Trillbilly Worker's Party - Unlocked Episode: Labor Daze

Episode Date: September 12, 2017

We're unlocking our Labor Day special with Michelle Miller, co-founder of coworker.org, because it's a Monday and we had to work today and work sucks. If it's not obvious at this point the topic of discussion is WORK.

And welcome back everybody to the McLaughlin group. I'm your host, McLaughlin. McLaughlin. Joining us today are David Brooks from the New York Times. Hey, hi, good to be here. And Louise Minch. Louise Minch. I'm so fucking stupid.

Who, Louise Minch is? No, I am. Oh, you're so stupid. Yeah, I was so Louise Minch. Who the fuck is Louise Minch? You're a Twitter neophyte, I can tell. She's like a... I can't keep up with Twitter.

I can't keep up with you. I do my best. That's all a... I can't keep up with Twitter. I can't keep up with you. I do my best. That's all I got. You're doing good. I see you out there on the streets. Hey, I've got a question for you. I just was looking back through my phone. You never told me who Louise Manch is.

Oh, she's just some conspiracy theorist. She's like the Alex Jones of the resistance. That's the best way for me to put it. The Guardian put out this article about how she was taking all of her talking points from some sort of hoaxster person. Yeah. I saw the headline. I've not read it yet. I'm pretty into conspiracy theories, so that's been all of the far stretch.

It's not fun, conspiracy theories. It's incredibly paranoid. Well, no, I don't even know how to put it. It's just not fun. She takes all the fun out of conspiracy theories, God damn it. Is that possible? Somehow.

Is that possible? Yeah, if you're taking all the fun out of conspiracy theories, it's possible. Alex Jones has done this recently, too. Alex Jones is no fun anymore. Well, he went, you know, since he went hard for Trump. Was he fun before that? You know, like.

I guess he was funny a little bit. Sneaking into, like, Bohemian Grove and shit was, like, uh... Yeah. It was totally performative and absurd, but it was funny. Wait, he actually went to Bohemian Grove? Well, like, me and Tom watched the video one time. It's him and John Ronson. You know, the author

John Ronson. It's funny, like, they don't actually go in. They just, like, film shit from, like, the outside of it. Oh, my God. And they use editing to make it look like they're actually going in there. But they don't actually go in. It's like a porno without the money shot. It never actually comes.

Yeah. It's just insinuate. It's just implied. Yeah. There are people. It's like the Bigfoot videos. It's like, there it is. There it is. Look. It's moving in the woods. Right, right, right. There's like the Bigfoot videos. There it is, there it is, look. It's moving in the woods.

There's movement. Something sort of like that. Lord. Anyways, yeah, Louise Minch. So, what do we got on the what do we got in the old

hopper this week? What do we got in the, what do we got in the old hopper this week? What do we got in the old silo? The old. The joke silo. Bread basket. We need a granary, like a joke granary where you go and you do the. Not jokes. My McLaughlin group intro was the best

I had this week actually and I actually thought about that on the toilet this morning I thought it'd be funny if I but you didn't have

my character Lando no no no I just had mine I just did that part on the fly but I thought if we ever do a live show

that's how I would intro us I'm really not I was thinking about this the other night I was sort of stoned by myself at my house and I was just like shocker I was thinking about this the other night I was sort of stoned by myself at my house and I was just like thinking about

shocker I was thinking about how like deeply unfunny I actually am like I don't know a thing about structuring jokes or yeah he I mean Tom this week was like man we really could go on the road with Lee Baines and I was like I cannot imagine

how loud the boos would be. We would bomb and it would like totally ruin their thing. We would bomb so hard. I'd be like, man, this is just not really working out. This ain't gonna work when I fly you asses home. Right, right. I feel like it would just bomb all of our entire lives because we'd never recover from a full stage. Just fucking break down.

So I was wondering this about, you remember I texted y'all over the weekend and said, I bought an announcement about Ray's Law. You remember that? I do now. Oh shit, my phone died. I can't actually do this.

You don't have it in your hand? So I was looking on the internet. I thought maybe perhaps I may have found something that disproved Ray's law, which is that I can't find any cases of... Actually, this is not really Ray's law. But I was going to say that with the eclipse, I think the basic structure of Ray's law is basically that if it can happen, it will.

Yeah. Or it has. Or it has. Although specifically, that's... If it can happen, it will. I think that's Murphy's Law. That's Murphy's Law. Ray's Law.

You're competing on his territory. Ray's Law specifically has to do with narcopheria. Sexual deviant. Yeah, necrophilia. But I was wondering if there's anything related to the eclipse. Surely, I mean, people contacted the state of North Carolina

to inquire about conception tents. You know? Were they trying to take, but were they trying to take their dead mother into a conception tent? Do you think anybody's ever taken their dead mother into a conception tent during an eclipse? That has never happened. It has never happened.

That's probably never happened. Well, I don't know. It's like, obviously we're around for the eclipse of 62. Well, when me and Tom were talking about this the other day with Alex and her sister, we were talking about perhaps the best known example of this would be 9-11. What was the craziest shit happening in the towers on 9-11? I mean, really, it could be anything, right? And the scenario that me and Tom came up with, wasn't it something like... A blind guy was jacking off his service dog

Oh my god A blind guy was I think it was a blind guy was fingering a goat I think that's what it was In the towers I thought it was a blind guy Was jacking off his service dog Now we're getting into Mandela

That makes more sense because why the fuck would anyone have a goat In the Twin Towers during that one But someone was jacking off his service dog. Now we're getting into Mandela. That makes more sense because why the fuck would anyone have a goat in the Twin Towers during that one? But someone was jacking off their service dog in the Twin Towers. Dear God. And they were just sitting there like... It's like the whole building shakes a little bit.

That he didn't know what the fuck was going on. Yeah. Oh shit. I mean, when you started this I was going on. Yeah. Oh, shit. Oh, my God. I mean, when you started this, I was going to say, oh, probably coworkers were secretly fucking in a closet somewhere and thought they had gotten caught. Well, yeah, that happened. That was as weird as I was getting in my head.

That definitely happened. It would have been pretty crazy, though, if you were doing that. We just went to 100 there, didn't we? Yeah. If you came, though though right as the plane hit, just a few floors above you. Could have been a really intense orgasm.

Like the shake of the earth. You conceived a child and named it Bahamadatta. We need to hold this bit until September, the week before September 11th. Can you imagine how fucking funny September 11th is going to be you imagine how fucking funny september 11th is gonna be this year with president trump as president oh the smoke the there's a video

dog and pony show it's gonna be big there's a video clip of him from 9-11 actually um i think it's on the morning show or some shit like that or a radio show i can't remember what it was where he's he says something like oh now the trump tower is the tallest tower in manhattan oh my god yeah what if on this september 11th someone does something to the trump towers he really jesus christ i can't believe he said that yeah no it's gonna be great though it's gonna be really funny like you know like it was really funny to see him and Melania go down to Texas. And, like, Melania's wearing, like, six-inch heels, like, for, like, a photo op for, like, fucking flooding. Like, the biggest environmental catastrophe of this century probably so far. She's out fucking Dior.

Ready to pull fucking people out of the water. Oh, my God. Well, anyways. I'd write her closet. I couldn't fit any of it, but I'd take all her handbags. Fuck it, you'd sell it. Yeah, I'd take it all to Annie's.

I don't just dole this out liberally, but Trump is a shit for brains. That's a classic insult we didn't bring back. He is just a shit for brains. That's a classic insult we didn't bring back. He is just a shit for brains. Sometimes I wonder, though.

I actually talked to someone about this after the eclipse, when the picture leaked of him staring right at the sun. I thought, maybe there is a genius marketer, marketing intern, some fool that's hanging around like you know be great if we could picture him to stare at the Sun staring at the Sun people love it people talk about it for days well that's one things conservatives do like doing funny absurd self-owned shit just to own lives and that is good That is the kind of shit that could conceivably be one of them. What would be even funnier to me is if Trump was actually partially blind now, but he was just playing it off like he's not.

I'm not going to admit it. For some reason, somebody resurfaced that picture from the Oval Office with Kellyanne. It was like when all these HBCU presidents were in the West Wing. And she's sitting on the couch with her feet in the couch. It's just her knees. She looks like an amputee. And it's hard to believe that's a real picture. The funny thing is that somebody...

Whatever happened to her? Did she get the ax? Oh, yeah. Did she? I think she's still there. Really? The funniest Photoshop I saw of that photo was somebody had just very slightly put a Pornhub logo in the bottom right corner of that photo. Yeah, that's pretty good.

Oh, Lord. Pornhub always has the best April Fool's Day situation. Have y'all been to Pornhub on April Fool's Day? I remember I did Pornhub. Pornhub on April 4th day? I remember when they did Pornhub. Pornhub was so good. You know, I haven't really been watching porn lately at all. I haven't watched porn in a really long time now that I think about it. It's been months.

Tell it to somebody who believes you. I haven't either. I can tell you last time I looked at porn. No, I mean like, I've gone through... I've just been re-watching the L word. I go through faces faces Is that porn? Sometimes Occasionally

Is there pee in What is the L Word? Is that the porn you're watching? People peeing on each other? You're so fucking vile No no no I don't watch You all make me out

To be the freak here I just told you I haven't watched porn In a long time I literally haven't. You know, the L word is nostalgic porn because I watched it through the lines on Showtime as a child. You know? What is the L word?

Wait, what? This is even more layered. Listen, so. So you're jacking off, like you're masturbating to. Pre-internet. Nostalgia. Teenage. Softcore.

Nostalgic softcore porn. No porn no i mean i'm not it doesn't show penetration in that show right you're not getting it's insinuated isn't it it's softcore you're watching softcore porn that's just those gyrations and it's just like that's what i'm watching on netflix i'm like going back and forth between that and this other crazy netflix original and so it's the closest thing i'm watching to porn. I'm like going back and forth between that and this other crazy Netflix original. And so, it's the closest thing I'm watching to porn right now

because I haven't watched You're jacking off like a 12-year-old boy. I'm not jacking off. That's what I'm telling you. This is how I got off in high school. I was watching like

softcore porn through the lines on Showtime at my dad's house. To China? Is that what you're talking about? When you're jacking off to China? Oh, God.

She had massive boobs. She had huge, she? Oh, God. She had massive boobs. She had huge, huge tits. She had massive arms and thighs. Hey, you fucking judge her. If I had to guess, I'd say she had a massive clit. I was always into she did. That was proven. Remember that night in China?

Oh, God. I'd buried that. Her and X-Pac, X-Pac rocking a fucking four-incher just trying to go to town on that woman. Oh, my God. Oh, my dear, sweet Jesus. It's funny because he used to have, his first wrestling name was the 123 Kid. Oh, hell yeah. Dear God.

I don't know why that's funny. Just smile it out quickly. Yeah, do you want to put this at the beginning of this episode or at the end? We'll do some creative editing. This could be kind of funny. If we're going to put it at the beginning, hello everybody, welcome. Support our Patreon. Our guest is Michelle Miller.

If we're going to put it at the end, we're definitely the McLaughlin group. The beginning sounds right Okay Alright Well then let's remind everybody to Go to our Patreon Support us

Patreon.com Slash Trillbelly Workers Party That's T-R-I-L-L-B-I-L-L Y-W-O-R-K-E-R S What did y'all think Backslash What did y'all think

About the last Patreon episode We put up I wasn't with y'all Did y'all listen to it I haven't been able To listen to it yet Cause you're not

A Patreon supporter I'm not a I'm not a Patreon supporter I'm locked out Of my own goddamn Work of art Yeah that happens to me too I can't even figure out how to listen to that.

There are literally episodes on Patreon I have not heard. Yes, so listeners, I'm sure there's episodes that you haven't heard either. We're in this together. We're in this with you. Yeah, good to know. We'll all be hearing it for the first time. So go and become a Patreon for us. Patreon.

So anyways, yeah, our guest this week is Michelle Miller. She works for Coworker. She's founder of Coworker.org. Yeah. And we talked to her about some fun labor stuff. She's the boss bitch. I wonder what would happen if her employees started using Coworker.org to organize against her as the boss. Wouldn't that be meta?

Whoa. Think about it. Oh, shit. All right, well, there's only one way to find out. Stay tuned. The funniest part is that the five will get stuck sometimes. And just dial a bunch of five.

Dial a bunch of five. Dial a bunch of five. 555. 555. Hello? Hi. Hi. Yeah, you can hear us, Michelle. Hey, Michelle.

Hey, how's it going? I can hear you. Yay. Good. Good news. Yeah, good to have you join us today. Thanks. I'm glad to be here, to be here by phone. Yeah, good to have you join us today. Thanks. I'm glad to be here, to be here by phone.

Yeah. How was your Tuesday? It was pretty run-of-the-mill, running a non-profit Tuesday. Wrote some budget, did some calls. You know, standard stuff. Sounds sexy. Gave the appearance of doing work. Or is that just me?

I had a pretty interesting Tuesday. I had to go, I was telling Tom earlier, I had to go to the doctor and get a steroid shot in my ass. Oh, my God. Yeah. Now you're sharing it with the whole world. Now I'm sharing it with the whole world. Tom was like,

why did you do that? And I was like, I'm trying to get swole. I went to my doctor. I was like, I'm trying to get jacked, bro. That's covered under your plan. It's covered under my anthem plan.

No, I'm trying to get a big fat ass. It sucks not having an ass because it really does make- Sit on your spine all the time It hurts like shit No really it was for asthma You know I have all these physical problems Wrong with me

I try to pretend like I'm weed smoking Bourbon drinking Reprobate but I can't even eat god damn tomatoes In reality I can't even eat tomatoes Boy can't even eat goddamn tomatoes In reality I can't even eat tomatoes Boy can't process lettuce Oh lord The flat bottom boys in here

The flat bottom boys Oh thank you so much For agreeing to talk with us Yes We got things off to a good start By talking about my ass I mean I usually talk about your ass

So good I can do it with you That's our favorite It's a good ass breaker I mean, I usually talk about your ass, so good. I can do it with you. That's our favorite. It's a good ass breaker. Oh, shit. Oh, Lord. So, Michelle, will you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Sure. So I am a native West Virginian. Woo-hoo. Woo-hoo. So I am a native West Virginian living in Brooklyn right now. And I spend most of my time running this kind of nutso labor organization called Coworker.org. And, you know, we're kind of doing this thing where we're organizing in the wild and helping out like anybody that comes to our digital door and figuring out what the future of the labor movement is. And I am a huge fan of this podcast. So I'm really excited to be on today. Uh, so I'm really excited to be on today. Um, and just met you, Tanya, like a couple of weeks ago when I was down at Apple shop, taking a walk around with some friends that I wanted to show,

show off Whiteburg too. Yeah, you outed me. You outed my smutty podcast in front of my coworkers. I did. I did. I tried my travel companions. I tried to get them to listen to the Elizabeth Catt episode before we could go into Whiteburg, but they didn't do their homework. So I was kind of mad. I can relate to that. I can definitely relate to that. I'm staring right at Tanya as I say that. I rarely do my Trill Billy's homework. I did, however, look up a little bit about co-worker before this we I've been excited to talk with you mostly to hear about your West Virginia roots you said that I think it's cool you said you all organize in the wild so I wonder how your wild and wonderful roots have prepared you for that yeah so so yeah I grew up in northern West Virginia in Fairmont,

which is a town about 20 minutes south of Morgantown, where the big university is, but it's mostly coalfields and coaltown. And every man in my family, except my father, worked in the mines. And so I kind of grew up, my dad just like didn't work very much. So that's why he didn't work in the mines. So I kind of grew up really with this idea of the union as almost like a third pillar of authority and like your life, like there's like the government, there's the company, and then there's the union. And like, you know, watching Rich Trumka hang out in parking lots at mines on the local news, because he was like the president of the mine workers local near my house.

So, and my grandma actually grew up, like she was one of the first black lung check for Symbionts. She had to fight really hard to get the money after my grandfather died. And so like I just was sort of immersed in this story of labor versus capital and very keenly aware of like what side we were on and like throughout my childhood. And so I, of course, though, was like a poor, smart kid and was encouraged to leave immediately because nobody thought that I, you know, I was going to be able to have a job. So I moved to D.C. and I went to this fancy university with all of these rich kids. And I quickly sort of was able to see the differences between what it was to be me growing up and who they were. And I remember that you get, you know, you sort of like, even though you don't quite believe it because you have pride,

you are so indoctrinated with this idea that, like, these people are somehow supposed to be more sophisticated than you in a number of different ways. And then you meet them and they say really ridiculous things about whether or not you have shoes and where it's don't know where West Virginia is. for me the ways in which like class had all these layers because I had these sort of class-based experiences when I was in West Virginia as like a poor kid among kids that had more money and then you go out of West Virginia and then like it doesn't even matter whether or not you what you had and how much you had because you were still just sort of a hillbilly to a bunch of kids from New Jersey and Long Island. And in that sort of time period, also kind of fell upon Apple Shop and discovered this like body of documentary film that made me feel like I was connected to my home while I was among all these like rich kids and sort of also had this idea in my head that I

wanted to tell my story and working people stories. And so I, you know, I like developed this. I'm sorry, guys, can I pause for a second? Yeah, for sure. I'm getting like a thousand text messages and that probably means something bad's happening. Okay. Are you on a group message chat with like 30 of your friends? You sure it's not all memes? It's all good. Anyway, yeah.

Well, your story, I was going to say, I think I've read about it before in a book called Hillbilly Elegy. Yeah. It's the only time we're going to hear it. It's exactly like that book. I was going only time we're gonna exactly like that i was gonna say it's exactly like that anyways i'm sorry to cut you off go ahead michelle uh yeah no no problem so yeah so anyway um i was getting a little long-winded um but i i sort of had this experience of like of growing up in a place where um these sort of stories of class and sense of class were just part of the daily lived experience and was transported into a place where people had a lot more,

and class slowly became invisible as a dividing line if you were on the other side of the line. And at the same time, like really sort of started watching all these, I was a documentary film major, I was watching all of these like films and stories about people. And I became really obsessed with this idea of like, people who could tell their own stories and assert their own way in the world, and ended up in the labor movement, I think mostly because I like one wanted stories of working people and it seemed like a great place to go to find them. And two, I thought that maybe if I got a job and the labor movement, I would be around more people like the people that I grew up with,

even though I couldn't quite go home because I was really indoctrinated. My generation, I'm in my late 30s, and my generation, I think, of, like, Appalachian kids is really indoctrinated with this sense of, like, you have to leave. You can't come back. There's nothing for you here. There's something else somewhere out there.

And I really, I'm, like, so excited when I see other young folks who got to stay home because it makes me feel like maybe I could go home someday. But so from there, I actually, I like went almost immediately from college into working at a trade union where I made documentaries and videos and stories about workers for like 10 years and basically spent all of my time functioning almost as like an artist in residence in the union and thinking about how people's stories connected them directly to like the more bread and butter fights that people were having inside their own workplaces and how, you know, the union, especially like sort of like more business unions or big money unions like to communicate who they are to the public

through wins or through fights or through slick press releases. And what we constantly found was that when you gave people room to talk about the difference that actually like having some agency in their workplace made in their lives, that was the place where people actually connected to what the labor movement could be and had a sense of ownership over labor and over their own labor and their own ability to build a movement, which is really what made us, when we left my co-founder that I created a co-worker with and when we left the union, really were sort of motivated by that idea that people could both define themselves inside their workplaces through the stories that they told, but also define what a labor movement was by being able to create their own narrative about what work meant to them and what their vision was for the future.

was for the future. So, yeah, Michelle, could you tell us, like, maybe give us an elevator speech on coworker, but just maybe even go a little bit deeper than that and tell us why it's necessary. You know, why, like, the sort of history of labor organizing necessitates it, if that makes any sense. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm obsessed with that question um so yeah i mean like i'm like do i start in 1935 or do i go earlier um you found the right audience what's that you found the right audience i mean we're so like, so yeah. So first I'll say what coworker.org is,

and then I'll sort of talk about like why it is what it is. So we're basically, we are a place where right now we're just a digital platform staffed by three people where the idea is that anybody, anywhere can go to our website and start a campaign about something that they care about in their workplace. And when you start that campaign, we help share it around through social media and through the press and through other outlets to help you build what we call like a network of your co-workers. So for what that means, um, and sort of the material world is, uh, we have 40,000 Starbucks baristas who have joined campaigns over the past four

years. They're about 50 different campaigns by Starbucks baristas, and they work on all of these problems that are happening inside Starbucks. So they've won the, they've won dress code changes. They've won wage increases. They've won improvements to their scheduling. They've learned how to spell people's names correctly. They are not prioritizing that right now. I'm sorry. Go on.

So, yeah. So, yeah. so they do that um we were the place where the welch fargo bank tellers came together like four years ago to start talking about the fact that they had all these crazy sales goals that were actually the practices that led to like the consumer fraud that was uncovered last summer that got the CEO fired. That was started by a couple bank sellers. Was that the video of Liz before and really going in on that one dude? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, that was a real good day. Real good day. Giving it to her. Yeah, yeah. They sort of gave her ammo. So, yeah, so, so like it's basically so the idea is basically that like any worker can start a campaign. And by starting that campaign and like telling a story about something that they want to change, they attract other workers.

And then those workers all kind of work together as a network to keep like pushing for changes inside their company and that is all done in this decentralized way through the internet so like because there are like six starbucks baristas who work in um franchise x they can't really talk to the six starbucks baristas who work in franchise y they like don't ever see each other so you have to figure out a way for people to actually come together. And this sort of goes to some of the problems in the current trade union model and in the National Labor Relations Act and all of the existing infrastructure for people to organize, because it's all predicated on this idea that you have some central place where you can go

and you'll see everybody and you could engage in organizing from there. But that doesn't actually, like, that's not the reality for most workers in this country. So we, like, we had seen a bunch of workers before we started Coworker, like, kind of trying to do this on their own. They would, like, use popular technology like Facebook Group or Change.org petition, or they'd write letters to Hamilton Dolan at Gawker. And they would sort of amass some kind of swarm of people

who were into the thing. And they would sometimes win something, but there was no infrastructure that actually kept people together. So it would be really ephemeral. It would like eight weeks everybody was really into something and it would disappear because it's the internet so our idea was like if we can like center that activity in a place and we can keep people connected over time could those swarms that care about one thing actually start to become like like institutional infrastructure that consistently has like some memory and is consistently pushing for more and more and more and does that start to

become like what the new model of a of a union is yeah um yeah that's the idea have you found that to be the case so far i mean i guess it's pretty new i mean you guys have only been doing this for not that long but um but yeah where do you see it like what do you see it working towards i think it's like so um i think that we're just figuring out like so we've been around four years um like we have these networks uh what we're seeing is like so it's interesting because on one hand the internet makes you go really fast in terms of amassing a lot of people so like i like we have these huge networks and these companies um but you still are operating like the human scale of transformation and like building solidarity and building some sense of like what power means. So where we've seen it go the farthest so far

is like there are a bunch of REI workers. REI is like that outdoors retailer. It's like they won wage increases and scheduling reform last year. And like they still work together as a network and they're working on a new campaign right now. But they also like got together and issued an annual report of their own where they surveyed each other, and they had all this data in the annual report, and they delivered it when they had the annual meeting. So there was the REI official report and then the one the workers made.

Oh, that's pretty cool. That is nice. And that's pretty cool yeah and they just like that's what people do they just like come up with cool shit that they can do that's like that's like and i feel like those are like the signals of people like starting to see themselves as something more than a couple of individuals that are trying to get something done right right yeah um have any of the any of the uh companies uh got wise to your devices and sent you nasty letters or made idle Twitter threats? We have, for the most part, it's been pretty okay.

An interesting thing is the big companies are not worried about it. We see them kind of copycat us sometimes. They'll try to have their own Facebook group. And that's fine because, like, they can't do what we can do. But it seems like sometimes, like, we've had, like, the smaller companies, which I cannot name on this widely broadcast radio show. Oh, yeah. Tens of thousands of listeners.

It's just our moms. Someday I will tell you in person because the company's like really funny uh but they they a couple times we've had like we get letters that are like i just want to let you know that there is there are lies all over your website um and you probably are going to be up for a defamation lawsuit. And, you know, it's like really clumsily written and totally, it's always written as though like we're just like, we're just like helping you out and letting you know someone lied on your website. That's usually the tone of it. And we ignore it and it's fine. Or we like send some form letter and it's fine. But they haven't really, nobody's really like fucked with us too much yet. Although I know it's coming like any day now yeah i mean anytime you're raising uh class or worker consciousness

there will be a point at which the boss puts his foot down so yeah as a threat um so yeah back to my earlier question i didn't mean to take us off topic there. But yeah, we were saying like what about the sort of history of the labor movement necessitates this? And why do you why do you think it's necessary? 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which is the thing that defines what a trade union is for most people, to be really inherently flawed for a number of reasons. And just to give a little bit of background, so the Wagner Act, which was passed in 1935, sort of defined trade unions as these entities. It was a compromised deal to begin with that Francis Perkins, who was the labor secretary at the time, didn't even think was like that great of a deal.

And when she took it to the heads of the unions, she thought that they would want to like push back a little bit, but they were so eager to have a seat at the table that they were like, okay. So from the get gogo it was not like a great deal and it basically really defines a trade union as like very much aligned with the industrial factory model of um one group of a very centralized very stationary group of people negotiating with management to sort of cover a mass amount of people under a contract that has to be renegotiated every couple of years. And one of the big flaws in it is that it only applies to employees, W-2 employees.

W-2 employees. And it really only benefit, it was designed specifically really only to benefit like white men in factories. There were all of these exclusions written into the act, like domestic workers were excluded from the act. And I can't imagine why you would exclude domestic workers who are mostly women of color. Like it was just so written as an inherently exclusionary piece of legislation to ensure that economic benefits only went to very specific workers in the economy that I protest against it because it's sort of morally and ethically not okay, but also because what it did was it defined what labor could be so narrowly that then business was able to expand into the holes that were all around that. When you look at the fact that like, there's this huge rise in the use of temporary and 1099 employees, like part of the business case for that is that they can't form a union. And so like, Part of the business case for that is that they can't form a union. And so like it by by being sort of racist and exclusionary at the outset, what the act ultimately did was created a pretty sturdy mechanism for tearing apart any power that labor could build over the past century. This is not like not everybody thinks this, but this is like the stuff that I think. So, yeah. So and like managers can't join unions.

And what's interesting about this is that like the structure of employment was kind of anomalous in the late 20s and early 30s. Like that industrialization moment when like everybody was working in factories wasn't particularly representative of the way people had worked up until then or the way people are working now. And so we have this like act that's based on an historical anomaly around the way that people were getting work as defined by the conveniences of these mega employers and these big manufacturing factories that don't reflect the current reality. So we have to find ways for people to form some kind of collective outside of what is defined by the NLRA, because this is not suitable. So that's why we are designed the way we are, which is like anybody. Managers can start campaigns.

Independent contractors can start campaigns independent contractors can start campaigns like we are here to build power for workers and we don't make distinctions about who deserves to have power in their workplace and who deserves the ability to form a collective around something they care about do you mention domestic workers do you all have y'all worked much with the domestic workers alliance we yeah we're um we're organizational friends. And we actually talk a lot to them about the work that they're doing. They have this thing called the Fair Care Lab, which is where they're trying to figure out how to use technology to connect domestic workers and to organize domestic workers. And we've done, I've been doing a lot of stuff around like the on-demand

economy and figuring out how to organize in that sector. And so we've, we've worked with them on sort of hashing out some ideas for, for helping workers there. You had mentioned, you know, growing up in West Virginia and seeing your, all the men in your family, most of the men in your family be union workers and your grandma in particular being you said one of the first women to get black lung benefits and so I'm curious to know how you're seeing things play out in the organizing you're doing around female leadership and if women are really leading a lot of these campaigns specifically you know especially in the mountains labor let alone organizing

just labor in general all work is really the national narrative of work in the region is very masculine like only men work here and the role of women in organizing around here has really been pretty invisible or has people have worked to make it invisible. But so I'm just curious as what you all have been seeing play out in this kind of new wave of organizing and what type of leadership, what the leadership looks like. Yeah, I love that question. Yeah, we're like 60% women. Um, cause we did a demographic overview last year. And I would say like most of our, not all, um, but most of our campaigns are led by women. Um, and, uh, most of the, I've also noticed that most of the, the, the online conversations, like a lot of our stuff is generated through Facebook conversations

just between workers and that a lot of the back and forth and a lot of the sort of planning and idea generation is actually happening among women who are talking to one another on Facebook. So, I mean, and I think it's interesting, like, so one, we're heavily women, um, centered, and we're also way more heavily, um, rooted in the South, um, and in rural areas. And I think that that speaks so much to like, what sort of what you were just pointing out is that like most of the, the traditional infrastructure, uh, the minimal amount of it that exists around, specifically in the South, is really male-dominated and really male-connected. And so we end up being the place where when everybody else ignores you, you can come test

something out. We had a worker, and one of our really, really powerful leaders is a woman in Asheville, North Carolina, who has been doing this really great organizing of restaurant and low wage workers across the city. And she had initially gone to like a labor organization to try and solve her problems. And they were just like, they just ignored her, like nobody wanted to talk to her. And so what we're seeing is like that, you know, a lot of the campaigns that end up on the say are kind of like solutions. They're like, they're like, I've identified a problem and I have a solution for it instead of just being, you know, purely protest oriented. And I think that so much of that has to do with like,

the hard problem solving work that a lot of these women have had to do with their co workers in advance of actually like starting the campaign. So yeah, it's like, like really heavily women oriented. We've been doing a lot of tech worker organizing lately, too. And while most of the on the site campaigns have been run by men like most of the actual work of organizing and meeting and discussing things has been really heavily women-led it makes sense yeah it does um so so like i guess i i have some questions just about like the sort of bigger picture um because i you know and you don't have to like wear your co-worker hat for this uh if you don't

want to um because you know i certainly don't feel like what i do on a day-to-day basis actually you know i i certainly don't feel like the the work that i do at the organization i do it provides services for the system it's like sort of harm reduction do you feel like um do you what do you think about like this sort of state of the labor movement at the moment is it challenging capitalism or are we just sort of or are we just sort of in this holding pattern? Or maybe a side question to that is, do you feel like a co-worker or what you do or what you've seen other people do, is that challenging the sort of larger system around us? And like I said, you don't even have to answer that question. I just wanted to sort of make a big picture. uh no i think it's funny that you asked that though because i was having this conversation my co-founder today about why um why we all fight all the time inside the labor movement

um uh because we do because we're all like i feel like persistently all in disagreement and she was like yeah because it's like the tension is that when you are running a labor organization within a capitalist context, like there is some element to which you are always the more successful you are, the more you are continuing to uphold the capitalist system because you are creating remedy in the context. Like you're still operating within the context, like the agreed upon parameters of how it operates. So I guess that would be her answer. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I feel like, I feel like we're all, well, first of all, we're all in like a state of emergency because like, I don't know.

And I'm not, I'm definitely not seeing for co-worker here i'm seeing for the labor movement but like we i i'm pretty sure that like the trade unions are going to get knocked out next year completely when there's a supreme court ruling that's going to come down that's going to basically make it so the public sector union members don't have to pay dues which is going to basically decimate further the trade unions. And like, I think that the rest of the labor movement is so under-resourced that we're trying, but we're not really, I don't think that we are confronting capital directly. I'm really actually kind of excited for all of the people that have come up like through

radical politics in the past year who are interested in these questions and maybe have like some willingness to push most of what we're doing. I mean, most of us are also like foundation funded. And so like, you know, can only push so hard. So, yeah, I don't know if that's a very good answer, but it's, I think we're in a tough spot right now. um across the board um was a sort of uh nationwide sort of um assault on worker protections you know and we have like all these right to work laws and all this stuff i mean it's a huge priority of theirs um they're trying to decimate uh labor power at all costs so i'm just wondering like you know you pointed out these problems to the um to the wagner act and all these previous sort of labor reforms like how do we get back to a place uh you know like what do we need to do to sort of like move the needle back to a place where we're actually um making demands and um

making the economy sort of uh bend the knee these you know I'm saying like bad to our needs and stuff like that yeah I mean I think it's organizing like really organizing and what we need is a movement of people who actually understand that that's that is in some way possible and they need to have a material experience with that like in their own lives to start making those demands um i think and and that's really like that's why we are doing what we're doing which is this like literally anyone organizing in the wild showing up where someone has a spark of an idea and helping them make some sort of movement toward that idea.

And the reason that we have to do that, I think, like to get to like what you just laid out, is because people need to have an actual experience of like leveraging their own power and using their own organizing muscles and confronting power directly in their own lives. And the way that you do that is in your own workplace because it's kind of the closest relationship you have to economic power is the one with your boss. And so I really think that that, like, ends up, I mean, it's a 20-year project.

I kind of feel like we've lost everything, so we've got all the time in the world. Like, it's urgent urgent but it's it's also like we keep fucking up yeah so we fight as well uh just help some people organize along the way uh but like the the most of the labor movement right now is like still i mean fbiu just like said they're gonna spend like another 100 million dollars on the 2018 elections, like they're still going really like, let's make sure we elect a bunch of Democrats. And I feel like that can, that persistent insistence,

I understand why that's important, but it's like, there's so much resources that go into, into political and electoral and like people I know, because they, they come to us, people are really hungry to be able to organize and to know what to do in their own workplaces. But it's, you know, it's hard.

Yeah. Especially with unemployment so high in so many places. Yeah. We know around here that was a big ripple impact of the union breaking. the union breaking well and it presents a really hard um sort of philosophical question which is that like uh i think the sort of um i don't know what the word would be it's sort of like accepted truth and sort of the socialist left for over 100 years now is that the working class is the sort of protagonist of historical change like the sort of agent of historical change, like the sort of agent of historical change. But, you know, how do we work in a system?

I'm not asking you this, Michelle, because it's like I don't even know how to answer it. But it is something that I think leftists have to ask themselves more. It's like how do we push for a sort of systemic change in a world in which we have this growing number of, uh, surplus population where a lot of people don't work. Um, they can't, you know what I mean? Like they, they don't, um, but they also can't exit the system. They can't drop out of the system. So I don't know, you have this really, um, this is really bleak situation where people are like sort of stuck

in the system, but they can't really use their leverage as workers to bring the system to its knees. So I don't know. It's just a really, it's something that I have grappled with a lot recently. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like you just really put your finger on the thing that frustrates me about the universal basic income conversation.

Yeah. really put your finger on the thing that frustrates me about the universal basic income conversation. Yeah. Because that is not, like, what you just named is the thing that that pretends to be solving, even though it doesn't solve that problem at all. Right. Because people still lack power, even if you're giving them $12,000 a year. Yeah. That's why the tech people are into it.

I mean, you can actually, you know, give people, and I've even are into it. Um, yeah. I mean, you, you can actually, you know, give people, and I've, I've even advocated it on the podcast before. I don't think, you know, strictly like that's all you need way, but yeah, it's like, you can just give people, uh, money or a paycheck every month and still keep them totally, uh, oppressed and unable to challenge their circumstances. Yeah. I mean, I think about that, like, in Eastern Kentucky and in West Virginia is, like, and I'm also, like, fine with the universalistic income, but I just feel like it doesn't solve anything. But, like, sure, but it doesn't solve anything.

Right, right. Because it's, like, in West Virginia, I think 60% of the land is owned by people other than people that live there. It's owned by secret foreign companies. And by foreign, I mean foreign to the state of West Virginia. And half that land that people own anyway is totally polluted and ruined. And so it's like, what power do you really have over the resources around you,

even if you have extra money to like assert your own way um if everything around you is owned by some other some other thing and i don't i don't know what the answer that is yeah yeah um yeah i don't know it's just like um some you know some part of me thinks that like maybe you could sort of um i mean i've heard people like cory robin talk about like you know maybe one way is like trying to organize people under this sort of like big um sort of like bigger tent of people who identify as socialists but they may not have any um uh may not have any uh leverage when it comes to their ability to organize in the workplace and all this other stuff. And maybe that pulls the system a certain direction.

But I don't know. To me, it's just a question of who is this sort of, like I said earlier the sort of agent of uh historical change you know for the longest time that was a working class for us so anyways i don't mean to take it down this road but that was interesting the bleak road well i i keep thinking about um this so like there's all this future of work conversation i have to go to like a lot of meetings and uh people really think or i also think like everything's going to get platformized so we're all so like there's it's going to be like ubered everything everything's going to be ubered right and so like i keep wondering if they're like ends up developing this weird like

consumer worker class consciousness mashup. Because if you're having, regardless of whether you're a consumer or a worker, you're having the same experience of interacting with an anonymized platform that's stealing your data one way or the other. Does that start to form a constituency? Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, that's a great question. You hear that a lot, too, when people talk about luxury space communism.

You know what I mean? Like freeing ourselves from labors and letting the robots do the work. When in actuality, it feels like you're not walking the problem back far enough. It seems like the problem itself is that we've organized society around the need to have labor to begin with. Yeah. I don't know. Big issues. Big, big issues here on the Trillbillies. I do have a secret or not so secret fantasy that we're going to figure out a way for everything,

for robots to do everything so we can just live our best full lives and be creative and raise children and swim and make things that'd be nice i like swimming yeah um i will have a couple questions i'm curious uh if you have any hot takes about cop unions and uh organizing cops cops organizing yeah for power uh yeah i um uh i feel really uh i don't like cop unions that's that's my that's the good and right answer let's just get that right out there um i'm also like so scared of them that i said that i'm like they're gonna be at my door in five minutes i know it's terrifying it really is you're fucking like they're vigilante i mean so the thing about them that i feel like we need to be like say all the time is that most of them are not unions they're fraternal orders and like I they're like that just to me adds this extra layer of like total

lack of accountability and that they are basically just like clubs for protecting the worst elements of society. Sorry, I don't mean that. Maybe, I don't know what you meant. But I think that, I mean, I'm not necessarily sure that I believe in police as they are currently structured in our country since they are generally dispatched to protect forces, government and capital forces that are oppressing people.

Yeah, fuck cops. Go ahead. I said fuck police. I was elevating the conversation. That to me is actually a very funny thing. It's really funny that growing up, a lot of people that used to tell me, oh, you know, like, fuck the police, you know,

like, I don't know, there used to be this very anti-cop sentiment, I felt like, back in the day. And most of those guys became cops. Most of those guys became cops. When we were young punks. Yeah, I don't know what happened, though. I mean, it's like, who the fuck likes cops? Like, nobody likes cops.

That's the weird thing about the Blue Lives Matter thing. Who's ever had a good interaction with a cop? Yeah, a very small percentage of people in this country likes cops. That's the weird thing about the Blue Lives Matter thing. Who's ever had a good interaction with a cop? Yeah, a very small percentage of people in this country likes cops. Sunday night we were coming home from a birthday party up north, and we had to drive through a checkpoint, which a lot of people in cities don't even believe that this is a thing, that they set up literal roadblocks. So, yeah, we had to go through a roadblock.

For what? Like to see if you're high or if you're drunk? I assume they were looking for someone. Actually, this is kind of funny. We rolled up to it and we were like, you know, panicking. There were six of us in a van and we were like, all right, is there any beer out? Put anything out?

Look around? We were like trying to, you know, shuffle to make sure nothing, we just hadn't been thinking. And I said said they're probably just looking for somebody specific and so sure enough they just looked at my friend's license and looked at the tag and said you know your tags are up the end of the month you know see you later and we go through and i said i wonder who they were looking for and my friend said probably my sister

so it seems like when that happens a lot of times they're either like it's they're trying to drum up something at the end of the month or um oh yeah i gotta get those quotas there's i've seen the wire there's there's a term for it around here called fee grabbing yeah oh yeah that's what the old timers call fee grab yeah yeah yeah i've heard of that too them fee grabbers yeah oh anyways i didn't mean to take us down a tangent there yeah yeah i mean there's this good project that that was going on for a while where they were publishing the contracts the union contracts that cops had with various cities and they were like going through them which i thought was like a really good smart strategy to start demystifying like how those shitheads have so much power yeah yeah it's part and parcel of like why cops are able to do whatever they want

essentially yeah yeah it's it's pretty cool what you said i hadn't thought about this way but cop unions the fraternal orders of police actually by some miracle create even less accountability than they already had before um it's pretty that's pretty amazing that that's even possible yeah well i mean like what's the larger consciousness they're working towards you know i don't know it's just like they're not, sensibly cops exist to protect capital and to protect property, but they're not, like, producing anything. There is no product of their labor, so to speak, other than misery and fear and shit. Yeah, I don't know.

It's totally, it's another one of those things using the language and ideas of the left to create this sort of flesh or fascist project that's a good hot take yeah there are labor people that want to defend top unions like that it's all like we don't like them but like we need to have and i we need to have them and i just like i just can't get with that well yeah i mean like with a union i mean okay ostensibly to me like the end goal of union organizing is being able to organize a large enough demographic a large enough percentage of workers in this country to um push for larger political goals and push for a larger political program and to be able to build something that has economic

power against the capitalist class like where the fuck do cops fit into that they don't so I don't understand why it's controversial to be like fuck cop unions like I just not to me it doesn't fit into that larger sort of political horizon I just don't understand it I mean

right yeah drawn a great sort of political horizon. I just don't understand it. I mean. Right. Yeah. Strong agree. Strong agree. Hard yes. Yeah. It is hard to understand.

Headphones keep going out. I can't hear. I mean, but the labor movement does this thing where like, because like a scarcity mentality or like this idea that we have to operate within the rules of like what the current system is and so you know like that's there's like that's just like one of many things that that we i use the term loosely do that, like, just about continuing to prop up that system because we're too scared to function without it ourselves. Yeah.

And we just, I mean, as you said, we only have so much energy right now. Yeah. And a large large large fucking hill to climb for lack of a better way and you know it makes sense priorities are going to have to be put in line and it makes sense to prioritize people like domestic workers

wasting energy organizing cops seems like a god damn rat race why would we who knows though any more rat race. Why would we? Who knows, though? Any more hot takes? Round this out?

I don't have anything. My headphones are done for. So that means I can't hear Michelle, but she can hear me. It's kind of like a one-way glass in an interrogation police room. So, you can't hear me, Michelle. You sound like you've been on the business end of that scenario before. I can't hear you, but thanks for joining. Well, I'll let y'all close it out since I can't.

Anything you want to add, Michelle? We're so thankful to have you on. Yeah, no, thank you. show we're so thankful to have you on yeah no thank you um i you know if uh anybody wants to organize their workplace they can call me um no i'm like really excited i think like speaking of hot takes i said this like a couple weeks ago um like i'm really excited for like these big messy conversations that we're all having um so i'm excited to have them with you guys and with other people we're hanging out and being around and see you in the internet organizing see you on the internet that's right all right thank you so much, Michelle. Check Michelle out at coworker.org.

Or is that right? Coworker.org. Awesome. And then maybe I'll see you next month if you're coming down for Apple Shop Board meeting. Yeah. Yeah. We can all get real drinks. Yeah.

Talk some real shit. Terrence and I will have tonic water while you... Yeah. These two can't hang no more. God love them. Guys. Yeah. Drink enough can't hang no more. Guys. Drink enough bourbon for them both. Maybe we'll see...

Maybe I'll see you next year at the Memorial Day softball tournament, Michelle, although I haven't been in recent years, but that's where Michelle and I met on opposite sides of a softball. We did. I know. You haven't gone. I know. It's been a while. Why haven't you been going? I get lazy, you know. I know. You haven't gone. I know. Why haven't you been going?

I get lazy, you know. I rarely get out of Whitesburg in general. All right. But maybe next year. Maybe next year. Maybe you West Virginians need to see what these Kentucky hands can do out on the diamonds. Oh, God. You got to do it. Hands can do out on the Diamonds You gotta do it you cannot tell me

You're too lazy to go when it Takes me like nine hours to get there From New York or something I don't have an excuse you're right You're right Cool thank you Michelle Have a good rest of your week I hope

All those memes you've been getting During the show are funny. They bring you great joy. It was a bunch of bullshit. All right. As always. Meme train. All right.

We're going to let you go. Thank you so much. Come gather round, children. It's high time ye learned About a hero named Homer And a devil named Burns. We'll march till we drop the girls and the fellas. We'll fight till the death or else fold like umbrellas.

So we'll march day and night by the big cooling tower. They have the plant, but we have the power. So we'll march day and night by the big cooling tower. They have the plans, but we have the power. So we'll march day and night By the big cooling tower They have the plans But we have the power