Episode Transcript
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Welcome, friends, to another episode of Talking Strategy and Making History. I'm Dick Flax. I'm going to be joined by my partner in crime, Daraka Larimore Hall. We'll be talking again, as we have in the past, to the distinguished dean of American labor historians, Nelson Lichtenstein. Nelson has a new book co authored with Samir Sontee, actually co edited. It's an anthology of articles from Dissent magazine about the labor movement from the 1950s to today. Title of the book is Labor's Partisans. We're going to use this book as a kind of springboard for a discussion about not only labor's past, but the state of the unions today in relation to the struggle against authoritarianism, against the Trump agenda, and what are the prospects, given all kinds of challenges, but also a rising tide of interest in organizing among a lot of young working people in this country. So stick with us for, I think, a provocative and useful conversation in these times.
Welcome Nelson Lichtenstein, back to Talking Strategy, Making History. It's always a pleasure to have you your wisdom. And in particular, we're going to talk about a new book project that recently got published and use that as a springboard, as we always do, to talk about the state of the unions in the midst of the state of the union. Welcome, Nelson.
[00:01:59] Speaker B: Glad to be here.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: And hi to you, Daraka. So Labor's Partisans is the name of this book just recently published by the New Press, and it's an interesting it's a compilation which is not always that newsworthy, but I personally think it is quite a newsworthy piece because of what you put together here. It's a compilation of material spanning the history of magazine called Dissent, which I grew up with and you grew up with, but which many people may not know that much about. So what is Dissent magazine, anyway?
[00:02:38] Speaker B: Well, it's, it's been in existence for more than 70 years. Founded in 1954, it was called itself a socialist magazine. The editor, Irving Howe, famous for figure in American Thought and Letters, that said socialism is the name of our desire. Now, when they founded it in the middle of the 50s, this was not a radical period, but they viewed themselves as kind of holding on, kind of holding out the ideal of that of the socialist idea. They really didn't. Maurice Isterman, once a very good historian, described them as sort of tired radicals. That's not quite right.
But they were a little bit sort of disenchanted in the sense of the revolutionary radical hopes of the 30s and 40s that had passed. But they still wanted to Say we need a group of intellectuals, group of people who were writers.
Actually many people were not.
They had auto workers and steel workers writing for them. It wasn't as if they were all New York intellectuals, although a lot of them were to hold onto the socialist idea in a period of great conservatism. Now they were of course a particular kind of radical. They were the non communist sort of. Sort of came out of a sort of Trotskyist world. But that broadened and became more of a. That was the origins. But as the magazine went on, that particular kind of politics was there, but it became part of other strands that went into it. So 70 years is a long time for a magazine. And they consistently covered the labor movement from the beginning. And the book came into existence because one of their longtime supporters and writers, Jules Bernstein, had some money and he said let's put out a book here which covers the labor reportage from Dissent, which many famous people wrote for dissent. Daniel Bell and Harvey Swedos and Dwight McDonnell and Norman Mailer and all sorts of people.
And anyway, when they were writing about labors to put it together. So with actually Samir Santi, who I'm very happy to say was a got his PhD here at the University of California, Santa Barbara, was my co editor and we had a very, you know, we had fun going through all of the thousands of articles, I guess that have appeared in 70 years, not all on labor, but we went and tried to pick out some representatives, ones which we.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: Well, and the list of names in the table of contents is impressive. Just from a labor history. Yeah, the kinds of figures who are in there. But you've got in addition to names, you mentioned Michael Harrington, for example. I just make one comment. I remember vividly to this day an article in Dissent that's in this book by Harvey Suedos about the auto workers.
It influenced my thinking deeply and maybe we'll get into some of that as we go along. But there. But there are many other. I wrote for Dissent and I knew Michael Harrington. I knew a bit of Irving Howe, I knew Louis Kozer was the co editor.
And I was finally happy that they did give some recognition. But it was quite a struggle to the New left and students for Democratic society. But that's all history. I don't want to dwell on it. Daraka, you've been using this book in a class and labor history, you taught this this quarter, right?
[00:06:18] Speaker C: Yeah, quarter's not quite over, but yeah, yeah. My labor studies seminar course has been using this as kind of our main textbook. And it's been really helpful because, you know, the, the way that the book is organized in, you know, chronological order, but also thematically around some of the big questions that face the labor movement, you know, in the, in terms of the creation of the post war order, the stagnation of it and then its destruction. And then, you know, importantly, some recent articles about, you know, the new economy and the post new economy and what it means for workers and what it means for organizing. So it's actually, yeah, it's been a very useful text.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean it normally wouldn't do this, but I, I think, I think this might be useful to your listeners here. Here are the main five divisions of the book. One is called Socialists. Look to the post war labor movement. That was the, the original group of, of socialists who founded Dissent. What did they think of the labor move?
We have several articles from that. And then the next one is Democracy in American Trade Unions with a question mark. Because that was a big issue back to then and today.
And there were, and there was a kind of a debate about that, how important democracy was for, you know, effective trade unionism. Some people thought, well, you know, maybe, you know, that's not. We, you know, unions are fighting capital, so whether they're internally democratic or not may not be that important. And then another one, of course, a Time of Troubles, which is all about the 70s and 80s and, and the difficulties of that period, the 90s. And then, then we have last two, you know, new frontiers, you know, new kinds of people who are being organized. And then of course, since this is about a socialist magazine, the last section is called what is to be Done. Right, that's of course there's a, there's.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: A little kind of symposium at the end. Was that from the magazine or did you create that?
[00:08:06] Speaker B: We created that. We created that.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: We had so mentioned that because we.
[00:08:10] Speaker B: Had Sarah Nelson, who was the rather well known head of the Flight attendants, and Luis Leon, who's an editor of Labor Notes, someone very good. And we have, and Daisy Pitkin, who has written a very, very good book about organizing. And they were, you know, I mean, here's where, you know, it was this, this discussion took place I think in, in May of 2024. You know, so, you know, and what were the prospects and what. I don't think they disagreed in any dramatic way, but it was sort of like what are the prospects for the future here? And obviously the, the, the moment for this book coming out, it's not an accident that comes out now is, is a Kind of at least a, a revival of the interest in unionism by a new generation.
The, I mean, whether the, the numbers are growing. I mean, it's another, another question of the actual potency of the unions. But, but certainly there's no doubt. And here I asked Daraka whether he, he found this among his students that, that there's a new interest in the idea of unionism. And I think that's. That, that, that discussion and all of, all of the last part of the book is really based on that. On that what's been happening in the last couple of years here.
[00:09:26] Speaker C: Well, there's, I mean, there certainly is a interest. I mean, I think you can see it statistically and then, you know, anecdotally, you know, my students are of course, you know, the most unscientific and possible. I teach labor studies, so it's a, it's a self selecting group. But from what they, how they talk about their peers in talking to students who take, you know, my, my kind of more general courses and so forth, there is not just an interest in union, unions, unionization, but in particular in trying to find career paths that are allied with or in the labor movement, which is very interesting. And then, you know, the other thing that I found, you know, quite refreshing is how much openness and kind of voracious hunger there is for learning about labor history, activist history, the history of the left, much more than students were, I think like a decade ago, which was. Is made teaching this book also really interesting. A couple of notes. One thing is that how. I don't know if it was by design or happy accident, but the very first section, which is like ostensibly the oldest, you know, the further. The oldest essays, the, you know, addressing issues the furthest from us, I thought we're all incredibly relevant. You know, there's this essay about automation that my students instantly picked up on as describing what's going on now with AI and other, you know, introductions of different technologies into the workplace. But, but also even like the essay by Harrington about who the working class is, the old working class and the new working class. And you know, it really is a very well put together set of essays, not just as a set of historical documents for the sake of documenting interesting, fascinating history, but also as like a reader on, you know, just core questions confronting organizing working people or working people trying to get political power, et cetera. So really can't recommend it enough. Should be on, should be on all the bookshelves, as they say.
[00:11:34] Speaker B: You know, Dirac. The one thing that I was Sort of struck by, and I may be kind of surprised a bit in going over all the, you know, finding, looking, reading all these sent essays that in the 50s when the union movement was. Was strong and big and, and we think it as successful in a way, we'd like to get back to that. I know during the recent strike of graduate students that UC all, all the UC campuses, one of their major demands was we want COLA cost of living adjustment. I thought, well, that's exactly what the unions were demanding and getting in 1955, you know.
But anyway, I was struck by the degree to which the writers for dissent were critical. Critical of the union movement. Sidney Linds, great Chicago radical, I guess he was sort of. Irving Howe said, write something about the AFL and the CIO merging. And he was very critical of it. He thought, oh, it's just, you know, becoming more bureaucratic and more closely tied to the Democrats or the famous, you're right, Dick of the Harvey Suedos essay is called. The title of it is the UAW over the Top or over the Hill? You know, and he was very critical here was this was. He wrote this in the early 60s when the UAW was absolutely its height of power and was winning things and was politically influential.
And you know, and he said, well, they've reduced their aspirations. What happened to the stars that used to be in the eyes of all the UAW radicals? They've sort of made their peace with the status quo a bit. So I was very surprised at that. And then you move forward a generation, although the unions are weaker and sometimes they're even more conservative. But the writers in the magazine are Certainly by the 80s, late 70s, 80s, 90s are, you know, we, the union movements on. We got to link our, our solidarity with the unions. No matter how whatever problems they have, we, you know, we're going to be, you know, isn't that.
[00:13:30] Speaker C: I mean, it's just, it's a story of the American left, but just like a, a slightly different trajectory than the New Left, but still one of, you know, hoping for more at the height of the New Deal order, critiquing it from the left and then mourning its loss after, you know, Reagan.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: Well, I think the thing that I remember about the Suedos article that hit me very hard this is 60 years ago that I read it was that because we, we. I was in Ann Arbor and we had a lot of relations, we in the early New Left with, with the sons and daughters of UAW leaders, for example. And we, we knew that. We knew some of those leaders. And he basically says what the union UAW had achieved were contracts that five year term, contracts that provided cost of living increases, that provided wages that enabled many workers to actually buy their own homes. It was unbelievable in terms of the material gain, but something was really traded for that. Namely the union gave up efforts to control the workplace itself, the working conditions on the job. And that, that on a day to day level made the job and the life of the worker no better than it had been. And that's what I remember about that because I thought that was a fascinating point. And then we.
I've told you this story, Nelson, of being at the UAW convention shortly after that and hearing from the floor, union stewards speaking from the floor about this very fact that they were, they were presiding over a great deal of member discontent over the working conditions and the union was not addressing those kinds of things.
So I don't know. That seems to me at that time people were conscious of this as a trade off. Now I'm not sure that there's any hope day to day on part of a lot of workers that they're going to be able to really. Well, how does that issue play out? Now? I should.
[00:15:39] Speaker B: There's a very good essay by BJ Whittake, who is a, an auto worker and an old radical and later, you know, from Ann Arbor. And, and he, he, he worked for, he was in the Chrysler plants for 20 years and he has a very good essay precisely about the, the, the working conditions, et cetera. I would, I would phrase it, I would put it a little differently and actually here I disagree with kind of a general, that's so called trade off. The way I would put it would be that trade off means you're, you give one thing and you get something else. Well, basically in, in the 30s and 40s, the UAW is defeated when it comes to the question of any kind of control of, you know, working conditions. They try very hard both formally and, and in Wildcat strikes and et cetera, et cetera, they are defeated. It's a def.
Now they are not defeated and in part because the companies are making money and it's a different political moment. They are not defeated in actually raising the standard of living of American workers. But they wanted both and you can both everything from shop stewards to Walter Reuther's speeches, they want both. In 1964, Reuther denounces the gold plated sweatshops, et cetera. And I would make this point the, the famous Dodge revolutionary union movement that comes along in the, in the late 69. 69, 70, actually, what they were demanding was precisely the same thing that UAW radicals and activists were demanding in 1939 and 1940, I.e. control of production, shop stewards that were as powerful as foreman, et cetera. So, so that thing of trade off, I don't, I don't buy that there's a defeat. And on one, on one level, and which, from the point of view of the auto is more important, you know, because they can give higher wages and then raise the price of cars, et cetera, you know, et cetera. But. So I would put it that way.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: Yeah. And we had about 10 or 15 years where the American auto industry was globally dominant and where. And where, therefore, the cost of wage benefits and health benefits and so forth could be. Could be incorporated into the price of the cars. And then along come Japanese and German competition, and that changed everything for America, really.
Anyway, I didn't want to. I don't know that we want to dwell so much on the history, although the history is both fascinating in itself and of course, as Daraka's students are saying, still bears very much on what we're trying to deal with today, including the uaw. I mean, this, that's a big thread in this book. You've spent a good deal of your life trying to understand the uaw, Nelson Lichtenstein, and now the new president of uaw for the first time, it's a democratic union in terms of the election of, of the president. And we have Sean Fain as a result.
So what's the latest feelings you have about that particular story?
[00:18:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I would say that just, just on the ua, that the writers for dissent, the first generation certainly, and probably the second and third generations, they always view the UAW as the key union. Maybe that. That could. One could say that that's a mistake in the last 30 or 40 years, that there are other, you know, the SEIU and then hospital workers and teachers, but they always did view the UAW as, as particularly important. Well, of course. What happened? What's happened? Two things, good and bad, dark and light, in the last two years. On the one hand, the UAW did elect a new leadership. Sean Fain is unquestionably a skillful and rhetorically skillful and almost charismatic figure and democratically elected in many ways, and I shouldn't even focus on him. I think the whole kind of, whole strata of UAW activists and people have re. Energized that union, and they did conduct a really brilliant strike in 2023, which was quite successful. And not just in terms of what the UAW won, but instantly after they won the strike, all of the non union companies in the auto industry instantly raised wages to the same level of the uaw. This is extremely important and new because for decades before this, the, it was really the non union companies that were sort of setting the pace and the unionized firms had to follow that or kind of follow that. But here in this case, it was very clear that the Toyotas and Nissans and non union companies, even Tesla, they instantly raised wages. Now that's the good thing. The bad thing is, the dark thing is the UAW thought it could instantly, it could very quickly organize these non union companies in the south. And they had a lot of wind at their back. The government was providing money for battery plants and other plants. The companies clearly in the south, we know that the workers at these companies were excited about the prospect of unionization, but this has not happened. And even they even had a brilliant victory at Volkswagen. They won 73% of the vote in April of 2024, which is a remarkable tremendous victory, but they haven't gotten a contract in the 13 months since that. So, and I would say this is the case with the entire sort of pro union sense of organizing and et cetera that's gone on, whether it's Starbucks or other places. Yes, the union workers are voting for the union, you know, in one way or another, and showing their support. But companies, you know, are hanging tough and they're succeeding in hanging tough. I mean, and that's why union density continues to decline even in this moment. Putting Trump aside. Putting Trump aside. So that is the dark side of it. And you know, there's some things we can do about that, but that's a reality that we have to face.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: What is it that allows a company to hang tough even though we have allegedly a legal system that supports collective bargaining?
[00:22:02] Speaker B: Well, right, but that legal system has one kind of many, many fatal flaws. And one of which is that there's, there's no penalties for failing to, to bargain. You have a duty to bargain. But there's no. And the other, and the other thing. And I have to think, I say this, I, I spoke, I went to Chattanooga, I spoke with some of the leading activists, I think only about five months after the election, four months, five months after the election. And they told me that that consciousness is episodic. It's episodic. And even four or five months after this election, they, for example, did not think they could organize a strike. I mean, in the 30s and 40s, you know, if the, if the, if the, if the management wasn't bargaining, you had a strike.
And today in, well, in Volkswagen, they didn't think they could have a successful strike or that would also be the case in some other places and at Starbucks where they have had strikes. But there the problem is, yes, you have 500 coffee shops that are organized, but there are 9,500 that aren't. So a strike, you know, doesn't have the impact it might have had. So this is a problem that needs to be confronted here. And I think, I think, you know, a certain kind of ebullient optimism, you know, that's always a good thing. But I think there's a reality here. We have to figure out what to do about it.
[00:23:20] Speaker C: Part of the problem obviously is just like getting workers to the point of bargaining and getting organized and getting, you know, getting this union certified. And the other book that I'm actually using in that same course, We Are the Union by Eric Blanc. I know is have, has kick started some good discussions amongst labor organizers, leaders, activists, scholars, etc. And we had him on our podcast. What do you make of his analysis or his proposal that you know, we have to get better at fostering the ability of workers to, you know, at least get started with the process on their own or with the limited support from, you know, paid staff and the more resource intensive parts of.
[00:24:08] Speaker B: No, he says, he has, he says many things that are very intelligent and correct. For example, he makes the point that the unions haven't been spending enough money organizing that and even if they did, a so called staff driven union, you wouldn't have enough money to turn the tide. You know, and there's, and a kind of, and his, his key theme is, you know, worker to worker organizing, which clearly was the case at Starbucks and many of these retail, decentralized retail places. I mean the. So I totally agree with that and I think he's also making the larger point and this is here we get kind of that there are no more, no longer any actually strategic kind of workplaces, you know, as in, you know, Chevy 4 in 1937, wherever you shut that down, you shut the entire General Motors down or, or you know, some crucial US Steel or something. Whereas today, and you know, think of, you know, retail, the thousands of outlets, you know, you think of the fissured workplaces all over the country, that it's sort of decentralized and therefore there's no one place that's got to be the kind of the node of crucial. And therefore you need this worker to worker organizing as a way of spreading the message and spreading the movement. And I think now there's a lot of truth to that. However, as for example, looking at Amazon and any other logistics company, there are in fact still crucial places, if you're thinking about the west coast docks, where the ilwu, although a small union, it is an effective union and boy, it can do a lot in shutting down American capitalism if it chooses to do so. And the same would be true of all the Amazon distribution centers. And Amazon is now a kind of whole ecology of a whole new world. But there are strategic places. So there's been a kind of debate that the union movement can't give up the idea of really of the command where the commanding heights of American capitalism. And in the 30s, as Eric Black makes the point that in his book that that's what that was what was organized. And so today, what are the commanding heights? I know that Jane Slaughter, who is a person I respect a great deal, she's been a writer for Labor Notes for decades and decades, she said something like, well, it's great that Starbucks, that we have these wonderful young people at Starbucks who are, who are organizing and going, but in the end it's still a coffee shop. You know, that's not quite the same thing as Silicon Valley or Port of Los Angeles, you know, so anyway.
[00:26:46] Speaker C: But I guess, but can I, can I ask like, but why is that so important? I understand like the term commanding heights, to me that that's a term that was important for people deciding what industries to nationalize to steer the economy. And I guess if you're thinking about, I guess what, you know, what group of workers can ask for the highest wages so that it causes compaction across the economy, so everyone gets raises. That's why it's important to think about the strategy, because it's not like the labor movement is contemplating a general strike to overthrow the government and therefore needs to think about how do you stop capitalism. So I guess I don't really understand what the stakes are of that strategically, what the real stakes are beyond a kind of esoteric.
[00:27:34] Speaker B: Yeah, no, no, I would say this. I would say that it was true 50, 60 years ago and I think it's still true today that some very successful big companies do set the standard. They set the standard. And then retail, it's a Walmart or Amazon or a Home Depot, they set the standard, the social wage standard. And what companies are the are most important are doing that is has changed. It used to be General Motors and U.S. steel. Now it's, it's a Silicon Valley. Obviously that's one thing. But then you know, the retail, big retailers on the other. And I think that, that if you.
[00:28:09] Speaker C: So then wouldn't that be Starbucks and Amazon and like all exactly these places?
[00:28:13] Speaker B: I think Starbucks would be, I think Starbucks would be. It is big enough that, that it would have. If they did have a kind of an agreement there and it was at the rages, wages went up 50 or 60%. I think that would have a huge impact throughout the hire retail.
[00:28:27] Speaker C: If I could go get a job at Starbucks for 20 bucks an hour, then there's so many employers that are competing with Starbucks for their employees that I would think that I would have an impact.
[00:28:39] Speaker B: Here's something that I'm in favor of. Although this is maybe controversial. There's something called sectorial bargaining which actually was invented in the, in the progressive era. At the time it was thought that, oh, you know, women and children and you know, working in the garments or retail, they, they really can't have real unions. So the state would kind of be a, a player in a kind of corporatist or kind of a. You'd have the state, you'd have the unions, you'd have the employers. They, they get together and they sort of set a wage really for you know, whatever it was department stores or, or something. Now that ideas come back.
We have that in. It works very well now in professional sports. I mean, you know, the baseball players don't just bargain with the Yankees. They bargain with, you know, the entire league. And that's sectorial bargaining. And then recently we had, in California we have a fast food law where, you know, McDonald's is today, today paying $22 an hour in California that's, that's substantial. Now there's no union there. I mean, or at least no one, maybe no One working at McDonald's thinks of themselves or they aren't part of a union. That's a problem. That's for. If you're thinking about democracy and, and worker empowerment and consciousness. But nevertheless they're making 22 bucks an hour. And that's a sort of new wage standard that's being set in California for other people who are not under that sectorial bargain bargaining.
[00:30:12] Speaker C: Yeah, there's lots of examples of.
[00:30:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean again in industry, some people don't like that because that idea, because it, you, it, you don't have a union. You know, there's a virtue in having people coming together thinking Together and democratically deciding things. I mean that's democracy and that's important.
Unions are not just about raising wages. They're about all sorts of other things. But you don't, you know, and you don't have that with under sectorial bargaining, I grant you.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: So that's a very interesting dilemma here, which is that it's possible in a sense politically to raise wages in certain sectors by action of local city councils, for example, as well as the state law that you mentioned in California.
These are things that groups, unions like seiu, I guess they've been working for that kind of avenue rather than collective bargaining in the usual meaning of workers being organized. You're saying it's more of a political decision with governmental control.
And that's.
And the Eric Blank view is, look, there's this tremendously growing feeling of worker to worker consciousness and wanting to be organized.
And he's groping, isn't he? A little bit to let's redefine what the unions are about if they can't come to the table for collective bargaining. There's still ways to define gains and victories that maybe we should foreground.
So when the non unionized auto companies are raising wages to match what the UAW has achieved, that's a victory. It shouldn't be seen simply as a way of undercutting the union. It should be claimed as what we're trying to achieve through organizing. But you know, I wonder how much we know about whether people in workplaces are discussing what should we do if we do get organized? What can we hope for if it. Maybe they have some ideas that we need to have a better sense of.
[00:32:16] Speaker B: Let me make this point. This will sound quite conservative. Well, not conservative exactly, but it's old fashioned. Old fashioned that consciousness ebbs and flows. We are fortunate today to be at a moment when consciousness pro union sentiment among young people, for example, is on the rise. That's great and that's great.
But what a legally binding contract or a law for that matter, a civil rights law or something, or a minimum wage law for that matter. What that does is to crystallize and sort of institutionalize that level of consciousness. Now later on people can become apathetic and, or whatnot. And you know, but, but nevertheless there's that contract.
So, but when you have that situation, then you think, oh, it's kind of, you know, there's a, it doesn't sound so exciting. But nevertheless there's the contract, which is like a set of laws. And one of my favorite pamphlets, the UAW Put out was put out years ago. They said, you know, a bright steward is like a lawyer. They can figure out how to make the contract work for the worker anyway. So that's something that I think the wobblies were wrong. And maybe to the extent that Eric Blanc is sort of a little bit overly enamored of the, of the, of this sort of worker to worker, kind of just sort of a kind of almost cultural, social sense of, of engagement, that's all to the good. But the fact is that conscious and, well, turnover certainly is enormous. That's one problem where just people are leaving. So who's, who's the next. The next cohort a year and a half later on.
So, you know, that's why, that's why contracts are, you know, they aren't revolutions, but they're a good thing.
[00:34:02] Speaker C: Yeah, I'd say. I don't see. I don't think that's Eric's position. I, I think.
[00:34:06] Speaker A: No, I don't.
[00:34:06] Speaker C: I think there was there, there is in fact like a part of the labor conversation that's like collective bargaining is passe. Independent unions, like, I mean, literally wobbly. You know, let's join the wobblies. And that's, you know, Eric's always been very critical. Critical of that.
[00:34:22] Speaker A: Like.
[00:34:22] Speaker C: No, then the point is to eventually get people into.
Affiliated with like big, real unions.
It's what he's questioning though is like, how do you get people. Or offering. I think, yeah, some more traditionally radical, traditionally leftist, traditionally, you know, social movement oriented tactics for getting people into those first steps, which, I mean, frankly makes sense because when we got big, the points in history where we got big, that was, you know, it was a movement dynamic on the ground. Not a, not a. Let me convince this worker why it's in their rational interest to sign a card. You know, and I, and I have to get paid to do that a thousand times a day sort of approach. But I, where, but I agree with you a thousand percent that like any strategy, which is the theme of our podcast, any strategy has to like, account for periods of abeyance and doldrums and demobilization and, you know, less energy and all of those things you describe. It has to like, put things in place that keep people from being harmed and maybe even improves their conditions, even when we're not in a upswing of engagement. And that, that's a, I think, a very important difference between a democratic reformist kind of politics and a end of the world millionaire. And we're gonna fix the world in one Fell Swoop kind of politics and the Millerites.
[00:35:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:35:43] Speaker C: And why I love, you know, back to Descent. That's like.
[00:35:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:46] Speaker C: Why I always love that magazine. It's that.
[00:35:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I stand corrected. On the, on the what? Eric Block wants it ultimately. Yeah, that's right. Right. You're right.
[00:35:53] Speaker C: No, but you're right, there is, you're not wrong that there's a position out there that the way, the way to.
[00:35:59] Speaker A: Resolve that this, that Eric Blank question is say he's really looking for ways to define victory that are not simply bound by formal contract but also have other. Where you can point to gains and therefore keep people's morale going for organizing.
So here's the situation we're in now in this country. Isn't it that large groups of workers, federal workers have been. Their jobs have either been terminated in some mysterious and seemingly illegal fashion or they're very threatened and that creates harm to them but also to the wider society.
And how is organized labor trying to respond or are they trying to respond in, in that circumstance?
[00:36:48] Speaker B: Well, I mean there are. They are obviously.
I just was on the, on the email with it with a, with a person I know who works. Who's, who's a federal worker. I mean a union official, an official of federal workers. And obviously they're, they, they actually they asked me to put together a petition which I did. For historians saying that when unions are destroyed, this is clearly a step toward authoritarianism. And, and I mean in a way the federal destruction of the federal collective bargaining among federal workers is. Is as great as the destruction of PATCO or even more so. And you know, I mean, now these federal unions.
Patco was interesting 40 years ago. More than that. Tell us what PATCO was the Professional Air Traffic Controllers organization, which was 11 or 12,000, you know, air traffic controllers who were becoming increasingly militant during the 1970s. They, many of them were Air Force ex Air Force people and you know, military people. But. But nevertheless they're becoming increasingly milit and kind of militant. But they were also had a conservative side to them. They didn't support Ronald Reagan.
[00:37:52] Speaker C: Yeah, they exactly. They endorsed it.
[00:37:54] Speaker B: He would help them out. But anyway, they struck in August of 1981 and the Union was destroyed by the Reagan administration. Now that was a hugely symbolic, more than symbolic thing which really set in train decades of union difficulties defeat. But today collective bargaining has been abrogated for, I don't know, some 800,000 federal workers. I mean, I mean they. And this has not gotten as much news as it should.
Part of the Reason for that is that these, these unions were, they were constrained even in what they could do. They couldn't really bargain for higher wages. They couldn't go on strike. They were a bit, they were a bit tenuous. But nevertheless, Trump just, you know, abrogated the collective bargaining. And I mean, it's being challenged in the courts. But, you know, if this kind of thing happens in one sector, it's going to happen other places as well, starting probably with, you know, public employees in various, you know, states and then moving on. So, you know, that's what conservatives, the sort of libertarian tinge conservative, they want, they want to atomize the working class and really destroy any actual real organizations that, that aren't, that they aren't, that they don't control completely. And there's a reason that unions are both the first institution that authoritarians destroy, going back from, back to the, from the, you know, the Mussolini and the Nazis and into, onto Spain and other places and Brazil. And also, when you get rid of an authoritarian, unions are always, you know, part of that up, part of that upsurge. And I think, you know, we should begin to look at it, look at it in that way today. And, you know, I mean, I think we're at a moment here where there is beginning a momentum among both unionists and others in resisting the authoritarian turn that's, that's taking place from Washington.
[00:40:00] Speaker A: What is specifically. I mean, we know that everyone's in court to contest all these things. And it seems to me that's the big crunch right now. It's being played out in the court system. But everyone is tremendously anxious.
Can the Trumpers refuse to follow the courts if the courts ruled in their favor? And so we're at this crunch point, but is there a sort of grassroots action side of what people in the labor movement are talking about and coming forward?
[00:40:35] Speaker B: Well, or even, not even grasshopper, but just union leaders. There are radical union leaders today. There are people who see themselves as leftists, from the CWA and the lawyer and to the uaw, et cetera, who are kind of. Now, Sean Thanes for a general strike beginning May 1, 2028.
[00:40:56] Speaker C: Me, too.
[00:40:57] Speaker B: We can't wait for that. We can't wait for that kind of thing to happen. I think I would say this moment, the unions are not demoralized, at least as unions. The Chicago teachers just won a very good, you know, there are other places that they're still kind of very, very kind of active. They aren't, they aren't, you know, feeling in the light the way they were in the 80s, utterly defensive. So at least at that, at that level that, you know, the unions that exist are feeling their oats a little bit to a degree, and Bernie is again, once again leading the charge. And they said sort of not our fault. We weren't the ones who were in charge of the strategy of the Democrats. You know, this was really our opponents within the party who were the ones who failed in 2000, in the fall of 2024. So. But, Dick, your question is good because although I'm hopeful something will gel in the near future, but at this very moment, I think you're right that it's not happening. Is that what your, your implication was?
[00:41:54] Speaker A: Well, the implication, yeah. I'm wondering how so many people could be thrown out of work so quickly without them, they themselves as workers saying, what. What recourse do we have? What are we supposed to be doing? And I'm not sure what they're expecting. Do they really think, is it the court process that they're waiting for resolution of? Because there have been these cases where already courts have said, you can't fire this group of people in that group. And so there have been delays in some of this process. And incidentally, today's news is indicating that Elon Musk has decided to go back to being a capitalist.
[00:42:31] Speaker C: Now, I don't buy it.
[00:42:32] Speaker A: Is pretty disgusted. He's publicly disgusted with what's going on.
[00:42:37] Speaker C: Yeah, his feelings are hurt, but, yeah, I think he's just going to be doing it from the, from the side, but from the shadows.
[00:42:43] Speaker A: I don't get, I really don't get this. How can an order come from an administration to simply shut down a whole category of federal government operation and fire all these people?
It doesn't sound like a legal, Legally.
[00:43:02] Speaker B: No, it's not. I mean, the ostensible rationale they're using is, oh, you know, national security. But most of the unions they're actually destroying have nothing to do with it. And they do with that. They're like the Agriculture Department or something. And so that's why it is illegal. But the reason we're facing an authoritarian turn is that the courts are ruling against this administration, but the administration is ignoring the courts. I mean, that is the definition of, of authoritarianism. And, and I would say, I guess I would say that maybe one reason to explain the current passivity of these is in a way that, well, the courts are ruling in our favor, so it's only a matter of time before we, you know, this thing is resolved.
[00:43:42] Speaker C: But, yeah, But I don't even know that I would describe it as passivity. I mean, I think one thing is any of us need to always be humble about, like, what we're finding out about, because the flurry of news is so difficult to follow. But, you know, there, there are a couple of journalists, labor journalists, who've been really tracking the resistance, the mobilizing the, the mutual aid networks that have been forming amongst federal employees. But, like, ultimately, it's.
They do need the courts, they need some part of the government to rehire them or bring them back or get them restitution, because it's not like they can just go in and occupy the, you know, USAID office and just keep working. And I'm kind of half joking when I say that, except that there was like an armed confrontation over this sort of thing, you know, when one part of the government didn't want to follow Doge's orders.
And that is sort of like where we're at in a scary sense.
[00:44:42] Speaker B: I'd certainly be in favor of federal employees occupying their, you know, sit ins in their offices. I think that'd be a great, great. A great.
[00:44:48] Speaker C: Yeah, sit in. Absolutely. It just would be hard for them to, like, go about business as usual, you know, as a meat inspector or whatever. But, but I do see it does seem like people are getting involved in getting engaged who weren't before, because. Exactly. As you said, Nelson, like, these were, these were the sleepiest of sleepy little unions in normal times, filing a couple grievances here and there and so forth. But now they're. Yeah, like, just like patco, radicalized by just being shit on.
[00:45:15] Speaker A: Let's step back one moment to Sean Fain and the May Day general strike idea.
And it is not really tied to Trump. It was something I think he was proposing even before all this. Right.
And so explain what he seems to have in mind with that.
[00:45:36] Speaker B: Yeah, he proposed very shortly after he was elected, I think, even before the strike took place, that as many unions as possible coordinate their expiration dates for their contracts to May, to May 1 or the day May 1, 2028. And, you know, with that, that, you know, and there's a logic to that, that would be great. I think that, you know, a few unions are trying to do that. You know, it's exciting. I mean, here's a labor leader. I would say there's a labor leader who's thinking ambitiously. Yeah, I think that's important because they've been defensive for so long. And, you know, even the rhetoric you have about you know, oh, the oligarchs. And you know, which is, you know, Bernie does that. Other labor leaders do that. But that's one kind of rhetoric. Okay, but what about, you know, let's. Our empowerment, our, you know, the world that we want to create. You know, and I think that Sean Fane can do that. I think he's very good at deploying the social gospel that, you know, he is a Protestant and I think he has a. He has that Debian reading of the Bible, which I think is very good. So he made that proposal. Now, you know, I have to say I think that it's general strikes. When they do happen in world history, they happen because of particular incidents. Usually the government uses the police power to break or hurt the unions. And then in response to that, there's a general strike right away. You don't wait three years. So I'm not, I'm not, I mean I'm in favor of it, but I don't see that as the solution to our problems.
[00:47:09] Speaker A: Well, it depends on. Wouldn't it depend to some extent on how much pre. Before the date there is agitation, so to speak, and education about why. What we can achieve if we all went on.
Well, that would really involve having a set of demands that people are building up around that really represent trans. Something transformative. Not sure what.
[00:47:35] Speaker B: Well, when we have had real general strikes and I would, I would say the red for Ed was a general strike of a sort had that had the character of that. You know, these are the. There, there, there's a kind of mobilization but then there's an, you know, there's a particular incident, you know, a kind of a crisis and then, then it takes place, you know. You know, and there are.
[00:47:54] Speaker C: Maybe that's the point. Like that's the problem.
Like you were saying, we're not articulating what we want. And this would be. The idea is for. As far as I understand it is like a strike in order to win things.
So the.
As opposed to defending from a take back or repression. I don't know. I, I continue to be enamored of the idea but.
[00:48:15] Speaker B: Well, all general strikes are illegal. They just are and. But that in the end. So actually I wrote a book which is called why Unions Matter. And the last chapter is about why we need general strikes.
And I have four of them. One is San Francisco, 1934, where I describe that as a general strike and why that happened. And the second is red for ED, 84 years later. But nevertheless, I think there's some things that are Similar. And then I go abroad, Brazil in the late 1970s, that was in Sao Paulo, led by Lula. There was an effect, a general strike which eliminated the dictatorship. And then of course, Solidarity in Poland, which really was a general strike ineffective. So I mean, you know, the unions have to, they train during these moments of great trends. They transform themselves, they transcend themselves. They begin to reshape the society. And you know, to, and I think that, you know, I think we have, that's one of the things that we think thinking boldly. And those people who do think boldly, Sarah Nelson and Sean Fain and, and Bernie for that matter, I think, you know, that's important. That's important to think boldly, you know.
[00:49:26] Speaker A: Well, you're reminding me as an of another example which is France in 1968, which started with a student strike. And that that may be relevant right now because if you are going to have. The University of California has yet to be fully targeted by the way, Harvard and other private universities for removing of huge blocks of aid. But that's only a matter of time, I think. And I'm just wondering whether if you had given that thousands of students or workers who are organized by the UAW now in California, you could actually have a process, I'm just fantasizing in which there was students. The student unions led a strike against the federal efforts to destroy the universities.
[00:50:18] Speaker C: As soon as they've, when they've paid off all the costs, the legal costs of the injunction on their last strike over political issues.
[00:50:26] Speaker A: Well, it wouldn't have to be so the unions wouldn't, you know, it's not necessary to have the unions take the lead, but having you could, you could have a student worker alliance, which is something my generation was somewhat dreaming about at times based on, you know, this attack on the universities as part of what is generally the dictatorship that is trying to be imposed upon us.
So, and that would be, could end in some kind of general strike situation.
[00:50:56] Speaker B: I would say this. Two months ago there was a terrific the UAW Local 4811, which is the grad students, researchers, et cetera. Quite, you know, it represents almost 50,000 work academic workers. They had a, at a time when the regents and the president of the university was basically saying nothing or kind of accommodating to Trump. They had a terrific presentation about the cutbacks and just what that will mean. It wasn't agitational. It wasn't saying we're going to strike tomorrow, but it indicated that they were taking kind of grasping this crisis and kind of understanding it in a way that the official leadership this university was, was, was not. I thought that was very impressive. And more recently the faculty association has done sort of the same thing in a way that I haven't seen it come out of the, the regents or, or the University of California.
[00:51:59] Speaker C: The deans will not save us.
Okay, I, I, I want to get in the last question because we're, we're almost out of time and I want.
[00:52:06] Speaker A: Good, go ahead.
[00:52:07] Speaker C: Like your part, the parting thought. So the, so there's a kind of high profile discussion happening amongst lefty types right now about this book published and a sort of thesis that's behind it, Ezra Klein's book about abundance and the abundance economy. And then a new poll that Axios did and you know, is framing, I think in an interesting way about whether the democratic base is more interested in populism, which they define as around, you know, blaming elites, economic elites, the oligarchs, the rich, etc.
Or an abundance frame which sort of blames red tape, bad luck, things like bad governance for the lack of progress on, you know, infrastructure improvements, new jobs, high speed rail, more housing, etc. So like you're someone I, you've done a lot of really great work about how the labor movement and the labor left, like liberalism in America has framed the economic question and how we've talked about the economy and the role of regular people in it. Do you have any thoughts about whether there's a strategic advantage in those two frames or a policy one or. Yeah, what do you think? Populism or abundance?
[00:53:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Right, right, right.
Well, good question. Very good question. I would say that, I mean one thing we haven't talked about much is when the union movement is strong, when it can tilt the, the levers of political power, then what does it do? And it, it is in favor of. Well, abundance is this new word that, that Klein has kind of brought back. But I mean that, you know, it's in favor of planning and in favor of, of, of you know, building things and, and all, you know, and that was true when it could do it in the 40s and, and, and other, other New York City public, you know, basically worker public housing. That was a whole generation. They, they did that quite a, quite dramatically. So I think that the union movement has been beat down and on the defensive for so long that it's very hard to grasp when it is powerful what it wants. I would think that Ezra Klein's idea that somehow it's just red tape, it's just regulations, they do exist. It's true. It does make things more difficult in some places to do it, but I think far more. It's a question of actual resources of money. And we've become more unequal over the last 50 years. And if you really had a powerful union movement that was strong enough to. To change the tax code, to change the fiscal equation where you could put trillions of dollars into. Into reanimating the economy. And that's what I mean. That's why I, as a social Democrat, I am. I was. I thought the Biden. Biden was doing that, and that was creating a environment that. It made it much easier for unions to fight and grow. And. And that's what that was, what was going on. I mean, just.
And yet they didn't. Yeah, I mean, the governors of Tennessee and Alabama just a few years ago would blackmail industry saying, if you unionize, we're not going to give you these incentives. Okay, well, when Biden comes along, the incentives that he provides are 10 times greater than that which the states could provide, these Southern states. And so that kind of blackmail disappeared, evaporated, which is one reason that Volkswagen and a few other firms had a.
Did in fact have a more kind of neutral stance when it came to some of the unionization. I'm in favor. I mean, abundance, just, just, just in and of itself, without other reconfigurations of power in this society is not going to solve the problem.
[00:55:44] Speaker C: Well put.
[00:55:45] Speaker A: Well. Well, I think, Daraka, you're. Whether you intend it or not, and I think you did intend it, you've opened up the gate for more episodes of talking strategy, making history around this particular debate that you're pointing to. And that's part of the ongoing thing that we've been tracking here, how to make the Democratic Party represent the needs of the. Of the people and of the working people in particular.
We've been privileged to have our friend Nelson Lichtenstein. The book that we've been talking about somewhat is co edited with Samir Santi. It's called Labor's Partisans Essential Writings on the Union movement from the 50s to today. And we are both recommending that, Daraka and I both, not only because we're a friend of Nelson's, because it's really a good book.
[00:56:35] Speaker C: Very good.
[00:56:36] Speaker A: Surprisingly so.
[00:56:37] Speaker C: And support Dissent. You know, I forgot to mention, you know, just that was like my first internship was at Dissent magazine.
[00:56:44] Speaker A: Oh, really? Okay.
[00:56:45] Speaker C: And when it was run out of Simone Plastric's apartment, it.
And, well, yeah, it was. Yeah, an amazing experience.
[00:56:54] Speaker A: Well, thanks to you, Nelson. And we'll certainly be talking to you over the years to come, if there are any years to come.
[00:57:05] Speaker C: Inshallah.
[00:57:06] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:57:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, thanks.
[00:57:08] Speaker C: Thanks so much.
[00:57:09] Speaker A: The words of this song were taken.
[00:57:11] Speaker B: From the preamble to the constitution of the American Miners Association, 1861, the first.
[00:57:19] Speaker A: Miners union in the United States.
A hundred years later, Pete Seeger set.
[00:57:24] Speaker B: Them to a traditional Irish air.
In just four lines, they tell us.
[00:57:30] Speaker A: What unions stand for?
[00:57:34] Speaker B: Step by step the longest march can be won? One can be won?
Many stones can form an arch?
Singly none?
Singly none?
And by union what we will can be accomplished? Still drops of water turn a mill sing? Glitter up Singly num.
Step by step, the longest.
