Can Unions Make a Comeback? with Hamilton Nolan - 261
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- čas přidán 14. 05. 2024
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The labor movement is in a state of flux. Support for unions is the highest it's been in decades, including the explict support of the Biden administration, yet actual union membership has plummeted to a historical low. With only 10% of the workforce unionized, is the labor movement missing its best chance to organize more workers? This week Adam sits with Hamilton Nolan, labor journalist and author of The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor, to reconcile the popular support of unions with the grim reality of declining membership. They discuss what led to the current moment we find ourselves in, and the best strategies for workers to find solidarity no matter their trade. Find Hamilton's book at at factuallypod.com/books
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Link for 'get in touch with union organizer in your area'?
They're also many of them that are basically wolf in sheeps clothes
Heck half my comments got deleted just trying to mention the u word
It doesn't matter that it's happened because it's meaningless Biden has done nothing The Democrats have done nothing You're wasting your time voting for either or sure one is more fascist than the other but either way it's just you decide you want to go fast or slow to fascism and in all honesty I rather just enjoy the limited day off that I have and not vote sure the faster fascism will win but it's inevitable at this point so why worry about how long it will be when I'm damned anyway and I can thank you baby boomers kids the baby boomers the older generations you have stood there and have made your videos and have done absolutely nothing meaningful and made no attempts to actually try to organize or do something that can change things for the better One day we will have to figure it out for ourselves because at the very least none of you assholes will be in our way
13 mins in. Why does every problem we are having in the US right now go back to Ronald Reagan. Every issue ties back to Ronnie
He was an actor. That played his role as servant to the rich to the great satisfaction of the rich.
Should have passed laws to make sure he never was president or governor of CA
Him over here and Thatcher in Europe. Neoliberalism is a plague
Neoliberalism, look it up
A summary of the problems with the american labor unions can be broken down into a series of major problems. The Taft-Hartley act of 1947 that barred unions from meaningfully participating as political entities & purged their radical leftist members from leadership.
The second major problem can be tied to Yellow unions (or corporate captured unions) that are capitulate to corporate demands over member demands. An offshoot of yellow unions are the federal unions (Which are yellow unions) that strip members of actual capacity to participate in negotiations (The air traffic controllers union being shattered in the 1981 under regan) showed that federal unions are absolutely powerless.
Regarding the Taft-Hartley act, the far more leftist & radical CIO was forcibly absorbed by the notoriously racist and comically incompetent AFL (The AFL was racist to the point that it consistently created scab labor forces.)
There is a vested interest in making sure that a resurgent labor movement can not do anything.
I was a steward in TWU local 100. One of the biggest challenges I saw was getting resources for education and new leadership. Keeping newer members engaged keeps the spark going. It also would build a foundation for new energy when older leadership gets burnt out or worse… conservative.
dont give them the comfort of being called conservative. you mean corrupted. they dont care about conserving anything besides consolidated wealth and power
I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but we need to keep fighting. Look at the Starbucks union success. They almost gave up until Starbucks knew the union pressure would not be stopped by closing stores.
I'm a little over halfway through, but that also reminds me of the rail worker strike that it seemed like they lost. Last year they were able to re negotiate for more, I can't back this up but I had seen that Biden worked to help achieve that, so this may be optimistic but I think workers have more support than we may see outright(by the time posting they did touch on it but I don't think they confirmed Bidens involvement)
@@Shouja198 I heard Biden did the exact opposite of helping
@@Phoenix.Sparkles well like I said at first it seemed like he and congress forced a halt on any striking, and then the following year they renegotiated. I was looking for a bit but can confirm that in the renegotiations he played a role. I just know that they did renegotiate and got better deals, after what had seemed like quite a loss
starbucks cheap it benifet consumers is that a bad thing for middle class & upper class citzen wallets . Government bankrupt cafe franchsie like independent
@@Phoenix.Sparkles Biden had negotiations with the rail owners to force some concessions after he shut down the strike. Probably not as much as they would have gotten from stirking I'd imagine but still.
I want so badly to join a union but there is no union for my job as a caregiver. I look into the process of starting one every couple months and I don't have the resources to make it happen.
Feels like we are losing slowly in my industry. They keep cutting and merging jobs while doing historical stock buybacks after the meager wage increases over the length of the contract. So it will never catchup to the inflation. Im so tired of this shit.
My employer is breaking state law by paying it's truckers salary without overtime compensation (illegal in my state), and it's overwhelmingly frustrating that nothing can be done about because of how weak labor laws are. The last guy to speak up about it was almost immediately terminated under the grounds of being unruly on company property. Everyone agrees it's bullshit but any sort of pushback or retaliation is almost certain to result in termination.
No individual can stand against a system. Your only power as a worker is collective.
The DOL is often useless in resolving worker issues and pay issues.
However, just suing the employer directly has been effective for a lot of people. Restaurants have been underpaying drivers for a couple decades. Regulation enforcement has been nil. But drivers have had lots of success filing lawsuits and getting settlements. If they would have fired my coworker after his lawsuit that would have been another action to sue over. But he did get over $50,000 out of them after legal fees.
There are laws making it illegal for someone to be fired for retaliation in regards to whistle blowing.
workers need to get aggressive again is the answer, like battle of blair mount aggressive if need be. because the way things are going, especially if Republicans sweep, we might see labor laws get worse and worse until they are at level we saw in the late 1800's-early 1900s but done in a more covert way.
they left out a critical part in the name of that law. should be called "right to work, under inhumane conditions and without well being of laborers considered"
They're working but there's just not enough of them and it's becoming increasingly difficult to form them.
I used to work at a grocery store that was under UFCW. The first page of the contract clearly stated that we would not strike under any circumstances. That contract was expired for over a year and negotiations were just starting when I got tired of the frozen wages and left. The new contract was almost 2 years late, no back pay was offered for missed raises, and the company gave everyone that voted for it a $100 gift card even though missed wages were around $500 on average. It was almost unanimously voted for even though it was just a copy pasta of the old one minus some rights and an updated raise schedule. Really put me off unions for a while.
I would love to hear a deep dive into the difference when it comes to "right to work" states. Everyone just gives flippant answers. I have had people just tell me, 'It's a right to work state" as if that means unions can't exist. But I know they exist and operate. What is the difference legally? What are the extra challenges? How do we fight it?
Unions exist just fine in right to work states. For instance, UAW and Kroger's unions operate in Michigan.
Right to work (as I have heard) basically means that unions can’t force workers to pay dues, meaning they can’t properly fund benefits and necessary functions of the union as they would without right to work. Really hard to fight unless you have the right people working in government or a public pressure campaign.
Nolan's words were very inspiring. This is one of my favorite episodes of your podcast Adam.
I have great hope that the rise in interest will lead to a rise in membership. We just need to give it some time.
I'm a contractor for a union business and feel sick everyday knowing I'm not union
I threatened to unionize my workplace and my boss said she’d make sure to cut every good thing we had.
Essentially, bringing a union into your workplace means that the capitalist will play hardball, give the union the hardest of times and the end result may actually be far worse in some ways.
Also, it’s important to know that labour unions are essentially asking for their fair share of the products of empire and so they should also be anti-empire inherently.
Of course she said that, she didn't want you to unionize. It is a scare tactic.
Utterly startled hearing my own name in the thanks during the outro. 😆
I think there are some very good arguments for the concept of craft unions, specialized knowledge and such being particularly core to this, but none of that supports craft unions taking the island approach. Whether a craft union or not, unions have to be coordinating with each other, and helping to build up new unions for new industries, because together is when we are strongest!
I think that it's also easy for people to associate the "Labor movement" with being "anti-labor". It paints people in union as lazy, against working hard, anti-capitalism and victims of unions who leech their paychecks. That narrative is being appropriated again and again. Let me drop a few random terms here also: Wage-slave, Work visa, at-will employment, slavery. Any link between them is purely coincidence/s.
Yep. That protestant work ethic brain washing is really serious. We work to live, we don't live to work. The idea that there's an issue with wanting to work at a reasonable pace is silly.
The Team at DeleteMe should unionize
1:06:20 - says it all. Goes on for about a minute.
The NALC is struggling with morale severely right now. We are hurting for support, and newer carriers simply don't understand the point of paying for a union to exist. 😢
'Raise a glass to [*labor power*], something they can never take away, no matter what they tell you!' 🙂
I just got hired at one of the coffee shops in Pittsburgh that unionized in the last few years and I’m counting down the days till the end of my probationary period. Also in Pittsburgh the Carnegie Public Library System unionized through the Steel Workers unions here. Love to see the support and I’m sure Carnegie is rolling in his grave.
Solidarity!
There's also negative stereotypes of unions for first responders like police, when a bad cop is fired, the union he's part of gets his job back. There's no accountability with some unions.
Cop unions aren't unions in the same way the KKK isn't a civil rights group.
My workplace definitely needs a union but the unfortunate thing is most of the guys here don’t want to start one. We used to have one back in the day but it was dissolved unfortunately and now they just get shafted left and right and none of them seem to want a union. My company is close to a national union as some places have it so i hope we get one.
I remember back when I was a copier technician. It is a skilled trade and the workers are treated poorly. This seems like it would have been a prime greenfield for unions.
I approached a couple of unions and the question was always the same. "What union are you a member of?"
The unions were only focused on poaching each other members, not in helping workers become unionized.
At this point, I am a teacher, in the NEA. I am very pro-union, however, the unions need to focus on growing not poaching.
When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run,
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,
But the union makes us strong.
Give him the job!
The discussion about the Union Board's role being to serve, and focus on serving, the current members sounds exactly the role given to the board of a capitalist company i.e. the role of the board is to to serve the interests of the investors... I hope the irony isn't missed by the workers that think the Union's role should be solely concerned about current members.
What if every time the corporations work against unions, one of those capitalists disappear
Based on my own personal experience trying to increase the unionization among 205 iatse in Austin are the answers unions are fucking dumb. The joining process for my union can only be described as intentionally obtuse I have a workplace full of people who want to be a part of it who are covered by at CBA and I have no Union member who was an organizer present on jobs I'm trying to explain to people how to join comes with 16 different caveats about how you should ignore how do you want you to go about it because it's dumb
As far as I know, a lot of unions in the US are like "service providers" (sometimes non profit, sometimes not) and if a union exists as an organization that's separate from workers it's doomed to fail from the get go. The main resource of labor movements is the labor itself (or rather the ability to collectively withhold it)... how in the hell a separate entity supposed to control this kind of power without getting tempted by capital to lead workers astray?
So, if you wanna get a union, You have to build it. You and your colleagues. No other way, as far as I'm concerned.
And fellow workers you can go even further, don't just unionize the place but install workplace democratic coops.
I have so many more questions now
Gonna say something REALLLLY controversial here; but i think Unions need to be more like 1910s Unions and such, not 1960's Unions to gain power back, get aggressive, get armed and get politically organized. Break factory windows, size trucks and don't let them dock, make sure you come out in numbers with a decent number of people armed (John Brown Gun Glub and SRA members among others), the laws are so stacked against workers shows of force might be the best way. because as we have seen lately, peaceful protesting for worker rights is barely moving the dial in our favor, time to turn it up a notch.
The hard one to argue against is due fees, like in throry the union can raise your pay to compensate for those dues, hell maybe even improve your condition. But before that happens how much of your money is going to go to fees? can you even survive until then? It's easybto say "it's fir your own good, things will get better" but it's hard to know if you can handle that.
this is why i had a horrible experience with them. not only was i not protected by them because i wasnt working at the place long enough(a functionally useless and stupid rule btw) but they were taking 20% of my check because i was making one dollar more than minimum wage... i couldnt even buy enough food for a week with what i was getting paid for FULL TIME hard labor IN THIRD SHIFT....
Good
Adam conover, I'm your biggest fan. :D
Does feel like David vs Goliath...
Maybe there should be an app for that. Every worker downloads it and pays a subscription, vote in app and if all vote yes then a team of lawyers comes down and deals with the negotiations. 😊
Yep, I was a union school Custodian but not allowed to strike.
"Well it depends what you mean by cwisis..."
There is an issue for wfh employees that are quasi contractors. Im in a field that is licensed state by state but companies are now hiring in all states. So, our rates have been stagnant bc of fear of more work going to those licensed in affordable state, and also being replaced by AI. I cant just up and move to another affordable state without testing for licensing.
That's horrible. I'm in a similar boat working as a contractor for international companies, very puzzled about what I can do short of starting my own company or supporting other folks and unions instead (which would be great but wouldn't give me any protections)
Back during covid, the local school board was meeting about whether or not they should force in-classroom teaching again. The union (to whom most of the teachers belong) unilaterally said no, no nuance, it’s too early and unsafe for our members. The council held that session over public zoom, and I’ll never forget how cold I felt when someone on the council nastily said “Not that the union opinion matters.” Half the room laughed. They reopened classrooms. The union did nothing. Elderly teachers worried for their health quit.
I understand the union’s desire to be conservative and hold what they can, but at a certain point, you’re worse than useless if you claim to represent and protect your labor, then after taking the opinion of your members, completely allow yourselves to get steamrolled at every turn for over a decade.
I work in an at-will right-to-work state, I can't start a Union in my company without getting fired.
Bristol Ren faire has a reputaion for firing anything even thinking union, especially the actors because they aren't paid.
I trued to unionize my place of work. My fellow workers were not interested. They said you dont like it here find another job
America has not had, nor ever has been, anything close to democracy. Democracy is where everyone may vote, and every vote counts equally. Dictatorship is "democracy" where either only one person gets to vote, or only one person's vote counts for 51%+.
I'm a medical molecular scientist and it is really hard to get healthcare workers to unionize. We're easy to manipulate with one sentence, "Don't you care about the patients?"
Most of us are overworked and underpaid, and if we do get benefits they're usually pretty barebones. Because most of us aren't willing to strike because we don't want to risk someone's health for our rights.
I'm not saying I'm anti-union. I'm super for unions. And healthcare workers desperately need strong unions (there are a couple, but they don't do much). I just don't know how to reconcile strikes, the most powerful tool of workers, with what we do. Because if we don't work, people aren't just inconvenienced. They die.
Ultimately, precision technicians will have a lower quality of output when overworked. Someone who is 3 hours into their shift is probably in a much better state than someone 12 hours in.
I do believe there would be fewer medicine recalls if there was a functional Biomedical Workers Union.
I'm a pharmacy technician and they put us in with the UFCW (Union of Food and Commercial Workers). We should be part of Healthcare and medical, especially because we don't just work at a CVS or Grocery Store pharmacy.
Remember that bus trike where the drivers still drove but refused to accept money?
@@FrogsIsGood Thank you. For all of this.
He’s not actually a crocodile???
What’s with the weird comments from accounts created in the last few hours with profile pics of nearly naked women? New type of bot? 🤖
They are everywhere man. Every AP video has a couple bot comments.
Well... The Internet is for... 😂
@@SquirrelexCorn!
But for real, report them as spam, they are obnoxious
Mail carrier. We arent allowed to strike. Apparently if we strike we re fired and refused employment with usps.. my local union is great. However, union president is a drunk with questionable loyalty. Contract talks have been postponed for over half a year now
Unions are good, but Worker Cooperatives are better. Don't negotiate with shareholders, _be one_ .
I can tell you from my experiences with unions is when it comes to getting membership dues they are quick to get that. I had bad effort with 32BJ and DC37. One was noon existent and that other one full of shit. Non inspired strength and unity. Then when they so take up a minor cause they buckle.
Wait til they find out about works councils ... ;)
Why is it that comedians have more political knowledge than literally most people in the states??
being a comedian requires paying attention.
Most of these comedians are very educated and come from middle-class backgrounds. Adam went to Bards college which is ranked 72 in the nation.
There's plenty of ignorant comedians out there, don't worry.
Actually the wagner act is needed bad .
Why do I have to apply to a job that has a Union? Shouldn't I be able to apply to a Union that has jobs?
Some trades jobs such as plumbers, hvac, and eletricians work like that depending on where you live.
Man.
That used to be the norm.
Well, probably gonna start a fire here. The downside of unions is that they can repress wages. I work in a rural area and my business would be more than happy to be able to bargain with new applicants. Give them a competitive wage based on their qualifications. We can’t. The union negotiations dictates the wages based on experience. Because we are in a union, raises aren’t based on performance or competence, but on what the union negotiates. So you can be STELLAR and kick ass at your job and you get the same % raise as everyone else. One business can’t raise their wages too much because of the “rising tide” phenomenon because the union needs to do separate negotiations with each business. One business can’t raise wages in a drastic way, even if they want to, because the union needs all the businesses in their area/union to raise wages that way. So it is a slow climb. Also, union dues are almost $700 a year. A ton of money to pay to have another entity keep your wages down. I think that unions have a place and can be good but they also can work against the best interests of their workers in some situations.
few union leaders in jail in Austraia for fraud
cefu union president a billionaire his wife hired a hitman to kill him he not a nice man
Some unions are inefficient and/or corrupt so there should still be a democratic way to reclaim the power they offer. In my country unions suck overall, because they can be easily corrupted and are not transparent at all, but I do believe we can do a slow climb.
We need to move past unions and just start pushing for a direct democracy governmentally. Fighting the current status quo with only piecemeal organization, company by company, isn’t going to cut it chief. Unions don’t get workers what they deserve anyways. The dollar has lost over 60% of its value since the minimum wage was increased to $7.25 in 2009, and I don’t know of a single Union that has gotten an over 60% raise in wage in relation to 2009, and had those wages tied to inflation and cost of living so that they can stop fighting over it ever few years with their slave owner. Time to stop the nonsense and take back our government and country.
Unpopular opinion, clearly, but Biden is a good president, actually, and maybe instead of playing down his achievements, push them to be the norm instead of acting like his support means very little.
You want to know why union membership is down just look at the train workers strike. They got nothing they wanted and they wanted some pretty basic stuff like, the same days off every week and SOME sick pay. That's something you just automatically get at walmart or amazon. Look at unionized Safeway/Albertson's wages. They pay minimum wage, which after you pay union dues ends up being less than minimum. That means they pay less than everyone in town and it absolutely sucks to work there. When you ask your union rep where your dues are going they just get mad and never answer your question. Then when asked why we get paid so little the union rep says, "your labor just isn't that valuable". Bitch my labor makes the world go round. Literally right across the street from safeway is walmart that pays 5 dollars an hour more, gives regular hours and the same days off every week.
Is there a way to organize to take back the power or strike until this changes? I understand it's really hard to strike when you live paycheck to paycheck though. I hope things get better for you all.
If Walmart pays more for the same work across the street, just change jobs. Thatvis if the value of your labor is high enough to get the job.
If what you say is true, over time you'll simply have most of the higher value employees working at Walmart and most of the lower value workers working at Albertson. It's probably a good thing for the community that there are employers for both groups of workers so the higher value workers are paid more fairly and the lower value workers aren't unemployed.
They started this off talking about Federal unions and I believe the rail workers falls under that umbrella. Those particular ingredients are at a disadvantage due to what Reagan pulled on the airline unions.
@@kyleolson9636Yeah, when asked what the union does they said, "keep you from getting fired". So yeah, my coworkers were all tweakers who rarely showed up for work.
I moved over to Walmart a couple of years ago and since the starting wage at Walmart has gone up even more. It's not just wages. Safeway still paying minimum wage. Everything about working at Walmart is better than Safeway, the safety, the equipment, the hours, the schedule, the opportunity to move up. I could go on.
I just don't understand why it's like this.
that labor power will die with automation. We need to get UBI.
A lot of unions have become nothing more than another large business between employees and their jobs.
The APWU, that's union for Postal Clerks and Custodians, is total trash. They only protect bad employees and do nothing to help good ones.
The corporate business strategy seems to be just eliminating the work that the union represents...
franchsie own 90% businssses , not corporation lefty
Yes it is! It is full of PMC bureaucratic ladder climbers who are primarily self-interested. It has little interest in building worker power to oppose significant events including the wars in Ukraine and Palestine.
Teachers and Police have me really split on how to feel about unions. So many of the cops that don't get punished are protected by their union. Teachers unions burn out new graduates by putting them in the worst conditions so they can protect older members from unruly kids, robbing them of the career they dreamed of, and keeps mentally checked out teachers in classrooms who are just waiting for retirement.
All valid concerns. I would say, don't let those who do it wrong dissuade you from supporting those who do it right.
@@Vort_tm I feel like in this situation it becomes easy. If you work for the government, you don't get a union.
Why Labor hasn't worked in America? Racism, the same reason why we couldn't have nice things since forever.
Can the UFCW please listen to this and take notes, so they can stop being the absolute most useless union in existence.
Thought there'd be more. Through years of mismanagement embezzlement unkempt promises unions only work for 3 generations then got to go back to the drawing board if by then there's still one left.
Student/Teacher strike NEEDS to happen or the school system will fall because needed systemic change will never happen
Can’t afford to feed their kids? More like can’t afford to have kids in the first place, if the low fertility rate crisis is any indicator.
Is this why AI is really developing so quickly?
It's not so much developing any quicker than what it has been, it's been marketed and stocked and made money off of its existance faster than it is actually developing. People believe it's developing faster than it is, so it's making the capatalist working on it more money.
AI is being developed as a paper thin pretense to justify underpaying human workers. That's it.
So bored of hearing how the game is rigged. Be it Republicans vs. Democrats, corpos vs unions...no shit the game is rigged. The question is why you have so completely failed to rig it in your favor?
Vote for the Socialist Party are you will be voting for FASCISM again !
I adore you Adam but livestreams this long don't get views :(
When will we get another monologues. They are king when it comes to comedy, myth busting, and exposing capitalism's agenda. Your monologues are similar to Climate Town.
Unions have been on a steep decline for over a decade. No, they wont make a comeback, and we will be better for it
Is it the case that each individual job site has to unionize? Is it possible to unionize all workers of a company across multiple job sites all at once?
53:12 US labor laws prevent mass unionization. SMH
My union is fucking me over to the point I'm gonna have to leave which I never thought I'd ever do.
Would you mind telling us the full story?
@@firstnamelastname3335 I just did and then it accidentally erased. The short version is that a procedure was changed without any notice and because I didn't know, I've been out of work so long my unemployment is gone. I'm now 3 months behind on dues so I can't go to a meeting to discuss with other members and the national union is ignoring my requests for help. I can't sue until I exhaust my options in the union, and I can't do that if no one will return my calls. There's more, but I already spent a fat minute writing about it and that disappeared when my screen minimized (Android), so that's what's up. Also it's a trade union.