Rev Left Radio - There is Power in a Union: The US Labor Strike Wave

Episode Date: October 28, 2021

Mel Buer - host of the Morning Riot podcast, journalist, and IWW member - joins Breht to discuss the recent wave of strikes throughout the country, what its political implications are, and how regular people can help out!  Find more of Mel's work here: https://linktr.ee/coldbrewedtool Outro Music: "Working Reward" by The Haymarket Squares ----- Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio or make a one time donation: PayPal.me/revleft LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, I have on my good friend, comrade, and previous guests of the show, Mel Bure, to talk about the recent strike wave taking over the United States. Although she doesn't consider herself a labor journalist, she does do labor journalism, and is one of the best journalistic voices on the ground right now here in Omaha for the Kellogg's Worker Strike. And so we did, we just talk about the dynamics of these strikes, some of the contradictions within them, what they implicate about the rest of society and the labor movement more broadly and touch on a lot of really important and timely things regarding this recent working class renaissance, if you will. It's really, really encouraging to see. So, yeah, without further ado, here is me and Melanie's discussion on exactly that topic. Enjoy.

My name is Mel Bewer. I am an educator, a leftist, sometimes journalist. Yeah, hi, what's up? Hello. I'm a researcher. I'm writing a book. A lot of things. We're as many hats.

Today you're wearing a Cubs hat. It's just one of many. Yep. Long-time listeners of Rev left will certainly, I think, be aware of you. It's been a while since we've collaborated. but we've done multiple collaborations in the past and particularly we were just talking before we recorded some fun Patreon episodes a couple years ago. Yeah.

That went off the rails in the best possible way. Oh my God. So fun. Yeah, we have some great times. But I'm happy to have you back. And the reason I wanted to have you back is to talk about what your journalism has been addressing recently, which is this rising strike wave across the country. But specifically, you've been a leading voice here in Omaha regarding the Kellogg strike.

Yep. And the Kellogg workers strike started in Omaha, I believe, and then it spread? No, all four Kellogg's plants walked out at the same time. So, yeah, let's just go ahead and maybe start there with that specific struggle, and then we can sort of zoom out throughout the conversation. But can you talk a little bit about what's happening at Kellogg's, why they're striking, and where we're sort of at with that right now? Yeah, so the Kellogg's plant workers are represented by the bakery, confectionery,

tobacco workers and grain millers union, BCTGM. All four plants have about 14, I think it's 1,400 Kellogg's workers across four plants, and the Omaha plant has roughly 480. They negotiate their contract every five years. In 2020, their contract came out for negotiation, and they stalled out, and so they pushed it back a year. And those negotiations resumed, in the late, in late September, and essentially what's at the heart of this conversation is that the company, the corporate company, introduced a two-tier wage system in 2015. They kind of slammed that through with the contract. Dan Osborne is the union president for the Omaha local, and he recently was on the Working People podcast to kind of discuss the more minute details of what was

going on with those negotiations. Shout out to Max. Yeah, Max. Max is doing amazing work. And essentially what happened is in 2015, they introduced this two-tier wage system where it puts the workers on two separate tiers. You have a transitional workforce, which is usually made up of newer employees that have been hired in the last five years or so.

And then you have a full-time or legacy workforce that is full-time employees. They get the benefits. They have a higher pay wage, and they have the ability to vest more in their pensions, I believe. What they ended up doing with those negotiations is they, you know, essentially didn't want to do a two-tier system because what that means is all the worker, you know, there's 30% of the workforce who makes $12 an hour less, doesn't get as many benefits, right? And then you have 70% of the workforce who gets paid more and has more benefits, better health insurance, things like that. The issue is that essentially, as far as I understand it, Kellogg's threatened to close the Memphis plant if they didn't ratify the current contract, which would have been catastrophic, right? That's like 500 workers. They wanted to avoid doing that.

So they agreed to ratify this contract with this tier system. The whole idea with the tier system is when someone who's full-time retires or quits, then these. transitional workers can then be funneled directly into this full-time position. They get all the benefits, all of that. What's been happening, though, has not been that at all. They either keep the jobs empty, or they fight to, you know, keep these transitional workers as transitional workers. So some of these workers who are transitional workers did not become full-time for five years. They're working this job. And the thing is, is these employees work the same hours side by side. Yeah. So you have, you know, this 30% cap, which was negotiated by the union of these transitional workers who are working side by side seven days a week, 12 to 16 hours a day.

Doing the same job. The exact same job, trained on the same stuff next to these full-time employees. And when the contract came up from negotiation again in 2020, the union was like, we don't want this, you know. This is clearly not working. This is not equitable. We want equal pay for everyone across the board. And the corporate negotiators called those demands outlandish, and we're only at the negotiating table for like 10 hours. It was a two-week negotiation, and they were at the table for 10 hours.

Absurd. Absolutely absurd, right? Just middle finger in the face of the workers. 100%. 100%. And on October 5th, the contract that they had extended, expired, and they put down their tools, and they walked out because they had not reached a good. negotiation. And so they've been out on strike since October 5th. All four plants have been on the picket line. And here in Omaha, you know, we've got 500 workers who are still out there

right now, you know, waiting for Kellogg's to come back to the table. They don't want to be out on the line. They want to be working. But they know that this is extremely important that there is equal pay for these workers and, you know, that they don't get their insurance and and their pensions fucked with, which is, you know, the other part of this. Absolutely. And this two-tier system is actually fairly widespread. My stepdad spearheaded getting his workplace, which is a dairy factory here in Omaha, unionized, and he's the union steward.

And they have the exact same two-tier system. I'm just wondering, what are the interests of management by maintaining this two-tier system? Are you clear on exactly how that benefits management as opposed to helping the worker? Well, it's certainly, it's a divide-and-conquer strategy, you know, and these workers know this, too. They know that what they're fighting for is not just equal pay, but in the next five years, if Kellogg's is able to remove the cap on transitional workers, which they want to do, so that they can just keep hiring more than 30% of their workforce, all of these jobs that they've deliberately left open in the full-time side can then be filled up with transitional workers. They keep doing it, keep doing it, keep doing it. You come to the negotiating table in five years, you've got 70% of this workforce, transitional workers who are upset about their pay and their benefits not being the same, they may take a better deal that actually disadvantages the union in Kellogg's next time around. And then, you know, the logical conclusion is that there's no longer a unionized workforce at Kellogg's, and Kellogg's corporate can keep fucking them over, you know.

And like the working conditions in the factories are not safe, right? And the union is often the people to go to when accidents happen. And, you know, these workers need to be taken care of or they need to address concerns with management. Like that's what the union is there for. And if you have these two-tier systems where everyone is working the same job, but the pay is less and the benefits are less, it fosters animosity between the work. workers, you know, and everyone in the C-suite and the management, they will benefit heavily from that. Yeah, exactly. The divide and conquer strategy is absolutely true. And that resentment, I mean, how can you avoid it when you're standing next to somebody doing the same exact job and getting

paid significantly less? But that's also one of the beautiful parts about the side of this dispute where the laborers who are on the better side of that two-tier system still see the injustice in it and I'm sure it hurts them in various ways as well. well, of course, but they're willing to go on strike to make sure that these people coming in have the same amount of pay and benefits that they have. My stepdad, in his labor struggle, is the most senior worker in the entire factory, and the two-tier system is a hot point of contention for them right now, trying to push back on that. So, you know, even though Kellogg's is bringing attention to it, it's a broader thing for sure. I also wonder how, because of course,

Kellogg's is one particularly local and relevant example, but this, what is being called a strike wave is sort of happening all over the country right now. And there's many reasons. I mean, you cannot separate it from 40 years of neoliberal privatization and putting all leverage in the hands of capital and against labor. But the pandemic also had a distinctive effect, I think in this entire uprising as well. If for nothing else, then that it tightened the labor market and shifted leverage in a minute way towards the workers for the first time in so long. Can you talk maybe what your thoughts are on the role that the pandemic plays in all of this? Yeah, I think the pandemic plays a role in, you know, certainly ripped the veil,

shredded the veil in terms of worker relations and how we relate to our employment and our jobs, you know, business reporters recently have been talking about the great resignation, you know, people quitting their jobs, a lot of private sector strikes that are happening, a lot of people just, you know, feeling more confident that they can demand better working conditions from exploitative ruling class management, right? If you talk to the folks on the line at Kellogg's, however, this for them is not something that just was exacerbated by the pandemic. You know, this has been a five-year-long sort of buildup of tensions regarding these current contract, right? And many of them are proud to have worked through the pandemic. They didn't get

time off. Right. In fact, some of those people worked harder or longer. The thing about Kellogg's workers, and I'm sure you can say this about really anyone who's on strike, is that they deeply, deeply love what they do. They are proud of the work that they do. They have sacrificed a whole hell of a lot for the company, and the company is spitting in their face, right? And they know this, right? And I think, you know, speaking to sort of the broader conversation about how the pandemic has shifted priorities for folks, I think a lot of folks have just seen the devastation, right? I mean, we can also, we could point back to some of the the factors that may have led up to the uprising last year about just how the pandemic has

sort of like squeezed people in ways that they previously weren't aware of or hadn't ever experienced before. So certainly it plays a part, but I think for a lot of these, I would say for a lot of these negotiations, this has happened well before the pandemic really fucked with people's livelihoods, if that makes sense. Yeah. You know, 100%. In some other sectors, the pandemic, think is playing a larger role, particularly I've seen literal McDonald's workers going on strike in Wisconsin recently. And that certainly has much more to do with the pandemic in that, as we've all seen, this crybaby bullshit coming from the capital sector is about nobody wants to work, nobody wants to work. But it's because they can't find workers to work these shitty jobs when

they've been given for numerous reasons, a little bit of breathing space. Maybe they had to stay home because of the pandemic. They lost their job, so they got a chance to rethink what they want to do. They don't want to be on the front lines of this dangerous situation. We also lost, I mean, over 600,000 Americans. And a lot of people argue that the actual death toll, once the dust fully settles, will be much more than that. And we can't, we can't strip away the fact that just lots of people have died. More than a World War I and World War II amount of dead Americans combined, and then some are just no longer in the labor market at all. So that tightens it as well. Same with them. A lot of people chose to retire last year.

Totally. A lot of people, even at the Kellogg's plant, chose to retire ahead of this contract negotiation because they were afraid they were going to lose their pensions. So they left the job force early, right? So, and I think a lot of older Americans, when faced with working another five years in these conditions, being older and at risk for the virus, just chose to retire early, you know, or take disability. Or the many people who got COVID. and now have the inability to work, you know. One of our mutual friends got COVID from the hospital that he worked at, and he was out

for something like six months. With long COVID? Brutal. Heart condition, problems, you know, and thankfully, he's a union, so he had the ability to pay his bills. You know, they paid for his medical leave and all this, but, you know, those things have happened, and the workforce has been significantly altered. in the last year and a half, you know.

And historically, the thing with pandemic specifically crises more broadly is that it does tend to have this effect. You know, one of the big lessons from like the Black Plague, for example, killing a third of Europe, obviously more intense than what we're going through in some ways. Obviously, there's not the vaccine medical even option at that point. But killing so many Europeans actually tighten the labor market to such an extent that you had these worker uprisings and, you know, scarcity increases value. So if there's less workers, you've got to pay them more, et cetera.

And so you see the contradictions that already existed in our society being amplified many times. And there's negative consequences from that like hyperconcentration of wealth in the hands of, you know, the big businesses that have been able to survive. But you'll see some positive ones like we're seeing with the worker movement, or at least getting the boot off the larynx of the working class to just enough extent that they're able to sort of be more assertive in this way. And so, you know, throughout history, we see that pattern, and it's happening once again. But, you know, I guess I want to talk about scabs as well. The John Deere strike, right? 10,000 workers. And I also want to talk about how the media covers this or doesn't cover this, the mainstream media, in a bit.

But 10,000 workers and John Deere go on strike. And there are these immediate attempt to bring in scabs. Or, as we saw with the thing that went sort of viral, recently they tried to get people the engineering department, I believe, to move tractors and immediately cause an accident. And you see, like, the ambulance screaming towards the John Deere factory, day one of the strike or whatever. Is there a SCAB situation going on with the Kellogg's plant in particular? And how is the threat of bringing in SCAB as being handled broadly by the working class?

Well, this is kind of an interesting development. So they went on strike on a Wednesday, Wednesday, October 5th, I believe. By that next Monday, they were busing in third-party workers to try and get the factory up and running. Where does workers come from? This is a private staffing kind of deal. It's the same company that they used when they locked out the Memphis workers, I think, in like 2018, 2017.

God, I can't remember 2015. I don't remember the years. But, yeah, their third-party workers usually brought in by a specific company that will, you know, bring these people in. I'm not sure if they're local. I'm not sure if they are flown in. Don't know. Kellogg's is not really interested in having a conversation about it.

They're just publicly talking about how they're getting things back up and running, right? What that looks like on the picket line is, you know, having a slow walk across the entrances. You know, you can't, it's illegal to stop them from entering the plan at these entrances. And up until last Thursday or so, cops don't really come unless security calls them, because these buses are waiting too long at the entrance, right? And the security itself, as I've been told by some of these strikers, is private, like, Pinkerton security that was brought in specifically for the Kellogg strike. Wow.

So it's not even, you know, the people running the show aren't even employees, regular employees of the security team of Kellogg's, right? They're taking their orders from someone else, you know. And these security people are reckless and asshole-ish and, you know, young, young. Really? Right. Which adds to that probably. Right.

Right. You know, as far as, as far as like the SCAB situation, the newest development and, you know, I'm working on getting more details about exactly how this happened. But there are about 100 union contractors that have contracts at the plant. The Building Trades Union Council met with the local here to discuss what to do, right? because their contracts are being threatened as well during the strike because prior to this last weekend they didn't want to cross the picket line without having a conversation about it. And this is sort of maybe the complexities of solidarity during these sort of labor disputes, right, is that a very tough decision had to be made to allow these workers to cross the picket line to honor their own contracts, right? And these are union folks who feel like if they had any other chance to really try and make this work for themselves without losing out on their own work, then they probably wouldn't do that. But in a gesture of solidarity between these unions, the local is letting them pass, right?

These are local workers. These are union tradespeople. These are electricians and carpenters and all these folks who have existing contracts that they have to honor. right? Because the factory workers aren't the only people who have contracts with Kellogg's, you know? And it puts you in this really fucked up bind because you know that the corporation is doing the shit on purpose, right? And is planned for this, right? And wants this to happen because, again, it's a divide and conquer strategy. And if you don't understand sort of the nuance of what solidarity looks like within these types of actions, you may miss the point. a little bit, you know.

And, you know, Dan Osborne, when I was on the phone with him, like two days ago, I said, you know, it was a really tough decision to make, but we didn't want to jeopardize their own contracts because they are union brothers and sisters. And solidarity goes both ways. Right, exactly. As far as the rest of the scab situation goes, I mean, they still are trying to keep the plant running.

And picketers are justifiably upset about it, you know. scab workers are shitty it's shitty you know um that these companies also put these people in this position to cross a picket line because the uh you know their own economic situation is so fucked that they're willing to take scab pay yeah you know principles morals and ethics be damned you know what i mean um and it sucks totally that's a huge that's another complexity and wrinkle that can often be sort of bypassed and seen in a one-dimensional way, but you're finding more desperate people. And that's always been the case. And that's why the reserve army of labor is so important under capitalism. And keeping an underclass of people perpetually precarious and desperate

helps in precisely this sort of situation because those people become the scabs. And then, yeah, you have the other complexity where a big-ass plant like Kellogg's has to work with, let's say, the IBEW, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. And so they have a separate contract. They're not factory workers of Kellogg's, right? They're a union that is contracted out to come to some other stuff. And so how do we engage with this

business in the middle of our union brothers and sisters going through this? Right. And so you have complexity on both sides of that particular debate. Right. I mean, Dan Osborne, when he was talking about it, he was like, I was ready to go into this meeting, you know, calling him scabs, scum of the earth,

you know, because they're taking our fucking jobs, you know, and we're standing on the line and we're fighting for this and they don't care about this, why, you know, and instead over the course of what was a very difficult conversation, they, you know, they came to this space where they realized that this type of solidarity was necessary, right, and that the situation was shitty from all sides, you know, and they, you know, the impression I got over the course of that phone call is they left that meeting with a certain level of respect, right? and that everyone was a little disappointed.

You know what I mean? So, I mean, that's like tough decisions that have to be made within these types of labor disputes, you know? And it's just interesting to see this play out from my limited position, you know. I'm a member of the IWW and, you know, as far as like my experience on picket lines, I personally haven't experienced too many.

And so being able to talk to these folks and see what they're going through and the conversations with them has been extremely impactful to my own political education. Absolutely. And that's another reason why I want to re-plug the Working People podcast with Max Alvarez

and his recent episode, he had one of the workers from Kellogg's on to talk about the intricacies of that from the perspective of somebody in that particular struggle. And Capital has a much easier time in situations like this broadly aligning. They're on the same page. Extract as much profit.

as is possible. Working class has these divisions within it. And when capital can play on those divisions, to any extent, it benefits capital. And the labor has to navigate situations and fractures that just don't exist on the capital side. So it makes it harder as well. And I get a lot of this firsthand info because, as I said, my stepbed is a union steward of a very large dairy factory.

He led recently. The past couple years, it was ununionized. and he led the struggle to get it unionized with the Teamsters. And they're looking over at Kellogg's, and they're using what's happening with the Kellogg's plant as material and educational context for them to talk to their own workers, you know, try to get their own unions and try to attack this two-tier situation in a similar way.

They're not to the point of going on strike yet, but it certainly puts those cards on the table in a new way for them when they're looking, you know, across the city and seeing their other union brothers and sisters doing exactly that. Now, we have this element where, we're having this historic strike way by any measure, you know, the U.S. working class is a beaten down entity for so many decades. And finally, there's a little breathing room. They're taking advantage of it.

And I do not want to say that there's absolutely no mainstream media coverage because there has been some. But it's never in proportion to the level of coverage that these things deserve, especially how essential it is for an issue like economic inequality. So what are your thoughts on the mainstream media, the importance of, of independent media, independent journalists like yourself on covering these issues, and why mainstream media has an entrenched interest to necessarily not overly glorify and push these images up in front of the American Working Cloud? Well, you know, as we see with interactions with police, you know, mainstream media has vested interest in keeping the ear of these companies and being sort of stenographers for their statements, right? I wrote an article with The Real News,

which is Max Alvarez is the editor-in-chief of the real news. And he reached out to me and he said he had talked to the union president who was very disappointed with the way that the mainstream media outlets who were calling him, talking to him, and then putting out these articles with this information that's just kind of like uncritically repeated from Kellogg's spokespeople about how much money they make a year and how the terms of their contract is super generous.

you know, because these workers make $120,000 a year. The top-tier workers in the union, yeah. Yeah. The thing is, though, they're making it working 90-hour work weeks. Right, right. You know, they're working seven days a week, 16 hours a day. There's mandatory overtime. Working conditions are shit, right?

They work for three months on end without a day off, you know. Some of them barely get six to seven hours of sleep if they can, you know, they'll get off work at 8 p.m. and it have to be back in at 3 a.m., you know. It's your entire life. Yeah, yeah. Some of the workers on the line talked about how in their orientation, the company touted that they had a 50% divorce rate among new employees married.

Yeah. Not surprising, but heartbreaking still. You know, families don't see each other. You know, these kids are out on the picket line with their parents because it's the first time they've seen their parents for longer than two hours, you know, in months. right yeah no it's it's absolutely sort of heartbreaking when you think about the impact that it has on families but a lot of that pride you know can come from a union job where you you have the good but yeah i work my ass off i don't see my family as much as i want but i provide for them they are taking care of

you know i have the solidarity of a union and just just having a union just having that sort of communal you know struggle inherent in the workplace can bring a lot of dignity to the workplace as opposed to not having that and realizing you're just a lone individual that is absolutely powerless. Or in so many of these businesses where you have the HR presenting itself as if it's going to do what a union does for you. And you realize very quickly, if you've ever had any interaction with HR, that it is just the mouthpiece of management, of capital. They're not there to help you whatsoever. Well, and funnily enough, workers at the Kellogg's plant says that, you know, the HR offices have like, rows three by three, six offices with one door that opens up to the factory floor.

The only door that remains closed and locked is the one door that opens up to the factory floor. Amazing. So HR's not there for you. Yeah, yeah, literal representation of that. Keep the barbarians out. Yeah, right. So where do you even address your grievances, you know? Exactly.

And I think also the saying, you know, there's power in a union, it also cuts through the alienation. that, you know, we all experience as being members of a society that is marred by capitalism. These union workers, you know, the limited amount of solidarity I can get from the IWWFJU has been a boon during the pandemic, you know. Just knowing that you have people who are standing shoulder to shoulder to try and push back against the onslaught of just exploitation is extremely. extremely important, you know, staves off some of the madness, you know. Totally. I think I had my stepdad was telling me a situation as the union steward where he had a, you know, a working class woman of color, you know, who's like a more entry-level worker, and I forget

the details because it happened quite a while ago, but basically her kid got called from school and had like an injury and was very sick or something. She had to leave job because she's, you know, a single parent, had to leave the job and go and take care of the kid and was docked points for that you know like you know you've lost out now on some other time off sort of thing right she just you know nothing she could do in any context but they had just unionized and so she went to my stepdad and like what can we do and just putting up the fight you know just like going in there and being like fuck you can't do this you know um that can mean the difference and just like how you feel going into work every day um it's not perfect

and there's much more that needs to be done but it's something and to feel like you're not not utterly powerless in and of itself is sort of spiritually and psychologically reifying. But, you know, as with any uprising by the working class, there's going to be reaction. We've talked a little bit about it already. I know I was just listening on some stuff with dollar trees. Dollar trees are ubiquitous across the country are staples now, sadly, of rural communities who have been economically devastated. Maybe you can't even get to a Walmart, but you have a dollar tree.

and these workers, I mean, have always been treated like absolute shit. Payment is absolutely terrible. And now there's finally some rumblings of some dollar tree workers trying to look at this union strike wave and see maybe we can do something like this as well. And then there's the reaction by corporate. And in this case, one of the things that they're doing, and this really walks the boundaries between legality and illegality here. But what they'll do is they'll, or like Starbucks is another example of this where they're doing

similar tactics. They'll bring in out-of-state special managers. to work on the floor next to workers, to keep an ear to the ground, be able to push back against any union talk in real time, or what a Starbucks is doing is flooding the branches that have this union rabble-rousing going on with brand-new workers. So you've got workers that are just happy to have a job. They're there one week,

and how are you going to catch them up to speed and get them inspired to do this thing. So these tactics are very much at play. Do you know of any other explicit tactics? that management and capital use in these particular context outside of what we've already talked about? Anything come to mind? Thinking about, you know, these hiring these sort of private consultants for, you know,

$900 an hour to come in and do these anti-union sort of presentations. You saw that in Amazon. You see that. And I think Starbucks just has something similar. And you see these more when people are trying to form unions, where you see. have these groups coming in and say, you don't want to sign yes on that ballot card because then you're, you know, you're stuck and like it's just super overt, like shitty anti-union propaganda.

Fear mongering. Yeah. And, you know, from like an outsider's perspective, sometimes it looks really absurd, you know, mostly because we both implicitly understand that despite many, many flaws with many, many types of unions, collective worker organizing is always going to be a better solution. right? Yeah. But to some folks inside of these conversations, I mean, you saw it with the no evil foods where they were giving anti-union presentations, you know, that were just like, you know, captive audience of workers.

You have to sit through hours and hours of this stuff, you know, to try and stop a union from forming, you know, even before it begins, right? And like, there's no, they have nearly infinite resources when it comes to these larger corporations. And we have an NLRB that is doing its best, but is not very strong, you know, and it takes a long time sometimes for these worker complaints to be investigated. So a lot of times you kind of lose momentum when you have to deal with this kind of stuff. I'm thinking about like the Bessemer Union election for Amazon. Yep. And Alabama. Yep.

And, you know, the various things that Amazon was doing to try and stop this. election from happening or from being successful and the NLRB ended up finding I think like out of the how I don't know how many complaints they had but like a solid chunk of those complaints essentially rendered the election invalid if I remember correctly including putting a post office box directly outside of the Amazon facility and saying you can drop your ballots in there and it was discovered that Amazon was the one who petition the post office to put that box there. My God. You know, directly interfering with this whole process, you know.

And it's wild to me because all it is usually is just power dynamics, you know, and greed, right? Especially in that pre-union context where you don't even have the union yet. You're just trying huge disadvantage. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, on the other end with the contract negotiations, most of the time what it comes down to is that, that companies just don't want to concede because they lose power and authority in the workplace. And they lose out on a comparatively little amount of money, right? The CEO of

Kellogg's said that he would be willing to spend $10 million a day keeping strikers out on the line. I think the total raise for equal pay over the course of a year, I think, was like $60 million. So in the first six days of the strike, he spent more than he would have spent if he had just agreed to the contract terms, right? So it comes down to what? Your pockets aren't deep enough and you want them to be deeper, right? And you do not want to concede any sort of power or any sort of authority to your workforce because then that's dangerous for you as a capitalist, right? And it's dangerous to capital broadly to see any one of these things. It's kind of like the analogy would be, it's dangerous to the American Empire to have a socialist project succeed anywhere in the globe.

So it has to go the globe over and crush it, drown it in blood oftentimes. There's a similar dynamic here. You can't see it. And I think that also plays into the media, which is, you know, mainstream media is corporate. You know, it's corporate interest. They don't really have an interest in showing workers. This is a possibility. And actually, look at these are very successful and look at all your.

your brothers and sisters are out here already doing it and like people start thinking like wow so to keep that out of the eye and especially to focus on culture war bullshit from the liberal center does its own version and the reactionary right both have their own versions of hyper emphasizing the culture war as a way to obscure the class war right and the biggest threat to this entire fucking system is a militant multiracial working class movement and both the Democratic Party in its apparatchiks as well as the Republican Party in its apparatchiks will do anything it can to stop that from ever forming. And if you look at the picket lines on all of these places, you see real America and all of its glorious diversity. And that sort of struggle, I think

it does more to bring people together across cultural divides, ethnic divides, even political divides. So you have a big factory like Kellogg's or John Deere, anything like that going on strike every political position imaginable is going to be represented absolutely but those political differences which in other times could cause a fucking bar fight um are set aside because there's a common economic underlying interest between these workers so i'm a black woman with progressive politics and this is a white man with maybe even pro-Trump politics but we're standing shoulder to shoulder fighting capital and that i think is also a huge piece of the mainstream media not wanting to get too deep into it and really scaring capital broadly.

Well, yeah, and that brings you back to the train of thought that I lost. The concept here, like the funny thing here, there are union drives happening within mainstream media. Specific newsrooms or unionizing or, you know, folding into guilds and they're trying to, well, it's a little late, in my opinion, but they're trying to stop the hemorrhaging of workers from, you know, the journalism. industry. A lot more... Because it's become so precarious and shit. It is.

Yeah, you know, a vast majority of them, I would say, are freelancers like myself. We don't have the ability to organize for benefits and support within newsrooms because we are not in one, right? And we can be exploited as a workforce. And I would say the vast majority of reporters will write these stories, but the heads of these corporate media conglomerates have a vested interest. in maintaining a line that sort of they couch in this objectivity or both sides, right? You need to get all sides of the story and present it without context so that someone reads it

and makes their own informed opinion. At what point is that sort of like malpractice to not give context, right? So these mainstream outlets are reporting on Kellogg's by saying these people are making $120,000 a year. But they aren't providing the context necessary, right? And independent news outlets like the real news in these times, these sort of progressive-leaning outlets, provide context and nuance to this because that's what it is, right? And I think it's interesting as well to see, you know, the diversity of the picket line is exactly what you see when you go out there. You know, they're like, we don't care if you're a Republican or Democrat, right?

what we care about is that those people are fucking us over and they have the power to not do it and our only power is to withhold our labor until they stop fucking us over. Right. Collectively, importantly. It only works if you're also on this picket line with me. Exactly, exactly. But the thing is also there is an incredible level of class consciousness on that picket line, you know, hearing it from folks who are my age to folks who have been on that factory line.

for 36 years, you know, who clearly have politics that are much different from mine, they're still talking about the working class as this cohesive economic entity, right? And that's really fucking cool, you know, to be able to, like, sit there and have that conversation with people who are just members of the community, who probably didn't even pay attention to protests or elections in the way that you and I and others like us obsess over. And, you know, fold into our brains over. Fold into our personality at this point, you know. But, like, they still have that class consciousness that we talk about all the time, right?

And they put words to it, and it's eloquent, and it's always an interesting conversation. And especially in a strike situation, it's just laid out so plainly, you know, that corporate greed, whatever, you know, ruling class owners are pitting the workforce against each. other and the only way through that is to not let that affect the workforce and to actually withhold labor collectively yeah right and you collect a fucking middle finger up to these dudes you know what I mean and you know so many of these folks and maybe this can sort of tie into a larger conversation about the strike wave I interviewed one of the electricians he's a full-time worker he works as an electrician's apprentice

he's been there for about seven years he distinctly said this is a fight that we need to show other members of the working class that is possible that we can do this that someone may be inspired by our strike and be able

to have the courage to do it themselves you know to work collectively as a force against these assholes you know because for them it's all about putting food on their families table and they they understand that this is a collective struggle nationwide you know which was really fucking cool to hear you know yeah absolutely and that's the essential importance of unions is

that it instills that class consciousness in you just by virtue of you joining and entering that union all of my buddies from high school right all the all the dudes I grew up with have known since I was a teenager sometimes younger you know that are still in my life that are life like the brothers to me. They're all union guys. And we live in Nebraska, deep red state, 98, 96% white state. These are guys who, you know, hunters, fishermen could so easily be brought rightward just by their general cultural context. But it's specifically and precisely their union involvement that shifts their politics radically to the left. They're not perfect, you know, but it's enough to say all of my friends, for example, except maybe one who we dunk on routinely against Trump for

exactly this reason. They understand the economic context and they don't get blinded by this silly culture war ephemera that is so often used to obscure those realities. My stepdad. Another example. A white, you know, Czech, you know, second or third generation immigrant, but he was a military veteran, you know, had shitty sort of right wing intuition. and instincts his whole life. Nothing crazy, but not fascist or anything, but, you know, America's great, blah, blah, blah. And it's precisely being in a hyper-diverse with plenty of immigrant dairy factory context and then him leading the union struggle that has brought his politics radically to the left

and has even reached out to me and try to get some advice on how he can get past the blind spots he has as a white guy to be able to talk to a black woman, you know, in a way that he might not have been able to. but that the union, his union experiences instill in him is not only necessary but important and good for his own development. And he recently made a flyer, right? He had some input on a flyer trying to agitate the workers at the plant that he works at. And he specifically chose a black man as the image to put on it because he's like, you know, we have a diverse working class group and it shows that our economic struggle can unite us across race. to hear somebody like him talk, a 55-year-old white American veteran talk like that is really beautiful. And so whatever the, all this is to say, whatever the politics of individuals on the picket line are.

And like, for example, we saw a biker, all-white biker club, I think it was a John Deere thing, drive across and block scabs from getting in. That was Kellogg's. I took that video, yeah. You did, okay. Yeah. I was thinking, was that John Deere Kellogg's. Yeah, no, that was here in Omaha. Yeah, it was here in Omaha last Thursday.

Can you talk about that? Yeah, there was a number of motorcycle clubs that were represented. It was billed as a sort of cycle around Kellogg's kind of thing. I think iron workers were represented. There were Hell's Angels there. There were Val Halla there. Wild. Yeah, there were a bunch of different clubs there representing a wide range of political ideologies.

And there were about 120 of them. And they were running circles around the. the plant because there's six gates that people are picketing at. And it runs around the entire plant. So they were going around. And then I don't know if it was security or it was a scab. I'm not sure, but they were trying to get through the picket line to get into the gates. Pick the wrong time to try to turn in.

And the bikers came back around. And they just horseshoot around this car and got off their bikes, shook hands with the strikers and started smoking a cigarette. There was no intimidation. They didn't talk to the guy. You know, the guy didn't want to talk to any of the picketers who were trying to talk to him. So they all just left him alone and just parked there. And they smoked cigarettes.

They were talking to each other. They're laughing, joking. They didn't even pay attention to him. And then the cops got called. And the cops show up. And once the cops show up, they just go, okay, flick their cigarettes, get back on their bikes. And they just slowly. Because they're technically not allowed to physically.

block. They can't block it. They can obscure and they kind of walk that line. Right. Yeah. Once the cops show up, you know, the whole idea is not a cause of problem. Right. And you don't want picketers being arrested and having, you know, strike funds being used to bail people out of jail, you know. So they saw the cops come up. So they got back on their bikes. There was quite a traffic jam to try and get a, you know, get everyone back around. And then about 20 minutes later, scab buses that had gone in before they showed up, or had to leave. So they caused another traffic jam.

And again, the cops showed up and ushered these scabs past the picket line because police unions are only good for protecting yourself, apparently. And solidarity doesn't exist among pigs. Absolutely. But, yeah, so they were there for about an hour and a half. And then, you know, it ended peacefully. There was no major issue. The whole idea is just kind of slow people down and make it difficult.

Exactly. And to pick up on the thread that I was starting to unravel there and that you added a lot of context for is that regardless, because like, you know, a motorcycle club, white guys on motorcycles, you could see some of them being literal bikers for Trump in a different context. but what this does politically is it inherently and intrinsically benefits the working class left against the reactionary petty bourgeois fascist right who ultimately even though they pick up the rhetoric of working class politics ultimately serve capital and that's obvious and so they depend on these culture war and these racial divisions to to protect capital and advance their own grotesque political project and obviously the corporate liberal center does not benefit by a militant working class on the on the move um and so the the left benefits and the left benefits not from

watering down its politics to be like okay let's let these right wingers in but it but precisely for what i was saying on the picket line and the worker struggle you stop seeing let's say your black co-worker as somebody on the other side of a racial line and you see them on the same side as you of a class line. And that does more to humanize the other than almost anything else. Being involved directly in a struggle with that person for both of your economic benefit can do more to dismantle the white identity and the racialist and nationalism that the right wants to promote. So in that sense, it will always, I think, benefit the left and it will be to our advantage. Well, and I think it's going to make it a lot more difficult to destabilize a

movement of that nature. The plurality of the people involved in it means that you can't really, one, you can't find a specific leader to try and take out or bring it to the table in order to stop a certain thing from happening. You saw that with the yellow vests, right? The various groups represented within these types of movements form a larger hole, and it's really hard. If you have this through line of working class struggle, to try and pick it apart, right? Exactly. And it keeps the, you know, it keeps it cohesive and strong for as long as it needs to be

in order for, for us to really shift and change conditions in this country. Exactly. And just to touch on this point, because I think it's worth mentioning, is like we know how the right divides the working class along racial, ethnic nationalist lines. The corporate liberal Democratic Party center left also does it, but in the opposite way. So what they basically do is they elevate. and center the voices of a multiracial but upper class crust. So you'll have like, you know, the Joanne Reads and, you know, the Obamas and, you know,

we're against Trump and these racial politics and that's all great and dandy and we agree. But they'll strip out the class as well. And so you actually end up by emphasizing the other side of that thing, of that racial divide. You end up obscuring class realities as well. And it's obviously in their donor class interest. to not want a multiracial working class movement to rise up. And with Black Lives Matter, for example, you also had that multiracial element, often from the working class, grassroots, bottom up,

and it scared the hell out of everybody. Now, the corporate center, unlike the reactionary right, can say we support Black Lives Matter in its racial attempt to integrate into the broader class structures that we actually want to preserve. And so we see it as like commonsensical and tactical to like diversions. the system as it exists, but we cannot let that attempt be turned into a multiracial working class thing that actually challenges the entire class structure. And we know, as good leftists, that the only way to address a lot of these racial disparities in our society is to

weld it to a robust working class policy or grassroots revolutionary movement. And that's what will advance the ball ultimately for a lot of these inequities that aren't directly economic. So in that way, as well, it benefits the left. I just think it's worth pointing out how the corporate liberal democratic center does the same thing, ultimately, that the right does, just in a very inverted way. They obscure the various intersections in order to serve the interests of themselves. Exactly. When those intersections are extremely important, not to obscure. Totally. All right. Well, let's go ahead and wrap up with a final question. One, if you have anything else that you wanted to say that you didn't get out, let me know. We're going to

continue monitoring this. You're going to continue monitoring this as well. And I encourage everybody else to keep an eye on it. But the last question I sort of want to end on is how can regular people who might not be a part of the union assist in what's going on right now? And you mentioned strike funds as one way, if you could elaborate on that. Yeah, specifically with the Kellogg's strike. Each plant has their own strike fund. It's either a GoFundMe or PayPal, and I can give you a list of them for you to put on your page. From a broader perspective, solidarity and community support

is literally pretty much the only thing that sustains these people during strikes. You know, strike funds can be flush like the UAW, or they can be meager like they are with BCTGM International. I think each worker, as long as their dues paying, gets about $100 a week, which is not enough. Yeah. You know, they're living off their savings, right? The other thing is showing up to the picket line. You saw, I don't know if you saw the news recently about, I think it was in Davenport, Iowa City.

Some city in Iowa, a judge issued an injunction against the picketers saying that only eight people could be on the picket line at any one time. And if cops showed up, like, say, during shift change or whatever, that there were more than eight John Deer workers on the picket line to any entrance to a John Deer plant, they would be arrested. The community responded by planning a protest on the picket line. They're like, if you can't have eight workers on the picket line, then we'll come out and have a protest because we are allowed to be here, you know. And so they have bolstered the picket lines at pretty much every location during this John Deere strike, which is absolutely amazing, right? That's great. The big thing is listen to what the unions are asking for. Some of them call for boycott.

Some of them don't. Kellogg's has an official, you know, the union for this strike has an officially called for a boycott. But they're cool if you don't buy the products. You know what I mean? But the big thing is, you know, if you can donate to a strike fund, do something. So go to the picket line and talk to your neighbors, you know. The AFL-CIO has a strike map that pretty much represents almost every region in the United States of a picket nearby that you can stop by and support. There are something like 11 or 12 either strikes or authorized strike authorizations for private sector companies across the United States.

health care workers are also authorizing strikes, airline workers are authorizing strikes. There's a lot of labor work that's happening currently, labor actions that are happening currently, and it's probably close by you. So don't be afraid or embarrassed to drive up to a picket line and say, hey, I live down the street, I heard about the strike. What do you need? Right. You know, how can I help?

Can I stand with you for an hour? Hi, my name's so-and-so. Let's get to know each other. Because ultimately, these are your neighbors. Exactly. You know, especially in a town like Omaha, these are our neighbors, you know. They are people who have lived here their entire lives, and you have a lot more in common with them than you think. Yeah.

So just go out there and say hi. Exactly. They need the support. So, yeah, if you have any left platform, whether that's on social media or left media, get the word out about it. If you are part of an organization or just as an individual, go join the picket line. As you said, donate to strike funds. anything and everything that you can do to help get the word out and to show direct support. I mean, for example, I think there was a rally where it was just vehicles driving by and sort of like honking and throwing out the solidarity fist, just showing that, you know, this is whose side we're on.

And yeah, it's an absolutely wonderful thing. It's fraught with challenges and obstacles. But when working class people come together and fight for their benefits, it benefits the entire working class. class. And unions becoming more prevalent benefits, even non-union workers. And so even if you're not in a union, seeing these labor struggles succeed on behalf of labor benefits you in the long run and in the short run and in the medium run. And so it's really all hands on deck in whatever ways that you can. Mel, as always, I really appreciate your insight. I love your coverage, your journalism, your activism, being on the ground in these movements and keeping people informed

with a really principled left-wing voice before I let you go. Can you let anybody know where they can find you and your work online? Yeah, I'm mostly on Twitter. You can find me at Cold Brood Tool on Twitter. I'm currently working on a book on alternative media called Fuck Your Newsroom, which will be coming out at the end of next year, 2023, with or books, and you can find that link to my profile. And I'm also working on a podcast at some point.

released called Morning Riot Podcast. So plenty of projects that I'm working on. If you want to shoot me a DM and yell at me or tell me how great I'm doing, my DMs are open. So talk to me. Cool. Thank you for having me on. For sure. And I'll be a guest on your podcast. We're going to record that next. So definitely check out that. I'll link to it in the show notes. When it comes out, producer Dave, before you got here said that you're one of his favorite Twitter accounts, hands down because of the pragmatic, practical information that you offer. from a really principled perspective. So you've been on many times.

You'll be on many times more, especially with that new book comes out. Yeah. Make your Rev. Left stop for sure. Hell, yeah. And keep up the good work. Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

It was already meager, this work and reward for selling off the best years of your life. And the 30 bits of silver that you hope to call your own turned into shoes for some rich bankers' wife. It's a high wire rat With a safety net and tatters

And a target on your back A target on your back You're worth more than they'll ever pay you Don't let your desire To please other people betray you you may work for a day or a decade oh wake up feeling groggy and wondering if it was a fair trade well we're polishing our nest eggs we're checking our accounts

we're saving something for any day but the fabric and the texture and the cut our lives are things that we're so quick to trade away If the price is right Then how come it's no comfort When I lie awake at night I wake at night You're worth more than they'll ever pay you

Don't let your desire to please other people betray you you may work for a day or a decade oh wake up feeling groggy and wondering if it was a fair trade it was already meager this working reward for selling off the best years of your life the best years of your life all the best years of your life The best years of your life

There's a city in my mind Come along and take that right It's all right Maybe it's all right But it's very far away And it's closer every day And it's all right Maybe it's all right

They can tell you what to do And they'll make a fool of you And it's all right Maybe it's all right But the world is ending fast When he soon will breathe a last It's all right Maybe it's all right

Yeah, yeah. Your word more than they'll ever pay you. Let your desire to please other people betray you You may work for a day or a decade Aw Wake up feeling groggy and wondering if it was a fair trade It was already meager this work and reward Thank you.