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The Rick Smith Show 8-31-2026 · The Rick Smith Show

0:00
[SPEAKER_00]: It's time for the Rick Smith show.
0:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, here is the voice of a working class, Rick Smith.
0:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And welcome, brothers, sisters working class heroes.
0:17
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the Rick Smith show.
0:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks so much for being here.
0:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Today I have the big program.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Lots to talk about, lots to get to.
0:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Ah, look, the concept of bringing America together of healing the nation.
0:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Look, if we're serious about reuniting America,
0:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Then we need to stop pretending that our country can be healed while working people are kept weak, isolated, and well is divided as we are.
0:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've been saying for years the real path to national repair to bringing us back together is to reunionize American workers, rebuild solidarity across race, region, religion, party, whatever white black male female gay straight, I don't care, bring working people together and bring them around the one thing most people actually
1:10
[SPEAKER_01]: actually share.
1:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the daily struggle to live, work, and survive with some measure of dignity and respect.
1:19
[SPEAKER_01]: The American working class agrees on far more than our political class wants to admit to us.
1:28
[SPEAKER_01]: on the questions that are important, like good wages, lower costs, job security, job safety, health care, decent schools, retirement security, a fair and reasonable tax system.
1:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And oh, by the way, the right to speak up without getting crushed, we're pretty much all on the same page.
1:48
[SPEAKER_01]: We agree on about 80% of everything.
1:52
[SPEAKER_01]: but it's that 20% it's that slivered and a lot of times it's that 1% that the wealth class is weaponized against us to keep us angry at each other instead of looking up at the people who are robbing us blind and honestly it's the oldest trick in the book divide workers weakened unions flood the airway with culture war poison and make people think their neighbor is the enemy while billionaires are quietly stealing the whole damn store.
2:19
[SPEAKER_01]: J.
2:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Gold said he could pay half the working class to murder the other half.
2:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we're in full view of that prophecy coming true.
2:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And look, it wasn't just a sick boast.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was the operating manual for American oligarchy.
2:35
[SPEAKER_01]: If workers fight each other,
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[SPEAKER_01]: The boss wins without lifting a finger.
2:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And the sad reality is this self-governments thing that we've been trying, it can't survive when the public is fragmented and isolated, consumers, broken over-worked workers, and trained to hate one another.
2:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Instead of us organizing to fight for better wages, hours, conditions, opportunities for ourselves, our children, the future,
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[SPEAKER_01]: Understand, a republic only works when ordinary people, you and me.
3:09
[SPEAKER_01]: We've got enough power to make our country answer to us.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And that means unions, that means shop floor democracy, that means collective bargaining.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It means building institutions that teach working people how to act together instead of being played against one another.
3:28
[SPEAKER_01]: If America is going to survive, it's going to be saved.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's not going to be saved by billionaires surmanizing, corporate patriotic branding or some of the same politicians auctioning us off to the highest bidder.
3:43
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be saved when we rediscover the idea that we have more in common with each other than we have with the people who profit from our division.
3:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And reunionizing the working class is going to give us a fighting chance.
3:57
[SPEAKER_01]: You leave workers isolated, you continue to pit workers against each other, and this American experiment of self-governance, it can't survive.
4:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And the wealth class knows this.
4:11
[SPEAKER_01]: The Trumpist fear knows this.
4:13
[SPEAKER_01]: The real folks in the know, they know this.
4:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And they play off the anger, which is why I've said for years, look, the red hats are not wrong in their anger.
4:23
[SPEAKER_01]: They're just wrong in their solution.
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[SPEAKER_01]: and it's playing out right in front of us.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So for me, if we're gonna, we're gonna do this, we're gonna save America, we need to reunionize.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And today we're gonna talk a little bit about how, how we get there.
4:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's take a quick break when we come back, Bob Funk from Labor Lab right after this.
4:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Rick Smith, and this is Labor History in 2nd.
4:52
[SPEAKER_01]: In the early 1980s, telephone service in the United States went through a major shake-up.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Up until that time, AT&T threw their bell operating companies monopolized almost all of the telephone service in the nation, 150 million phones were part of the bell network.
5:10
[SPEAKER_01]: A federal anti-trust lawsuit had wound its way through the courts and was reaching a conclusion.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Ma Belle saw the handwriting on the wall that they would lose the suit and move to reach a settlement to break the company up.
5:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Into that restructuring chaos, the workers at Belle sat down to negotiate a new contract.
5:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And on this day in Labor History, the year was 1983.
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[SPEAKER_01]: 675,000 workers walked off the job.
5:36
[SPEAKER_01]: It was one of the largest strikes in the United States history.
5:39
[SPEAKER_01]: The strikers were members of the Communication Workers of America, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and the Telecommunications International Union.
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[SPEAKER_01]: They wanted improved wages, more funding for healthcare, and improved employee training.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The strike lasted for 22 days.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Scabs and managers attempt to keep the system going.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But those who called in for information often had long wait times.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was the last time the CWA sat across the negotiating table from Maw Bell.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The company's breakup occurred just a few months later, with the breakup came a slow eroding of the number of unionized employees, 55% of the Bell employees belonged to unions in 1983, just 15 years later, that number had fallen by half to 27%.
6:28
[SPEAKER_01]: The changing technology of cell phones oversees outsourcing and the emergence of new companies have made this workforce an important front for today's labor movement.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Labor history in two brought to you by the Illinois Labor History Society and the Rick Smith Shop.
6:58
[SPEAKER_01]: So recently the good folks over at the economic policy institute issued a report on just how much corporate America is spending each and every year on denying workers the ability to join and form unions and I got to tell you the number
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[SPEAKER_01]: fairly staggering on north of one and a half billion dollars each year.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And now you throw that on top of the billions they're already lining their pockets with, with stye, stock buybacks, retention bonuses for crummy CEOs, and the insane executive pay and shareholder sweeteners that keep you pulling away.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And what you have is a massive and enormously massive redistribution of wealth scheme that's robbed a working class of its prosperity and the question becomes what should we be doing to claw some of that back there should be real.
7:53
[SPEAKER_01]: anger around.
7:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that number in particular because it is the right of workers in this country to join in form unions.
8:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why I've asked Bob Funk to come talk with us.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Bob is the Executive Director of Labor Lab.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You can check out their website laborlab.us.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Bob, thanks for the good time for us.
8:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks so much for having me, Rick, a big fan of the show and really appreciate the opportunity.
8:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I gotta tell ya, 1.7 billion dollars for union busters.
8:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Seems like an enormous amount of money, but when you realize just how much return on investment, it seems like pennies.
8:31
[SPEAKER_03]: That's absolutely true.
8:32
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, the number that has been flooded around for years was around $400 million.
8:38
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's important to note that that was just the money that's being spent on the consultants, what's legally referred to as persuaders.
8:44
[SPEAKER_03]: So these are the folks that actually come in and meet face-to-face with workers, conduct captive audience meetings, surveil workers in the workplace,
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[SPEAKER_03]: collect information on them, spy on them, coerced them, that was $400 million.
8:59
[SPEAKER_03]: But as anyone that is ever tried to organize a union knows, the legal battle can be just as vicious if not more.
9:08
[SPEAKER_03]: So we're talking about the law firms like Little or Mendelssohn and Jackson Lewis and Morgan Lewis that make literally millions upon millions getting close to $1.5 billion.
9:22
[SPEAKER_03]: simply being hired to delay elections, challenge bargaining units, and fight the union to the nail.
9:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And then if you even do when the union election good luck with the contract fight, because these people will use any tactic possible to delay delay delay.
9:38
[SPEAKER_03]: And these law firms are getting really rich and a lot of these corporations are happy to pay the bill.
9:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely, and look, you know, we'll talk about, you know, the contract thing a little bit later, but the reality is, you know, my grandfather always said if a rich guy is going to take a buck out of his pocket to tell you, you don't need something, you better spend two to get it because they understand return on investment.
9:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And all of this money, this billion seven is the number that I saw.
10:01
[SPEAKER_01]: All of this money that's going to these union busters and denying workers their rights to join in form units.
10:08
[SPEAKER_01]: as at a cost and that's wages, that's hours, that's conditions, that's all of the things that my grandparents generation fought for so that they could pass along, that it had been clawed back.
10:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and now we've got a desperation class working class and the anger that we're seeing very real.
10:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think this is a big part of it, Bob.
10:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely.
10:28
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, the fact of the matter is that these lawyers especially have a huge incentive to hide how much they're getting paid.
10:36
[SPEAKER_03]: So they abuse these loopholes.
10:38
[SPEAKER_03]: And the reason they have an incentive to hide it is I can tell you that there's nothing that pisses off workers more when they find out that they are simply trying to have a voice at the table and the amount of money that their employer is willing to spend to tell them to shut up.
10:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, we're talking about thousands of dollars per worker.
10:57
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we talk about needing campaign finance and elections.
11:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, if you compare how much is spent to sway one vote in the union election, it dwarfs what is spent to sway a vote in an electoral election in our democracy.
11:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And this really irritates workers, because it becomes incredibly clear which side the employer is on and how seriously they take, they respect their employees.
11:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so let me let's talk about that money and you said a moment ago a lot of it goes to Union Buston law firms.
11:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Who hold captive audience meetings, but it's it's much more than that.
11:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you walk through some of the other they call it union invoidance Camp hands Because they're like I get people go, well, you know the employer should have the right to make their case against the union I go my responses the employer had the right to make their case from day one
11:50
[SPEAKER_01]: and there's a reason that people are now flocking towards the unions because they've been getting cheated out of wages, they've been treated poorly, and they've been disposable.
11:59
[SPEAKER_01]: So for me, good wages work, job security and safe workplaces, that's the reason you join in foreign unions, but I'm curious, walk me through some of the arguments because again, we're told, well, the employers just make in their case.
12:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, absolutely, they're not making their case.
12:19
[SPEAKER_03]: They are deliberately trying to suppress their workers.
12:22
[SPEAKER_03]: And we know that because when we get a hold of these contracts that are signed between union avoidance, union-busting firms, and employers, oftentimes there's a bonus that they get if they defeat the union.
12:35
[SPEAKER_03]: you also are not just trying to have your voice heard when you explicitly go out and hire union-busting attorneys and consultants who have a well-established reputation of bending and breaking the rules to defeat unions, right?
12:51
[SPEAKER_03]: This is not a good faith debate that you are having with your workers.
12:57
[SPEAKER_03]: you are literally hiring these folks to defeat the union so that you can retain power.
13:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's not just about the benefits of being in a union.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It is also about numerous CEOs and their egos.
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[SPEAKER_03]: They want to hire these folks because they cannot believe that their lowly employees would dare to question their leadership.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So they will send any amount of money possible to protect their
13:24
[SPEAKER_03]: their their fragile ego.
13:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And that was my next question.
13:27
[SPEAKER_01]: My next question was here.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You look at these companies who have very public images and they're willing to spend basically untold amounts of money.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I look at Amazon.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I look at Starbucks.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, even when the public is against them, they're still dug in because, well, ego, I think, one of it, but also power, control, and ultimately,
13:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, absolutely.
13:52
[SPEAKER_03]: And this ranges from Starbucks and Amazon all the way down to like a small health food store.
13:57
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I can tell you there are plenty of organizations out there that preach something different than what they actually practice, right?
14:05
[SPEAKER_03]: And the moment that the CEO's power gets questioned, he's willing to do almost anything to beat back
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[SPEAKER_03]: anyone that is questioning is power and influence.
14:16
[SPEAKER_03]: And you're absolutely right.
14:17
[SPEAKER_03]: We know that over 70% of Americans approve of unions and overwhelmingly want, they're to be more unions in the country.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Those are also consumers.
14:27
[SPEAKER_03]: So when a company decides to union bus,
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[SPEAKER_03]: They are incurring huge reputational harm if we bring attention to them, and that's a lot of the worth of labor lab does, is try to bring attention to this.
14:38
[SPEAKER_03]: But they don't care because it's about your ego and scorched earth at the end of the day.
14:44
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it doesn't even make sense.
14:46
[SPEAKER_03]: There's one campaign that we worked on recently where the employer spent $6 million trying to bus nurses who were simply asking for a few more nurses to be hired and a metal detector in the waiting room.
15:00
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what you're asking.
15:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is one of the things that drives me crazy, especially with that when you're talking about nurses.
15:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Because, you know, there have been a number of strikes where the hospital administrators have spent more money breaking the strike and breaking the union than they would have spent than the next several contracts.
15:16
[SPEAKER_01]: because it's not about what's best for the hospital or for the workers or for the patients for that matter.
15:23
[SPEAKER_01]: It's what's best for the administrators and the executives and their control and power.
15:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And that I think that message gets lost a lot of the time.
15:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely.
15:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, there are huge costs that are incurred from this.
15:36
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we're talking about the $1.7 billion that is spent on attorneys and consultants.
15:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And I want to be clear that we're just talking about attorneys and consultants.
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[SPEAKER_03]: This doesn't include a loss of product.
15:48
[SPEAKER_03]: activity retention loss.
15:51
[SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't include internal staff time that is spent union busting.
15:57
[SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't include employee engagement programs, which are essentially a design to diffuse union drives.
16:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, when we start incorporating all that, we are talking about
16:08
[SPEAKER_03]: of billions of dollars that are spent every year to Union bust, which just shows that is sometimes not really about the dollar in sense.
16:16
[SPEAKER_03]: It's about ego and it's about power and not wanting to surrender even one seat at the table to the people that drive your profit and make your organization work.
16:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Who's the biggest union buster?
16:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll put my hand up for Amazon.
16:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there someone bigger than Amazon?
16:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Which industry is the biggest union buster?
16:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it Amazon?
16:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Amazon is by far the largest spender on this.
16:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, their spending tells a story here where they are spending insane amount of money going after drivers that are organizing with the teachers, right?
16:52
[SPEAKER_03]: At the same time, Amazon, saying those aren't our employees.
16:55
[SPEAKER_03]: So literally their own spending points out to the fact that this is totally a scheme and a con by Amazon.
17:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Amazon is a single largest spender on all of this, but by industry, it goes to what we were just talking about.
17:11
[SPEAKER_03]: The healthcare industry is huge, probably followed by warehouse and logistics.
17:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are the jobs that are here, right?
17:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the reality is is, you know, I have people saying, we need manufacturing jobs back.
17:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, those manufacturing jobs were crappy jobs before the reunion jobs.
17:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And the jobs that are still here, healthcare, warehousing, that stuff.
17:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are the jobs that are here.
17:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And if we can unionize those jobs, we could probably make those the NVS jobs of the future.
17:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely, right now they haven't figured out a way how to offshore those are completely replaced workers.
17:43
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's what we're seeing the most organizing and the most spending against it.
17:46
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, and everyone knows that our health care systems broken.
17:50
[SPEAKER_03]: So everyone should be absolutely outraged at the amount of money that your local hospital is willing to do to tell nurses to shut up and literally nurses which are.
17:59
[SPEAKER_03]: by far one of the most favorable demographics in this country and by far the most important people in a hospital and you go in there and say well actually instead of putting more beds in this hospital we're going to spend millions of dollars telling nurses to just suck it up and keep letting traveling nurses come in and work under staff and in unsafe working can you see now you just you just you just tripped over my my biggest pet peeve in health care right now and that's
18:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I got a, you know, it's one of those things that she just insane to make, you know, as, as my audience knows, my wife was in a really bad motor cycle accident nearly two years ago and, you know, we, the first hospital that she was life flighted to was all unionized unionized nurses unionized staff, it was, it was amazing.
18:49
[SPEAKER_01]: We went to other places not as great and the majority of them were travel nurses who were there on a short-term contract and the reason and even they knew The reason was they were never going to allow those nurses to unionize and they get the healthcare The benefits the the wages and all that stuff that the nurses at the first hospital we went to were getting and they knew that they were there for that purpose That's that's my pet peeve
19:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely.
19:17
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it really is kind of despicable and, you know, there's own, unfortunately, we have examples of people sort of taking, um, gleefully being, uh, scabs and strike breakers and union, um, uh, busting scabs, right?
19:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, and what's even more frustrating about this is to, to your point, like they're willing to pay a traveling nurse to three times
19:45
[SPEAKER_03]: simply so that they can retain control and watch their bottom line.
19:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And we know, this isn't just anecdotal, we know that patients in unionized health facilities have better outcomes than non-union.
20:01
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's honestly true in almost every other sector, as well, productivity goes up, work a retention goes up, services improve, right?
20:10
[SPEAKER_03]: the hospital as much as they talk about how much they care about their community and everything like that would actually come to patient care.
20:17
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what their most concerned about is making sure that nurses don't ask for too much.
20:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll testify to that.
20:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Look, my experience with the unionized nurses at the Hershey Med Center was nothing but perfect.
20:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And these were incredibly caring, long-term dedicated people who knew their jobs and did an amazing job and I give them nothing but
20:38
[SPEAKER_01]: But in some of the other places there were people who had other agendas sadly, I'm not saying there were less qualified or that I think there there are legions is sadly we're in some other places some of the time But you know here's here's where I come back to this is a this is a policy issue is much as it's anything else This has been allowed to faster our our failure to hold these companies accountable and even to make this issue known
21:02
[SPEAKER_01]: has been a huge policy failure.
21:05
[SPEAKER_01]: In looking at what we've done through our government, because our labor laws are so badly antiquated and so badly in need of reform, you know, how, what should we be doing to stop these delay tactics, stop the retaliation, stop the kind of egregious spending and abuses that are going on?
21:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there something we should be doing?
21:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, absolutely.
21:25
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, when we launched our organization labor lab five years ago, it was really to bring more attention to what is happening behind the curtain when it comes to workers' rights.
21:37
[SPEAKER_03]: And the entire industry and infrastructure that exists to suppress worker rights.
21:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, the fact of the matter is that most of it is hidden, right?
21:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, we had, we put our, our annual report and we find that, uh, 57% of employers that are supposed to report just on like the consultants that they hire like disclose how much they spent on that.
21:59
[SPEAKER_03]: None of them have actually filed it and asked me if the Department of Labor has done anything on that front.
22:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely not.
22:06
[SPEAKER_03]: While they continue to prosecute union leaders, they completely let union busters and their clients off the hook.
22:13
[SPEAKER_03]: The clearest solution to all of this is obviously Congress needs to pass the pro-act.
22:18
[SPEAKER_03]: It would speed up negotiations, actually give the NLRA some teeth again.
22:23
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, literally labor law in this country,
22:25
[SPEAKER_03]: has not been updated in any meaningful way in over half a century, right?
22:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And we desperately need that legislation passed.
22:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I believe it updated to the for the positive.
22:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry, they've done have been horribly negative.
22:41
[SPEAKER_01]: The death of a million paper cuts.
22:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is how we end up where we are.
22:45
[SPEAKER_01]: But you brought up the pro act, which is, is dead on arrival in this Congress, but I have friends who, especially my teamster friends are saying, you know, the way forward is this faster labor contract act.
22:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious if you think that this is a step forward if this is the answer.
23:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I've said, I can't hurt.
23:03
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a third of what ethical was, but it couldn't hurt.
23:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious if you have a thought on it.
23:09
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, obviously the entire package of the pro-act is what we need if we actually want to take labor law seriously and workers' rights seriously, but the truth is the matter that there's also just a willingness to act in Washington, D.C.
23:25
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a culture of corporate culture where we continue to let corporations off the hook.
23:32
[SPEAKER_03]: In addition to fast track contracts and the pro act, there's literally stuff that NLRB and Department of Labor could be doing right now without any legislative mandate.
23:45
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, two years ago, the Office of Inspector General,
23:49
[SPEAKER_03]: issued reports saying that the Department of Labor was failing in its mandate to protect the right to organize, and there were five simple recommendations that the Department of Labor can institute to bring more transparency so that workers had all the information before they voted on a union.
24:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Ask me if any of those have been followed through on, not a single one of them.
24:08
[SPEAKER_03]: In fact, our little organization is able to do this work ourselves independent of the department of labor, which shows you that it's not an issue of resources, it's a issue of priorities.
24:21
[SPEAKER_03]: And unfortunately, our elected officials and the people appointed in our government do not give a damn about workers.
24:28
[SPEAKER_03]: They may give us lip service, but they do not give a damn.
24:31
[SPEAKER_03]: If they did, they would
24:34
[SPEAKER_03]: institute these five changes real fast, you know, when we talk about compliance, there are over 20,000 unions in the country that have to submit financial disclosures of all their activities.
24:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Nine out of ten of them comply immediately, and the rest of them are usually there's like a new secretary treasurer or something like that, and they become into compliance, as soon as the Department of Labor context them.
24:57
[SPEAKER_03]: We're talking about 3000 employers a year, maybe in a good year of organizing and the inverse of that complies with the law and they never come into compliance with the law.
25:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Give me a badge and a phone and subpoena power and I guarantee I can get more disclosure from these corporations and these union busters.
25:20
[SPEAKER_03]: That's when again.
25:21
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just an unwillingness to act in DC.
25:23
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what we need.
25:24
[SPEAKER_01]: We need a bob funk on the on the beat.
25:26
[SPEAKER_01]: So last question I've got for you, given the fact that we see the priorities of some of the especially this administration more than than the last I think I think Biden was moving in the right direction on a lot of this stuff, given the realities what what should we be doing.
25:41
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the what are we're the marching orders.
25:43
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you want people doing on the way out of here.
25:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, absolutely.
25:47
[SPEAKER_03]: So a couple of things.
25:48
[SPEAKER_03]: One as I've beat like a dead horse during this this chat, the Department of Labor is not doing its job and the but workers are entitled to a lot of information before they go to vote.
26:03
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you even think that you have a union buster or union busting campaign, please reach out to us at labor lab, we have compiled a lot of this information that you're entitled to and we will get it to you and assist you to make sure the workers are fully informed before they vote for election.
26:22
[SPEAKER_03]: The second thing is, you know, there may be a change in power in DC, um, at least in one of the chambers, and whichever chamber does flip if it does, they need to start dragging some people up to Capitol Hill to answer some tough questions that have not been answered.
26:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Those are the two key things.
26:40
[SPEAKER_03]: The most important is work or education, and we have to, I mean, for example, the Department of Labor has a Union Buster tip line.
26:48
[SPEAKER_03]: It was found that it wasn't being monitored.
26:50
[SPEAKER_03]: So please contact us so we can get you the information that you're entitled to.
26:55
[SPEAKER_03]: We can help bring public attention and scrutiny to the senior investing that's happening because no one else is doing this level of accountability.
27:04
[SPEAKER_03]: But outside of that, we have to keep talking about the two tiered legal system we operate in.
27:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Workers.
27:11
[SPEAKER_03]: that fund their own organizations are held to a much higher standard, much more scrutiny, and much more enforcement than billion, multi-billion dollar corporations are, even though they fly in the face of public opinion and sentiment.
27:28
[SPEAKER_01]: There you go, laborlab.us, the website, Bob Funk, I appreciate the time.
27:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I love to have you come back and share some more down the road.
27:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks so much.
27:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
27:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanna hear your thoughts, email me rickethorexmithshow.com.
27:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think we're ready for major comprehensive labor law reform that was so desperately needed?
27:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So desperately needed being the most important part of that?
27:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Wanna hear your thoughts, rickethorexmithshow.com.
27:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Quick break, right back.
28:03
[SPEAKER_01]: On this day in Labor History, the year was 1978.
28:06
[SPEAKER_01]: That was the day President Jimmy Carter declared a federal health emergency at Love Canal in the City of Niagara Falls, New York.
28:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Premier spokeswoman Housewife Lois Gibbs became the poster child for these citizens' environmental justice movement virtually overnight.
28:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Niagara Falls Gazette journalists had broken the story two years earlier.
28:27
[SPEAKER_01]: residential some pump testings and health surveys found a number of toxic chemicals and unusually high rates of cancers, birth defects, miscarriages and other serious health concerns.
28:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Initially planned as a canal, the site remained abandoned until the 1940s.
28:42
[SPEAKER_01]: That's when Hooker Electrochemical Plant and the city began using the site to dispose of toxic chemicals and municipal waste.
28:50
[SPEAKER_01]: More than 20,000 tons of toxic sludge containing more than
28:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Then, in 1953, the city school board bought the site and built two schools on the property.
29:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Soon, about a thousand families settled nearby.
29:05
[SPEAKER_01]: By the early 1970s residents complained of foul odors, health issues, substances filling their basements and leaky waste disposal drums popping up in their backyards, killing all plant life.
29:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Carter's initial declaration provided limited funding, but the disaster led to the passage of the Superfund Act.
29:23
[SPEAKER_01]: The neighborhood was demolished and residents were compensated and relocated.
29:27
[SPEAKER_01]: The new owner of Hooker Chemical, Occidental Petroleum, settled with the EPA for $129 million.
29:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Despite 21 years of remediation and residential redevelopment, new residents complained in 2011 of foul odors and ruptured sewer lines,
29:44
[SPEAKER_01]: oozing toxic sludge.
29:46
[SPEAKER_01]: By 2014, 1,000 new complaints had been filed, contending the area had never been properly remediated.
29:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Labor history in two brought to you by the Illinois Labor History Society and the Rick Smith Show.
30:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Not that it matters, but sometimes I wonder if the potentates of our official intelligence ever wonder why they've become so despised.
30:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I doubt it since introspection doesn't seem to be in the DNA of hebristic AI demagogues like Bezos, Musk and Zuckerberg.
30:18
[SPEAKER_02]: nor are they programming such qualities into their superintelligent bots?
30:23
[SPEAKER_02]: So, let me help them see themselves.
30:26
[SPEAKER_02]: First, today's eruptions of public hatred toward them are not as they want us to believe, just petty jealousy by people who want to be like them.
30:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Really?
30:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Be like Musk?
30:37
[SPEAKER_02]: His ugliness is not just skin-deep.
30:40
[SPEAKER_02]: It emanates from his inner core.
30:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Such aloof AI profiteers have sparked a nationwide purry fire of anger by plundering local water supplies, farmland, electric power, and tax subsidies.
30:53
[SPEAKER_02]: They're callously treating our communities as nothing more than a series of financial transactions for them to consummate.
31:00
[SPEAKER_02]: But people's rebellion is not merely about monetary prices and property.
31:05
[SPEAKER_02]: fundamentally, it's fueled by corporate elites total disregard for the basic human value of fairness, even preschool children comprehend the moral implication of, that's not fair.
31:18
[SPEAKER_02]: The corporate goal rush to an AI future is not about the mystical possibilities of technology, but old-fashioned greed.
31:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Money elites are grabbing more profits and control, and there's nothing fair about either.
31:32
[SPEAKER_02]: This is Jim Heiter saying, the spreading rebellion against AI arrogance is raising a politically explosive moral question.
31:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Who the hell elected you, selfish screw ups, to dictate our future?
31:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Musk and companies say they don't even believe in democracy, so why would we the people let them remake society in their totalitarian image?
31:53
[SPEAKER_02]: To join your local rebellion, go to jimheiter.com slash data centers.
32:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the Rick Smith show.
32:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, here is Rick Smith.
32:12
[SPEAKER_01]: So not too long ago, a red hat front of mine sent me a text and said, you know, there's
32:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Jeff Bezos has got this great scam.
32:20
[SPEAKER_01]: He's figured out how to get non-speaking people to go deliver his packages at eight o'clock on a Sunday night in a rental van.
32:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, that's what's wrong.
32:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm going, you got most of it.
32:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm with the out a lot of it.
32:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And, and understand, you know, we've been talking about Amazon for a while and the fact that they are pulling
32:41
[SPEAKER_01]: So many jobs down especially those UPS drivers who I want delivering my packages You know the people with good decent wage jobs family sustaining wage jobs the kind that you can you can live on the fun Take vacation put kids through college retire with some dignity those kind of jobs
32:59
[SPEAKER_01]: How do we get more of those because understand that I believe this whole heartedly that unions help workers build wealth and not just for the union workers But for everyone, and that's why I've asked David Madeleine to come share some thoughts with us David's a senior fellow and senior advisor there at the Center for American Progress the American Worker project You can check out their website americanprogress.org They had to survey not too long ago on this very topic of Unions building wealth for everyone David.
33:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for the time for us
33:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Rick, thanks for having me, it's pleasure.
33:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So I got to go back to this comment because it stuck with me and I've gotten a lot of response from folks over the last several days, you know, yeah, basis has got a great scam going.
33:40
[SPEAKER_01]: He's got a bunch of gig workers running around, you know, the fact as I pointed out, you know, the day I brought up the email, he's got to, you know, woman after her 10 hours shift throwing a couple of boxes in the back of her car in the way home.
33:51
[SPEAKER_01]: he's figured out a way to get us hustling to make him more and more and it ain't trickling down to the rest of us, which is why I say it, I think you, you would agree.
34:00
[SPEAKER_01]: This is where unions have to play a, play a piece in us.
34:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, well, and all the other thing that you didn't mention that, uh, basis and Amazon are doing is are trying to bust unions so they can't, uh, form so people can't.
34:13
[SPEAKER_04]: bargain and improve their working conditions and get better wages and benefits.
34:18
[SPEAKER_04]: So yes, Rick, not surprisingly, I'm with you.
34:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is where you know, I come back to this idea that when I was a kid and I tell the story all the time, I'm an eight-year-old kid, I'm living in a housing project on the West Side of Cleveland and the neighbor got a job at Ford and immediately you saw their lives get better.
34:39
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, they had food at the end of the month, which in our neighborhood was kind of a big deal.
34:43
[SPEAKER_01]: They got, you know, kids got better clothes, second-hand bikes got a second-hand car.
34:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And within a short period of time, like the Jefferson's of the old TV and 70's TV show, they were moving on up and out.
34:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So even as an eight-year-old kid, I saw union job better life.
34:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Got this union job at Ford, better life, nearly almost immediately.
35:03
[SPEAKER_01]: How come that message hasn't really,
35:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Or let me ask you this, has that message picked up in the 21st century in this era like it did for me that?
35:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, it's a little more complicated, I think in some ways that message has resonated big time, you know, unions are very popular right now, more workers would like to join union than just that any other time in past that's about half of all workers say they want to
35:34
[SPEAKER_04]: units.
35:35
[SPEAKER_04]: These are all really high.
35:37
[SPEAKER_04]: So I think part of that message is gone through.
35:40
[SPEAKER_04]: The disconnect is that public policies doesn't make it very easy for workers to join units, whereas you mentioned that the guy could go down and get the job at Ford, and that was a unionized job.
35:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, that is a much different proposition, so I think that's the big things that are going on, or the huge disconnect between public sentiment with the public wants and needs.
36:06
[SPEAKER_04]: and what our policy makers have delivered for us.
36:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and then there's said reality as, you know, as I mentioned, you know, with, you know, the Amazon drivers, a lot of those people are gig workers, none of them actually work for Amazon.
36:21
[SPEAKER_01]: They, uh, some of work for another company who will who hires them, but a lot of them are independent contractors who are just, you know, on their phone, I can deliver a couple of things, which is not a way to, I don't know, not really a way to build a prosperous working class.
36:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
36:37
[SPEAKER_04]: And you mentioned sort of alluded to this in the beginning of your remarks.
36:41
[SPEAKER_04]: We have a, we have a study where we looked at the wealth of union workers compared to non union workers and the wealth is sort of the sum of all of their assets that's if they have a house or if they have any retirement savings minus any debt they might have and we found that typical.
37:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Union household has about $200,000 more in assets than the typical non-union household.
37:10
[SPEAKER_04]: And that is a really big deal.
37:12
[SPEAKER_04]: That's about, you know, it basically means double the amount of wealth for the typical union household compared to a non-union household.
37:19
[SPEAKER_04]: And that is transformative.
37:21
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not just the better wages that unions help you get.
37:24
[SPEAKER_04]: It sort of that builds up over time.
37:26
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the better health insurance.
37:27
[SPEAKER_04]: So you don't go broke if you get sick.
37:30
[SPEAKER_04]: And then more stable jobs you can continue to earn and all of those things over a sort of a lifetime make a massive difference.
37:38
[SPEAKER_04]: And it gets you into a different stratosphere from being poor to actually being middle class.
37:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And look, the premise of this whole show is that that is my life experience.
37:48
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I grew up in a housing project on the west side of Cleveland, got a union job, that union job gave me the ability to earn a decent wage, got me health insurance that made sure when I got sick.
37:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't go broke when my wife had her motorcycle accident.
38:01
[SPEAKER_01]: A $7 million in build care, it's cost me about 1100, about 1100 bucks out of pocket total so far.
38:10
[SPEAKER_01]: So to your point absolutely spot on accurate and I think I think saying that over and over so people understand that there is a union advantage and it is Normously economically beneficial to pay that couple of bucks.
38:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I wish I could get every Return on every dollar I invest on what I spend on my union card
38:31
[SPEAKER_04]: know, no doubt.
38:33
[SPEAKER_04]: And you know, I think the other important things are the big differences, the biggest difference.
38:39
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, the site site was listing before or were sort of on average.
38:43
[SPEAKER_04]: The people without a college degree have even bigger wealth gains.
38:48
[SPEAKER_04]: when they join a union compared to a non union.
38:50
[SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, people without a who aren't union might have gone to college and they might have another avenue to earn a decent living and have build up wealth, et cetera.
39:01
[SPEAKER_04]: But really, especially for those who
39:05
[SPEAKER_04]: might not earn as much, might not have a stable job, might not have the home insurance.
39:09
[SPEAKER_04]: The union is the transformative over over a person's lifetime.
39:14
[SPEAKER_04]: The same thing also with race, black and Hispanic, white households do very well in a union, but black and Hispanic tend to do, you have built even more wealth comparably because of a union because it's lifting people up who are at the bottom and bringing them to the middle
39:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I saw the economic policy institute had a piece and we talked about it a couple of weeks ago that if we tripled union density because union density is now almost to where it was when it was illegal to be a union member or you got blackballed for being a union member we're almost in that territory right now but they said if we tripled union density back to where it was like my grandparents generation was around
39:54
[SPEAKER_01]: that it would mean like almost eight grand more in the individual workers pocket plus all of the other things that you talked about you know pension and health care and job security and all of that stuff which makes me go you know it's not surprising that people want it
40:10
[SPEAKER_01]: But how do we get it?
40:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the reality is the employers have done a hell of a job and denying workers their rights.
40:17
[SPEAKER_01]: What policies should we be looking at?
40:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I know you guys have done a bit of work on this with six policies to increase union membership.
40:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Walk me through some of that if you can.
40:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so we tried to look at kind of what is the research say about policy that boost union membership, not just sort of what we hope or what people are debating, but really what do we know works based on either what's happened in this country, what's happened in other countries, especially those that are most like like at the US and how policies like us like in Canada and what we
40:52
[SPEAKER_04]: fine is, you know, the six policies we need is our, the first is sort of the strengthening to workplace organizing a bargaining system that we currently have and most, this is where most of the public debate and policies and Congress are the quite of, you know, probably I'm sure you've discussed a million times and I've done it with you, the pro act.
41:09
[SPEAKER_04]: which would, for example, increase penalties when employers try to bust unions and the like.
41:15
[SPEAKER_04]: We need that, but that is just one thing we need.
41:18
[SPEAKER_04]: We also need to improve union access to workers.
41:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Make it easier for them to talk to and recruit members.
41:25
[SPEAKER_04]: We need to promote sexual bargaining so you can bargain for an entire sector and industry, not just at the individual work site.
41:33
[SPEAKER_04]: We need to ensure that unions are much more involved with things like training so that you have a continuous pipeline of getting workers into unions.
41:46
[SPEAKER_04]: We also need to make dues paying easier and we need to actually provide funding and support
41:53
[SPEAKER_04]: for union activities and that's you know a couple of states have started to do this where they're providing unemployment insurance for striking workers.
42:01
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's to me this sort of categories of things we need to do and that's big and ambitious and it's far more than it's on the table right now with most politicians but it's what we need to push for because we can't just get there with one or two little tweaks, we need a bunch of things to get us to
42:19
[SPEAKER_04]: That 30% density or higher where we really can transform the economy so that it is a middle class economy.
42:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Not lucky.
42:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are some people who are talking about that.
42:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I know some DSA members who are all in on a lot of what you said.
42:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And now they've been labeled as communists because evidently wanting to have reward for work is somehow now.
42:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you've noticed.
42:47
[SPEAKER_01]: according to to some on the right because I would think anyone who just heard what you said about increasing collective bargaining rights these these new fangled ideas like sectoral bargaining that nobody seems to have heard of all that sounds sounds for the communist David
43:05
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it is about making capitalism work.
43:09
[SPEAKER_04]: If right now it's just going to those the top who have the power to rig the system for them.
43:15
[SPEAKER_04]: This and this that oppose these to me is about how you ensure that hard work pays off, how you ensure that the rich aren't the only ones that benefit.
43:25
[SPEAKER_04]: from the economy's gains.
43:27
[SPEAKER_04]: That is, I mean, it's not calming as in my book.
43:31
[SPEAKER_04]: It is just sensible proper control of the economy and directing of the economy so that it benefits everyone.
43:40
[SPEAKER_04]: If, if, but whatever people need to think to actually get and support those policies, I'm game, call me, you know, lemon, whatever, it doesn't matter.
43:49
[SPEAKER_04]: This is about strengthening worker power, making the economy work and have a fair balance between both sides.
43:58
[SPEAKER_01]: for me it's about reviving what we were what I was told as a kid was the American dream you work hard to play by the rules you get ahead you get the little house with the pick advance you get the 2.3 kids there's a car in the driveway of vacation you retire and die with dignity in your home that that's what I was sold was kind of the American dream look we're not all gonna be Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos I haven't figured out how to screw over thousands of workers and and cheat them out of wages
44:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think you should be able to and I don't call it communism because look the reality is a lot of this stuff is what our grandparents generation did and they're the folks who kind of fought all that stuff
44:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean, they're hitting the nail on the head.
44:38
[SPEAKER_04]: This was the, in some ways, this, all the things we are pushing for now, the making, you know, to make the economy work to make capitalism work, or what our grandfather's or father's worked and fought for as a way to prevent
44:55
[SPEAKER_04]: fascism or communism from taking hold in the United States.
44:57
[SPEAKER_04]: We saw what was happening in the rest of the world.
45:00
[SPEAKER_04]: And if you didn't make the economy better for everyone, if you didn't democratize the economy, you were bound to have those kind of things.
45:06
[SPEAKER_04]: So that, yes, we went off and fought World War II abroad, but we also started to fix things at home so that we weren't going to be as susceptible to the kinds of problems other countries faced.
45:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Instead, we are now back where countries were back
45:25
[SPEAKER_04]: at those times, and we have to, as you mentioned, rebuild the kinds of things that made the American dream possible for a whole bunch of people that could live dignified lives by going to work every day.
45:38
[SPEAKER_04]: And that was enough to have the things we hope expect.
45:43
[SPEAKER_04]: But unfortunately now,
45:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm not lucky.
45:47
[SPEAKER_01]: We hear about a lot about manufacturing jobs and yeah, because we want those jobs back, but those were all crummy jobs before they were union jobs.
45:54
[SPEAKER_01]: You go back, you know, before unions organized the steel mills or the auto plants or any of those, those are really brutal.
46:02
[SPEAKER_01]: poverty wage jobs, but they became union jobs and now they're, you know, we pine for those now, which I say, you know, even the gig jobs that we've got, you know, the, you know, the single mother delivered packages on the way home from 10 hour shift.
46:14
[SPEAKER_01]: We couldn't make that a job that someone could make a living off.
46:18
[SPEAKER_01]: We could emulate what the teamsters have done at UPS and make those really good solid wage delivery jobs, but we just have to want to.
46:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And I look at, you know, the right share stuff that's going on, all this, you know, the Uber is the lifts, the door dashes, all of this, those could be reasonable jobs.
46:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Those could, those could have some bit of of wage security and health and retirement security if we chose because there seems to be a lot of money at it.
46:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, Ricky, you know, you're, I think once again, you and I are pretty much an agreement on this.
46:51
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a, and there's a fact of big move in a couple of states, Massachusetts, and California, and then hopefully in Illinois that has created these policies that allow ride shared drivers to bargain collectively and do so in a way where they're bargaining for the entire.
47:06
[SPEAKER_04]: sector and the hope is and really the path forward is that these can now be good jobs because the worker is going to be able to bargain over their compensation which other policies have failed to improve.
47:18
[SPEAKER_04]: There's been effort to give them higher minimum wages, et cetera, but the companies have found a way around it to say, oh, you're working, you're not working now.
47:26
[SPEAKER_04]: You're just waiting to even though you, if you don't click on the app, you're going to fire you.
47:31
[SPEAKER_04]: So, we've got a big push in these states to create the kind of dignity out of a formerly bad job just as you mentioned in the manufacturing.
47:42
[SPEAKER_04]: And in fact, one more sort of analogy I just think is really important is Massachusetts drivers on their path to get a union and bargain collectively were recently had their union certified 70,000 drivers, which is the biggest
47:59
[SPEAKER_04]: collective bargaining units in the United States for the private sector since River Rouge, Ford plant, you know, historic Ford plant in 1940s that helped transform that industry into good work.
48:13
[SPEAKER_04]: And so the other thing about these policies they can also get scale where you get lots of drivers in and hopefully improve their conditions.
48:22
[SPEAKER_04]: So let's say, we're still on the experiments phase.
48:25
[SPEAKER_04]: We, you know, we don't 100% know there's going to work.
48:27
[SPEAKER_04]: They're based on what work has worked in the past.
48:30
[SPEAKER_04]: But we, the board workers have to be able to bargain.
48:32
[SPEAKER_04]: and get the wages and the benefits that come with the union contract.
48:36
[SPEAKER_04]: And they're still seeking that, but there's a real path there that I'm very optimistic about, but we still got to see it in action.
48:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Now look, I had a conversation with a newber driver and I was trying to get his thoughts on this and he's like, look, when I started driving Uber, the percentage that came to me was higher.
48:53
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like, I thought he said like 70% or something.
48:56
[SPEAKER_01]: That would seem to kind of high.
48:58
[SPEAKER_01]: But he said now it's not like 25% so the money is there.
49:02
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just a matter of how it's being distributed is it being distributed to the people who may who actually do the work And create the product and create the profit or the person who's just moving money from one pocket to the other and I argue that that's across the spectrum of our economy because we've created it I don't know if you've noticed we got a lot of billionaires
49:21
[SPEAKER_01]: We've got a lot of really rich people while we've got a lot of poor working folks who are just struggling to get by, which is why I agree with all of the people who are angry.
49:29
[SPEAKER_01]: The anger is real.
49:31
[SPEAKER_01]: We just need radical policy to get us back to where we had policy that made people's lives better.
49:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So here's my basic argument.
49:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Bad policy got us here.
49:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Good policy can help us move in the right direction.
49:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm with you.
49:46
[SPEAKER_04]: And you know, there always will be.
49:49
[SPEAKER_04]: companies and employers are trying to cheat and screw their workers and we need to have policy change to make that harder or limited and have workers have ways to push back.
50:02
[SPEAKER_04]: The company is making a profit good.
50:04
[SPEAKER_04]: We want that.
50:05
[SPEAKER_04]: We just don't want them to make them the profit only because they're screwing the workers.
50:09
[SPEAKER_04]: We want it so that there's a relative balance.
50:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Right-share policies are a big step forward towards really pushing the on the low back towards what policy could do.
50:23
[SPEAKER_04]: We have done these things in the past, you know, Union membership as you sort of alluded to.
50:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Private sector Union membership now is 6% that's basically what it was when unions were illegal before the National Labor Relations Act was passed.
50:37
[SPEAKER_04]: But within 10 years,
50:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Councils that help spread unionization to companies that need it government contracts.
50:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Union density got to it's basically a peak within 10 years.
50:53
[SPEAKER_04]: That shows the importance of policy.
50:54
[SPEAKER_04]: And then once we passed half-heartedly to make it much harder to unionize, gutted that Union private sector has been declined ever since.
51:04
[SPEAKER_04]: So we can really transform things with good policy and with bad policy.
51:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Right now we're too much stuck in the bad policy.
51:13
[SPEAKER_04]: But we've got energy, public interest,
51:17
[SPEAKER_04]: and a real need to do things differently here.
51:21
[SPEAKER_04]: And so, you know, that's why I do what I do is because I see that we can we can improve things.
51:26
[SPEAKER_01]: There you go.
51:27
[SPEAKER_01]: David, as always, great stuff.
51:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Keep up the amazing work over there at the American Worker Project.
51:31
[SPEAKER_01]: You can check out the work David Madlin and his team do over at americanprogress.org.
51:36
[SPEAKER_01]: David, thanks so much.
51:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Hey Rick, thank you.
51:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Great talking to you.
51:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to hear your thoughts.
51:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you agree?
51:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I do unions.
51:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Help create wealth for everyone.
51:45
[SPEAKER_01]: You need me.
51:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll be rick at the ricksmithshow.com.
51:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell me what you think.
51:48
[SPEAKER_01]: What's your life experience?
51:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you share mine?
51:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Back after this.
52:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Rick Smith, and this is Labor History Inter.
52:05
[SPEAKER_01]: This day in Labor History, the year was 1890.
52:08
[SPEAKER_01]: That was the day that one of the heroines of the U.S. Labor Movement, Elizabeth Gourli Flynn, was born and conquered New Hampshire.
52:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Elizabeth learned her progressive politics at a young age.
52:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Her father was a socialist and her mother, a feminist.
52:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Elizabeth was kicked out of high school for speaking out in favor of socialism.
52:27
[SPEAKER_01]: This did not slow her down.
52:29
[SPEAKER_01]: She kept speaking and her reputation grew.
52:32
[SPEAKER_01]: She became a member of the industrial workers of the world.
52:35
[SPEAKER_01]: She traveled the country organizing and speaking to workers.
52:39
[SPEAKER_01]: From the Minnesota iron range to the textile mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts, Elizabeth was on the front lines of the labor struggle.
52:47
[SPEAKER_01]: She was arrested for her activity 10 times.
52:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But was never sentenced.
52:51
[SPEAKER_01]: During World War I, Flynn was arrested and stood trial for speaking out against the war.
52:57
[SPEAKER_01]: The experience led her to become one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization dedicated to protecting freedom of speech.
53:06
[SPEAKER_01]: In the 1930s, Flynn became a member of the U.S. Communist Party, writing a regular column for the Daily Worker.
53:13
[SPEAKER_01]: But despite her personal political ideas, she supported Democratic Party President Franklin
53:21
[SPEAKER_01]: During the 1950s, she was caught up in the anti-communist hysteria led by Senator Joe McCarthy.
53:27
[SPEAKER_01]: She went to prison for two years for allegedly violating the Smith Act, a law against overthrowing the government.
53:34
[SPEAKER_01]: She died while on a visit to Russia in 1964, more than 20,000 people attended her funeral there.
53:41
[SPEAKER_01]: A monument to Flynn stands at the forest home cemetery, just outside of Chicago, where she is buried alongside the graves of Eugene Dennis, Big Bill Haywood, and the Haymarket Martyrs.
53:53
[SPEAKER_01]: For more information, go to laborhistrian2.com, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter at LaborHistrian2.
54:11
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I've told the story of probably a thousand times here on the show because I think it's an important one and it really was one of those moments in my life that That I think back to you know fairly often You know when you know as a kid growing up where I did you know there
54:28
[SPEAKER_01]: We were in poverty.
54:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we were in an American version of poverty.
54:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Every month of the coverage were bare.
54:34
[SPEAKER_01]: You were waiting to, you know, because there were times we were on and off of welfare.
54:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, the check came at the beginning of the month and it never, you know, for those folks who think, you know, welfare is this great, you know, existence.
54:45
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not.
54:47
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, you believe what you need to and what you've been sold.
54:50
[SPEAKER_01]: The reality is, is those food stamps never go to the end of the month and you're always scraping, you're always buying the worst stuff.
54:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Because before you anyway, because you're just looking for stuff that's filling, which is why I say this all the time, my diet is still terrible because I grew up on the welfare diet, which is basically noodles or, you know, mac and cheese and, you know, all things that just things that were filling, cheap.
55:17
[SPEAKER_01]: But I remember that moment that, you know, I found out what a union was and I was like a year's old.
55:24
[SPEAKER_01]: When the guy came home and he proudly had his UAW jacket on, that said UAW and Ford, I still remember it.
55:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and and didn't know what it meant.
55:36
[SPEAKER_01]: But did see right before me that they had they had better food.
55:43
[SPEAKER_01]: First up,
55:47
[SPEAKER_01]: the kids got bikes.
55:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody else in the neighborhood had bikes.
55:51
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, they eventually got a second hand car.
55:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And like I said, they moved, they moved out.
55:57
[SPEAKER_01]: They moved into the houses that were a couple of streets over.
56:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Still remain friendly with the kids.
56:04
[SPEAKER_01]: But now they were, you know, they were, they were, they're in the upper crust now, according to where we were.
56:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And that messaging, that thought stuck with me.
56:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Union job better life.
56:18
[SPEAKER_01]: That's simple.
56:20
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I had the chance, as I'm 19 year old kid, I grabbed it.
56:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll tell you, you know, I'm fortunate that my union has done such a good job negotiating good wages, good benefits, especially especially, I've talked about my wife's accident.
56:41
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... we have i've got a stack of of a bill billed care over seven million dollars uh... if it weren't for good policy who knows where we would be if it weren't for strong by strong union i don't know where we would be because i understand uh... before the a c a most insurance is tapped out at a million dollars yeah uh... now
57:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I look back at the period that I've spent and look, I've done very well, I've worked very hard, but I have a defined benefit pension that seems like something from a past of a far gone era for most people because they don't exist much anymore.
57:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And the only places that they really do exist are, well, in union contracts where desperately holding on to that kind of security for their members.
57:38
[SPEAKER_01]: The messaging that we're seeing now is what I've been saying for 21 years doing this show.
57:45
[SPEAKER_01]: We need stronger unions.
57:47
[SPEAKER_01]: We need stronger collective bargaining rights.
57:50
[SPEAKER_01]: We need a fair, equitable share of the wealth that our labor creates.
57:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And we talked about the Uber driver there a moment ago.
57:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It's amazing to me that there is it more anger
58:09
[SPEAKER_01]: They have people running around as their employees, you know, they get to say in the car, they get to say in what how they drive, what the, everything and it's just a percentage and that percentage keeps dwindling at least that's what people are telling me and it's that redistribution of wealth that's been happening across our economy for decades now.
58:32
[SPEAKER_01]: we have created an enormously large wealth class, a bunch of people who don't know how to work and don't want to work, but have convinced us that their work matters more because they figured out how to organize things.
58:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And look, I think they should be rewarded, but where we are now,
58:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I gotta tell you, it's troubling.
58:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And reckoning is coming, because look, on the right, we're even hearing voices now saying, you know it's gotten a little, it's gotten a little out of control.
59:03
[SPEAKER_01]: You're even hearing voices on the right going after billionaires, because it's gotten a little out of control.
59:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Because they're finally waking up to the reality, they're not safe.
59:14
[SPEAKER_01]: They were just as big a mark as all the rest of us.
59:18
[SPEAKER_01]: So for me, as I've been saying, you want to reunite this country, we reunionize this country.
59:23
[SPEAKER_01]: We give people the ability to fight for better wages, hours, conditions.
59:27
[SPEAKER_01]: That's simple to make.
59:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Want to hear your thoughts?
59:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Email me, Rick at theRickSmithShare.com.
59:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell me what you think.
59:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Miss city portion of the program, grab the podcast, and as always, thanks so much for being here.
59:38
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll see you back here next time.
59:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Email REC at REC at TheRixSmithShow.com.
59:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Until next time, this is Ben TheRixSmithShow.
59:57
[SPEAKER_00]: We're working people, come to talk.