it to breathe and telling the truth and not allowing these corporate shills who have gotten lazy,

who are saying the quiet part out loud, who the cotton, the cotton lobby, by the way. I just read this on the on the way out here on the plane. They said that they got to get rid of the air conditioning because, you know, it's bad for the workers to get the air conditioning because there's too much of a of a distinct difference between working in the fields and then going in the air conditioning it's going to make them soft and then these newer workers have i forgot the words that they use but they said something like they've oh they've had a sedentary lifestyle and so we're going to help them learn how to work hard i was like oh the the cotton lobby huh this is hearkening back to maybe uh another time i could think of jesus christ yeah yeah i mean that's where we are for these people who we know what's best for

these people they're naturally lazy and they need oh my god that's what's different from 2007 which by the way we were out on your picket line and i'm i'm very proud to say that i'm not a writer but i did write you know uh without TV writers, television just sounds like George Bush. And that was our picket sign that we brought to you. That's great. Look, and you'd be surprised at how bad some of the picket signs that professional writers make, by the way, is some of them are a little bit like, I don't even follow your train of thought on that, but. All right. You're on here and you've got a sign so how do we how do we uh look we're still facing great headwinds against the labor movement right there's uh you know so

called right to work states um the laws across the nation uh we have an extremely labor hostile supreme court yeah um that is you know shown that it's going to be willing to make bad decision after bad decision that is designed just to make it harder to unionize. We don't even know about the bad decisions we're going to see in the next five or 10 years yet because it didn't even happen, but we know that they're going to happen. And you know, we're we've merger running rampant, right? Companies buying each other, corporate power growing.

How do we, you say we need to organize on a massive scale, take advantage of this moment. How do we do that in, in actual practical fact? Well, I mean, first of all,

the Supreme court, the corporate elite, they should all be a little bit careful about all these things that they want to take because it was massive instability that caused all the strikes in the thirties and forties that led to labor law in the first place. So, you know, if they want to take away all the labor law, then there's no rules. There's nothing that says that we can't strike. There's no rules that say that we have to go through a certain process in order to be able to have these rights. It is going to be, it is going to be mayhem. And so mayhem and so i mean in the 30s the reason those laws were passed was to bring labor peace that was how they described it they were like we need to

stop these these violent insurrections that are happening across the country and and make it sort of nice and regular and if and that was happening because the workers had no other outlet they were literally just taken to the streets and so if they they want that to happen again, they're doing a good job of it. So, you know, I don't think people understand how close we are to the corporate structure, the chamber, you know, the business roundtable, making a different assessment here. Because when the risk becomes too great, the solutions come Yeah. And they have to constantly assess the risk of not doing the deal, of not dealing with us fairly. And so we're and they said, you know, maybe we don't want to do this the hard way. Maybe we want to do this the easy way and maybe we want to be a good corporate actor here. And so they put together a set of labor principles and they agreed with CWA to union neutrality.

agreed with CWA to union neutrality. Yeah. Okay. And, um, to the, and they actually went out and taught their managers that union neutrality doesn't just mean, oh, we're not, we're going to stay out. It means that when a worker comes to you and says, uh, what, how do I learn about the union or, or they have a question for you about the union? You say, well, that's not my job to tell you, but here's the union website that you can go to and look it up.

So, so that's it. Did Microsoft do that out of the goodness of their heart? No, they partially did it because they were trying to do the largest merger in the history of the tech industry and they didn't want the CWA to oppose it. Correct. That yes. Like, let's be real here about that. The merger with Activision. Yes, absolutely.

Which is now going to go through and so the silver lining is this neutrality agreement so it was that they they wanted something um but also the workers were rising up and organizing right so the question was going to get called on them anyway yeah and um they looked at what was happening everywhere else and they said you know maybe we're going to choose a different path. Maybe we're actually going who, you know, also was almost solely responsible for getting rid of child labor in this country. She said, you will fight and win, fight and lose, but you must fight. And so if you're not fighting, you can't ever win and you're not exercising those muscles. Labor peace is a bullshit thing. It is a bullshit thing. There is always going to

be an issue to fight over. Now, you can get management to be reasonable. It goes back to my quote about beating it out of them or remember the beating that they're going to take. They have to remember the beating that they're going to take, or they have to be very aware they're going to take that beating. So that solidarity and that action by members all the time, even if it's not out on the picket line, it's a petition or, you know, it's there, there's always something in the workplace to, to fix. And we have to be doing this all the time. So, so that has to happen where we already have the unions, but then back to your original question, we have to be doing this. We have to help workers do this and, and give them the tools to do it. And I am building a program right now called Union Now, where any worker in the country

would be able to call up and say, I'd like to organize my workplace. How do I get started? And if there's a union that's already organizing, you know, just get them over to the union, right? And help them do that. But if there's no union that will take them, and frankly, if the unions that exist today put all of their resources into organizing, which is also not happening, but even if we did, it wouldn't be enough to meet the demand out there. So workers are going to have to have help. And a lot of them are going to have to form independent unions like the congressional workers had to when no union would take them. And eventually what will happen is they'll affiliate with the larger labor movement. But, you know, this is what we're going to have to do. We're going to have to put tremendous

resources into this. So, you know, the the people who have money who are listening to this show, give me a call because I would like to take your money so that we can start this program. Yes. Yes. I mean, why do you think I was going to wrap up, but I do want to ask this. Why do you think that the labor movement does not put more of its resources into organizing? Because I've heard this criticism. Right. And I know well that one of the problems in labor is unions that we have fighting unions and we have unions that, that do not fight. Right. Um, and, uh, why, why do you think that is the case that, um, you know, at this moment of where people are self-organizing, um, you still have the largest labor organizations, not putting that emphasis on organizing that you might want to see. So everyone has to organize and they're not. However, however, I think it's a fool's errand to think that the unions today are going to

be able to provide the resources that are necessary for this moment of organizing because and here's why. Because the unions are built up to fight for the members in the union. Of course. And the members in the unions pay the dues to keep that union running. Now, I can talk all day long to flight attendants about why it's really important that we're helping Delta flight attendants organize, because Delta is making more money than anybody. If we don't have a contract there, they're constantly undercutting us at the table. We're never going to be able to get forward until Delta flight attendants have a union and a contract.

So we can talk about that all day long. But let's face it, when people have real problems on the job, they can't access their benefits or they can't get the day off that they need. Or they can't for flight attendants. You know, they're not they're not getting the schedule that they need while they're out there. We've had these meltdowns where flight attendants have been left sleeping in the airport and everything. They're like, you know, focus on me. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm paying you dues for my services that I need. And the fact of the matter is, it's hard.

You have to constantly work on this idea of solidarity and this in the the recognition that we all have to be fighting all the time we all have to come out for each other all the time i was so proud of the flight attendants who are going to come out on your picket line tomorrow because they like we're doing this we're helping to inspire the fact that we have to do this for each other we have to come out for each other but when it comes back to you know the criticism about unions we can get into, you know, some of the leadership is going to have to change. It's just going to have to. The labor movement has only grown when young people have led it. Yeah. And that's true throughout history. So and I'm talking young people like 20, 21 years old.

OK, so we we're going to have to have that. And that doesn't mean that the people who have all the experience are worth nothing. They're incredibly important. They do have all this experience. They have so much to share with us about where we've been and what they've been through and the fights that they've been through. Um, are some people complacent and, um, do they make too much money as a union leader and do they have it too good and are they you know not engaged yeah that exists too yeah sure it does but um but i think that the the swell the groundswell is going to change all of that let's not though think that even if we do all of that that unions that exist today are going to be able to fully meet the moment of the organizing that needs to happen. Yeah. Well, I'll say that. I mean, which is why people need to call me and give me money.

Well, we've seen unions that that have leaders like you mentioned. Yeah. Some of them where the memberships have of that union have have risen up and you've seen the entire union changes to get more militant. We've seen unions flipped. I mean, WTA East. OK. The organizing that they have done in journalism and

then you know that made the news guild actually have to get off their butts and start organizing too and and we don't get to talk about this a lot because journalists are not supposed to talk about their own uh unions right so actually we don't even hear about this in the media as much as we should. But the organizing that took place in media over the last decade is a part of dramatically changing what's in the water. Yes. So I got to give huge kudos to WGAE. I do too. It was phenomenal.

And after this strike, I think, you know, the West should do the same and think about like how you're organizing around tech out here and stuff. And so and so I'd love to come talk to your board. But we'd love to have that conversation. So we should do that. But but, you know, huge kudos to them. Not everybody's doing that. But look at the shift in the reporting.

Not everybody's doing that. But look at the shift in the reporting. Every single reporter now, if they're a business reporter, they're a tech reporter, education reporter, they're all labor reporters because they themselves are in unions. They know what it's been like to take on the boss. And so now they know the questions to ask, too. A business article is not just about the business. It's about the people who are in the business. I get those calls from reporters and they're like,

we hear that they're trying to turn you into gig workers. We hear that they're trying to replace you with AI. And I was like, yeah, that's, that's a concern for you too, huh? You,

you like understand why that's concerning. And they're like, yeah, we do. It's, it's very present for them. Yes. They're,

they're being pushed in exactly the same way. And, and it started to change the tenor of that coverage. But so to get to your final point, you think we need, like the labor movement itself is not going to have the resources to create this wave of organizing.

We need it to come from an even greater source. We do, we do. And listen, I mean, there's a lot more the labor movement can do. OK, so don't don't misunderstand what I'm saying. We need to. We need to be strategic about it. We need to we need to get our arms around it. We need to support it wherever we do as much as we can at all times and grow it every year. But no, I mean, if people want to change the politics in this country, if people want to save democracy, if people want to take on climate change, then they should invest in labor organizing. They should invest in workers forming unions where they are and having the structure for average people to have political power, because that is the only way. And when I say political power, I don't just mean in D.C. I don't just mean in the state houses.

mean in D.C. I don't just mean in the state houses. Yeah. The political power democracy in their workplace, which then translates to a balance in in our democracy that exists within capitalism. And if you don't have these these checks and balances, you know, we've we've all talked about we all grew up learning about checks and balances in the U.S. government. Well, it doesn't exist anymore because we don't have the checks and balances in the economy. And the only way that we're going to change all of this is if we are investing massively and supporting labor organizing. You're blowing my mind because what you're saying is, look, we want to see change in D.C., of course. We want to see change in the state houses. There's also a million places where we want to see change throughout the entire country and the entire world and all these different places. And unions, no matter what you're talking about, are always a place where you can build that power, which is why I hate to bring it to our own union so much. If you care about diversity in Hollywood, it's not my number one issue in the world. It is an issue I care about. It's an issue many people care about diversity in Hollywood, it's not my number one issue in the world. It is an issue I care about.

It's an issue many people care about. Guess what? That's something you can do through a union, right? If you care about representation, that kind of thing. Or if you just care about, you know, media mergers or like having diverse voices in the ecosystem, whatever it is, that's something like, like the, you know, we could ask Sacramento to pass some fucking law about Hollywood. They're not going to do it. No, instead we just make it happen. And the same way that you were doing, uh,

during that government shutdown, where you were like, I'm putting my, we're putting our fingers on the scale motherfuckers over here. But also let, let me make one final point. And that is that the workers themselves are the experts in the business. Okay.

And in the innovation, they are the, they are the creators. Yep. Um, they are the builders. Okay. And in the innovation, they are the, they are the creators. Yep. Um, they are the builders. Yep. Um, they know how these things work. And so if we're going to create a new green economy, we have to have unions because that is the only way that workers have voices because in a corporate structure, they're held down. The workers are held down. They're, they're, they're told, Oh, don't you worry about it. We're going to handle it in the C-suite. Okay. Yeah. Where all the brains are. Yes. Right. So if we're actually

going to come to the table with solutions, we can't expect that that is going to come from someone who is coming out of an academic setting. It's just not going to work. We all know what it's like to learn on the job and how much different that is than going to school. School teaches us to critically think, which is really important, but doing the work and understanding how these things work and understanding how you, if you do this one thing, you might have an unintended consequence here. That is only going to come if you take the people who are actually doing the work and know it inside and out. And the only way you give voice to those people to get us to the solutions that we need

is to give them unions so that they can bring those issues forward when that corporate suite very often is not listening to them at all. What a beautiful vision, because every every worker, every every person is a worker and every worker is an expert in whatever their area is. And that means that if you want to fix fucking anything, you can go to the people working. You go talk to anybody in any job. You're like, what's the problem with healthcare?

Go talk to a nurse. They'll be like, let me fucking tell you. Right. And don't you think healthcare would be better if let's take all the nurses and let's empower the nurses and let's, let's let them call the shots. Correct.

And if we want to solve healthcare in this country, if you want to solve, name an issue., if you want to solve name an issue. How about the janitors who are cleaning that hospital? There you go. How dirty it is. Why people are getting staff infections. Yeah. OK.

And the people making the medical devices and whatnot. And so sounds to me like your pitches. Tell you what, if you were thinking about donating money to some political candidate or some 501 C3 that's going to, you know, I don't know, shift money around, maybe instead invest in the labor movement because that creates structural power that'll be lasting. Your dollar goes further. You create a powerful change. Is that about right? That's exactly right.

Billionaires, only the good ones. There's no good billionaires I've talked about on the show, but people, people who have money and they want to help change things. Go talk to Sarah. If there are workers there, I'm positive that there are people out there listening to this going, Oh my God, I'm so inspired. I want to do this.

Oh, but I, Oh, I work at a fucking ad agency and everybody is mean and I don't know what to do. And, but what do I do? Blah,

blah, blah, blah. What's what's step one, two, and three for, for people who want to start a union in their workplace? Easy way for someone to get involved is actually to find a picket line.

There are picket lines all over this country. If you go to a picket line, not only are you going to see and be inspired by the power of workers out there who are in a fight, but who are also like smiling and so happy to be together and joyful and doing this really powerful thing. And you're going to learn from that. But you can also ask those workers right there. And very likely you've got actual organizers who are out on the picket line, too. That's a good place to go and get your answers and get inspired. So go out on the picket lines. Yeah.

You can certainly try to call a union. You're going to Google how to get in touch with them, whatever. But I mean, if you actually go out and get engaged in one of these fights, that is the best way to learn about it. And until we have this program up and running called Union now that you can dial up and get someone at any time of day. The other place that you can go actually is is called Ewok Emergency Worker Organizing Committee.

I've met with them. That is phenomenal. And, you know, working with them, I'm basically talking about supercharging what they're doing and also expanding it and helping it all the way through a first contract. So we're locking in these wins, right? So, so lawyers and, and comms people and organizers on staff all the time. But, but Ewok is extraordinary. And so get in touch with, with Ewok. They have a website. You can get in touch with an organizer. They will help you organize your workplace.

I know people who are going to get a call back within 72 hours. They're great. Yeah, we're just going to we're just going to make it even better and faster and stronger. Oh, my God. Sarah, thank you so much for being here. How if people want to follow up with you and your work, how do they find you? Oh, well, they can find me at Flying with Sarah. That's generally my handle wherever I am on any of the mediums. And you can learn more about our union at AFACWA.org. And if you want to support the Delta campaign, once again, that's DeltaAFA.org. Yeah. And go get a pin and say and say, hey, we support you to a flight attendant.

Yes. Yes. You have no idea what that will do to help them. Yes. Sarah, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to get on the picket line with you. I can't wait to see you. My God, thank you once again to Sarah Nelson for coming on the show.

I couldn't believe how much I love that interview. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. If you did and you want to support the show, head to patreon.com slash adamcounover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show ad free. And if you support at the $15 a month level, I will read your name on this very show. This week, I want to thank John McAfee, Scott Kaler, Doug Arley, Sean McBeath, Samuel Aaron Foster, Alferia, James Sinclair, and of course, Jack Nelson, Sarah's son, who is now supporting the show. Thank you so much to Jack and everybody else. I appreciate you. You help make the show possible.

If you want to join him, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Once again, adamconover.net for my tickets and tour dates. I want to thank Sam Roudman and Tony Wilson for producing the show with me, everybody here at HeadGum. If you want to find me online, you can do so at adamconover.net or at Adam Conover, wherever you get yourGum. If you want to find me online, you can do so at adamconover.net or at Adam Conover, wherever you get your social media. Thank you so much for listening and or watching. If you're watching on YouTube, go subscribe to the podcast and your favorite podcast player. We'd love to see you every week. Thanks so much for being here. See you next time on Factually. That was a HeadGum Podcast.