This is Democracy – Episode 171: Work and Labor in America Today

Welcome to our new episode of this is democracy this week. We’re very fortunate. We’re joined by yet another, uh, distinguished story. And this time someone who’s really been a pioneer, not only among historians and scholars, but also among, uh, labor activists and political change agents around. Country for many, many years.

Uh, this is Nelson Lichtenstein, who is a distinguished professor of history at the university of California, Santa Barbara Nelson. Thank you for joining.

Delighted to be here.

Nelson is the director and founder of the center for the study of work, labor and democracy, uh, at the university of California, Santa Barbara, he’s a historian of labor, political economy and ideology he’s written and edited a whopping 16 books.

Uh, I can’t keep up with all of Nelson’s writing. Two of my favorite books, not just that he’s written, but two of my favorite books that I impose on all students on the history of labor in American society. Uh, Nelson’s absolutely essential. A biography of Walter writer. Uh, it’s called Walter Arthur, the most dangerous man in Detroit.

He was the head of the. Automobile workers, which was one of the most progressive unions in American society, mid 20th century. Uh, Nelson’s also written a book. My graduate students love called state of the union, a century of American labor, which is really a phenomenal survey of the changes in American labor unions and, and work in America.

Over the last century, he has a forthcoming book, uh, called a fabulous fit. Bill Clinton and American capitalism. And most recently, uh, Nelson has published an article in dissent magazine that, uh, we’ll make sure to link to the podcast. Uh, the title of that is, is this a strike wave, uh, discussing the current issues around labor and particularly many Americans choosing, uh, during COVID not to return to their low paying jobs, uh, in many different parts of our country and what that really, really means.

We’re going to talk to Nelson today. About how work and labor organizing have changed in American society over the last few decades, what that means for today and where, where we might be going, how this history of labor and history of work can help us to understand our current, uh, COVID moment. And maybe the future moment we’re entering into right now, before we turn to our discussion with Nelson Lichtenstein, of course we have a Zachary series scene setting poem.

What’s the title of your poem? Today’s day. Soon to be, but not yet. Let’s hear it. The belt workers and then stop. The bus turns another corner and stops the broken or the tired out or the soon to be, but not yet important. All turn around and face the door or take the clock off the wall. And the time stops the time stops and words can take back their meaning.

And there is something more than the cold commands pasted on the bathroom wall. And now you have forgotten the logic of the cafeteria line. And there is something colorful again in eating, in pausing for a second, and looking at the bread of a field of wheat, someone else had to reap and suddenly you are a person there is after all that, something inside you were smiling at worth saying, please, and thank you to over a grocery store, checkout, counter worth looking yourself in the eyes for and saying into the mirror UMass.

Or you are simply exhausted and you shouldn’t have to be exhausted anymore. That’s wonderful imagery. Exactly. What is your poem about? My poem is really about trying to understand, uh, why so many people are quitting their jobs today, and also why we’re seeing a increasing amount of organizing, uh, among workers in this.

That’s a perfect place to go to our discussion with, uh, Nelson Lichtenstein Nelson. Uh, how do you think about this current moment in America? Some people are complaining, uh, that they can’t get enough people to come work as waiters in their restaurants and as, uh, people doing other work. Uh, how do you understand.

Yeah, good poem by the way, Zach. Well, I think. And I think that’s sort of a structural. And then I, then a kind of cultural, um, comparison structurally it’s like a war like world war one or war. And in a war, what you have is lots of disruption in the labor market. People moving around different jobs, some industries sort of ending almost like, you know, civilian production and others absolutely booming.

Meanwhile, the federal government’s pouring in tons of money. Uh, in deficit, you know, to sustain, uh, the war effort or here with a pandemic, sustain the economy. And so what that does is it. Tremendous labor shortage of some places and big unemployment other places. And you can’t switch them. If you can’t put labor, doesn’t move that quickly.

You know? So that’s what we, that’s what we have really. It’s more like at the beginning of world war two, um, you know, when the auto production lines shut down for cars anyway, And they were up. For planes and things like that. So, so, and then of course wages are, are, are, there’s a tremendous demand for labor, so wages go up. so that’s one thing we have, which is, uh, and I, I think that’s given rise to this, this so-called labor shortage, uh, which we’ve had, uh, secondly, is this cultural, cultural, moral, social. It was dangerous. It gave me the war. Soldiers were venerated in world war II. Coal miners were to do a degree because that was difficult, important work.

Um, and so the so-called essential workers, frontline workers, there has been a sort of sense. And here it’s not just some lefty, um, you know, writing about the dignity of work. It’s it’s, it’s millions, tens of millions of people experience experiencing it directly. And I think that’s had an impact. Um, and so you, you get, you have this phenomenon where there has been, uh, a great, uh, you know, w what were they called, the great, the resignation or the, or, you know, choosing, uh, you know, carefully where to work.

And, and then, you know, that makes demands for higher wages, et cetera. So I think that as a real thing, Uh, some people are panicking over it. It’s clearly not simply a question of incentives that, you know, people have too much unemployment insurance that clearly is not the case. Um, and so that is a, that’s a, that’s a, again, I think it’s a, it’s a, not just a war time, um, and maybe, and post-war as well to, to a degree once the thing is over, uh, you know, we had huge strike waves in 19, 19 and 1946.

That way now I don’t think we’re going to get that right now, but, but some of the same sentiment. Um, about the role of labor in a society.

And so Nelson, if we could just drill down on so many of the excellent points you, you made, uh, first of all, um, How do we know this is not people just deciding to stay home because they’re receiving a government check. That’s the stereotype, the false stereotype that’s being put out there by some people.

How do we know that?

To some degree that’s true. And I applaud it. And that is when you have a lot of rotten work in a society and low wage work, uh, sometimes, and there are people only being coerced to work, to do this work because of a lack of, uh, sort of the erosion of the welfare state. And I like unemployment by the way.

Desperately and terrible. Uh, uh, you know, we don’t really have an point system sometimes if someone is getting usually on a welfare check, but some form of money has been, uh, there were these individual checks that were set out for what, 1200 bucks or sometimes the unemployment insurance and sometimes just, just money for the, um, uh, to sustain that the, the, the business.

And you not, yeah. At the bottom of the labor market, I think that’s an entirely saluatory thing. People finally have a little bit, have some extra cash, a lot with different sort. And then of course, Biden is trying to get through the family allowances, which will be the same sort of thing. And that will be, have a tremendously, uh, salary for impact on, on forcing low wage employers, just to, to raise their wages in a kind of massive and substantial.

Right. So you see that as a good thing in terms of improving.

absolutely quickly. What are we even to talk about inequality over the last 40 years here in the 99% and all of that I live in going on about that for years and you know, at a few little tweaky. You know, taxation policy and even welfare policy was never enough to, to change that. What really changes is when you, when you, when employers, and I’m not talking about you here, and I’m not gonna, you know, the bottom half of the working class, uh, the employers that, you know, when they raise those wages substantially, and I’m talking about 50%, not, not some little that’s, what’s going to do it.

That’s what’s going to, and that happened in world war two, that happened in world war two. Uh, that was when the. The, the greatest moment of equality in American incomes was world war II. Not because the rich got tax so much, but mainly because cause you know, tens of millions of workers had good paying jobs incomes in, in Mississippi, in, in, in, in black agricultural income in Mississippi quadrupled quadrupled during world war II.

Well, I’d like to see a doubling or quadrupling over of, of, you know, McDonald’s.

What has the state of organized labor, uh, during this pandemic been like, it seems like there’s been an increasing push for labor organization, but at the same time, there seem to be facing stronger and stronger pushback.

Well, it’s, it’s basically, I mean, uh, terrible. Uh, yes, there. Yes, of course. This is, this is, I mean, the other phenomenal thing about this moment, it kind of extraordinary thing is. All the sort of macro economic indexes, you know, labor shortages, uh, money, even now a democratic president who was in favor of unions that are all favorable to labor, to organize labor, but in contrast to the situation 50 or 60 years ago, which would create a spurt of union organizing and, you know, it has.

And the re, and the reason for that is that the, that on multiple levels. The obstacles to actually forming a union, whatever the sentiment of the workers are just there’s this sort of multiple, as it were a veto points, uh, the law is terrible. Uh, and I, you know, I go into it, but it’s just terrible. When many directions, uh, companies have perfected.

Uh, almost down to a science, um, the, the, the way in which you, um, uh, stop, uh, union, uh, you know, from being formed, even when the workers clearly want it, you know, that’s true Right.

now. Uh, um, Starbucks is demonstrating that in, in Buffalo. When, when something like 50 barristas want to form a union and Starbucks is sending in.

Uh, million-dollar vice-presidents to just sit there and behind the counter and stop it. I mean, it’s just incredible. So, that, so that those students and, um, uh, so one of the most remarkable things is we haven’t had a spurt of, um, Of union organizing, not that labors will try to and others have tried to, it’s just, it’s so difficult.

And I made this point in that little article in dissent that, that the unions that are on strike that we hear about right now, the, uh, the, uh, John Deere, John Deere, where the UAW, they just rejected a contract by the way, uh, the. Cruz and Hollywood and others. These are part of unions. The unions were formed 80 years ago during the great depression.

Uh, we don’t have a strike in Silicon valley. There is no union there.

So, so Nelson it’s, it’s so important and you know, this better than anyone for, for people to understand how vital unions were to protecting workers, but also to the growth of the American economy after world war II. And you’ve written more about this than, than anyone yet. I’m always surprised how little people know about this.

W why are unions important? Why should we.

Well, if I, in terms of macro economics or the just general growth, I mean, they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re a more effective Keynsian mechanism, uh, then any, uh, um, you know, as I said, tax policy, or even, even spending policy, I mean, they directly get money, uh, you know, and when they, when they’re successful and that’s what happened.

In the great compression, um, from the, from the forties to the seventies. I mean, there were other reasons as well, but, but, but, uh, unionism was one of them and, and unions, don’t just do things, um, uh, sort of in one factory or one workplace, they are political instruments as well, and they sustained, they were the, the pillars sustaining.

Uh, the new deal order, um, uh, in this book I’m writing on Clinton. One thing, I mean, Clinton, I, I view him actually sort of less of a Neo liberal and more of, in some ways, some ways a new left liberal, but what he didn’t have and couldn’t have. And, and what was the labor, but it didn’t exist or it wasn’t strong enough or it, it was, it was in his, in disrepute, in that period.

So here he was trying to put forward, create. Project, um, a liberal without a labor movement. And I think, I think frankly, the problem that Biden is encountering Right.

now with the, um, with the, uh, uh, uh, infrastructure social infrastructure is, is in part, you know, where are the troops? Where are the troops?

They, they, they don’t exist. Uh, West Virginia used to be a highly union. Uh, it, you know, it wasn’t, uh, you know, uh, with, uh, even Jay Rockefeller was the Senator wasn’t in yet. And he was a big, liberal was good. Liberal Western has had the greatest degree of de unionization, uh, of any state in the last 40 years.

It’s it’s, it’s toward the bottom now. You know, that institution doesn’t exist or Joe Manchin only listens to, uh, two coal mine operators or, or, um, uh, Walmart or whoever else.

So, what is your response to the stereotype? The, that the. I often put forward that unions were corrupt and that they didn’t help workers. This is obviously not true. So how should we understand the governance of unions when they worked well? In those years, the forties.

I mean, there has been corruption unions, and you, and you can actually, um, uh, the recent scan though, when the UAW, I think is a product of the UAW used to be always known as, uh, as extraordinarily, um, almost, um, sparked. Um, clean, you know, a non-corrupt union. And I th and then we we’ve had recently this, this, this corruption scandal there.

And, um, and I think one reason for it was it, it followed a long period of an effort, a collaboration with the auto company. Um, and that, uh, that was a demoralizing. And I may, I mean that in a kind of the moral, I mean, the purpose of union is to represent its members in, you know, whenever it can. And this was de moralizing in that respect and created this sort of sense of.

Uh, kind of, uh, insider collaboration, um, and that hat and that hat, I mean, that’s the downside. There’s a lot of academics that made their careers on, on arguments about worker management, uh, you know, cooperation, collaboration with the downside of that is corruption and corruption, whether it’s illegal or.

More more, more, more importantly, a kind of political corruption where, uh, the unions don’t do what they’re supposed to do. So that, I mean, it’s, it’s there. Um, the, the Jimmy Hoffa is the most famous unionists in American history. Uh, he, you know, and, uh, he, he was trying. They have it both ways actually on the one, he, sometimes he could quite militant, but other times he just completely, uh, uh, accommodated trucking firms or, or, or the mafia infested locals.

And, uh, and he, uh, actually I put it, it was almost a vacuum in American culture, which demands a corrupt union leader. Certainly that’s.

Do you think there’s space in our current economic moment? The pandemic for unions to play a bigger role in our account.

Yes. And he, and here his way, I think it might happen. Um, there’s OB I mean, it’s more than space. I mean, I think it’s something almost. But Biden. And some of the people around him, many of them by the way, came out of the Clinton administration. But I think they’ve been, they’ve learned something they’ve been chased and they know that they, they need something they need, they need troops.

And, uh, some people understand that, uh, that, uh, if you want to defeat Trumpism, you can’t just write off the, uh, you know, the working class. And here, I don’t just mean the white working class, because as we saw in the last. In 2020 is a lot of Latinos and even black men, not, they didn’t all vote for Trump, but more of them than we would expected Trump.

So you can’t just write this off as a, as a Senator Schumer at one point said, oh yeah, we’ll just win the suburb suburbs and we’ll let, we’ll let the old industrial working-class go anyway, once they can, they can have, that’s a, that’s a huge mistake. So, so it political as a political necessity for it. The other thing is this, and this is a theme I’d like to.

To hammer about, about a bit of list. It’s when we’ve had social movements that have triumph it’s because the opponents of those social movements have come to the conclusion. That it’s much better to reach an accommodation with that social movement than to try to resist it because the, the cost of resisting, uh, whether it’s money or politics or public relations, there’s just too great.

So the me too movement would be an example of that, you know, uh, you know, or the black lives matter recently, it would be an example of that when we see, you know, uh, all sorts of companies, you know, celebrating their own. Their degree of racial or gender equality? Well, the union movement is it’s now entirely legitimate, um, for a company to say, oh yeah, we’re going to smash this union basically.

Or we don’t think the unions in the, in the, in the best interest of our employees sort of like saying, oh, we don’t think racial quality’s in the best interest of our employees. Uh, you know, that would, that would be laughed out of, out of, out of town. So I think it’s possible that in this period, In a quantity is so.

Um, much in front of us. And when unions have achieved a today, a tremendous, uh, public support greater than, than any time in many decades that some companies might come to the conclusion. Well, Resisting unions is going to be a real egg and air face a real political problem. I think that’s beginning to happen in Silicon valley actually.

Uh, and therefore, maybe we should reach some accommodation. Uh, that’s what happened in the late thirties. Uh, that’s what happened in public employment by the way, in the 1960s with unions. So I think it’s, uh, that’s what happened actually in the, in the California, uh, agriculture with the farm workers, the companies came to see.

That it was in their interest to recognize unions, not because it’s going to increase productivity and that, you know, not, not, not some equation, that’s going to make it economically better for purely political, um, uh, reasons.

And how do we get over then the. Stereotype, we talked about it. And also the ways in which politicians from the Scott walkers to the Donald Trump’s seem to spend all their time bashing unions.

Well, I mean, Scott Walker certainly did, uh, uh, trumpet started off actually kind of, I dunno, who’s to say. Uh, well, I do think that, I think, I think Scott Walker’s moment is over. Actually. I do think that’s over, um, the, the, uh, sort of the beating up on. Um, public employee unions and public employees was a function of Obama era austerity.

Um, I think that’s, that may be over, um, uh, I, I definitely there’s, there’s tremendous amount of residual hostility, the unions all over the country. There’s no doubt about it. Uh, but I think, you know, when you have, uh, but clearly let me say this clearly among the. The, uh, the 2030 something, uh, journalistic, uh, you know, bloggers kind of who, for example, rush to Bessemer, Alabama, last winter to cover this effort to organize Amazon.

I mean, in some ways, what was, what I found most startling about that while it was not that, that there was a unionizing attempt at Amazon or that Amazon one that was sort of, I knew they would win, frankly. They’ve been winning. But that the enormous amount of attention that was given to it, my, the, uh, you know, otherwise, um, uh, you know, uh, coastal elites, you know, um, uh, you know, a young, young coastal elites.

And I think that reflects the same way. In the 1930s, you had New York intellectuals rushing to Harland county to cover the coal mines, you know, and, and in the sixties you had. You had, uh, you know, young, um, uh, radicals from the colleges engaged in the civil rights movement. White whites are talking about, well today there seems to be a beginning of a bad kind of attention to, to a union movement, which doesn’t really exist.

It doesn’t exist, but they’re looking for it. So I’m, I’m, I’m heartened by that.

No, there’s a lot to that. It’s a very good point. I guess the puzzle for me Nelson is that so many of the, um, white working class voters, those we’d think of in the past as being members of unions who voted for Lyndon Johnson, uh, many of them have become in that profile. Republican voters. In fact, they’re the main state that the people who vote for Ted Cruz in Texas and Donald Trump and various places, how do, how do we see them?

How could they become part of a union movement? Or is it, are they, are these a union movement gonna appeal to different.

Well, I do want to make two points. One is that vision, which Trump, by the way, love to surround himself with a white male coal miners and stuff, which was such an artifact of an earlier moment. I mean, the, the, um, the union with the working class. Is multi-racial and, uh, I mean, California is back entirely Latino, uh, and I mean the blue collar working class and it’s, and also of course, half women, et cetera, many, many immigrants.

So a, the reality of what is the American working class today is. Multiracial multicultural boat and heavily women and heavily immigrant. Okay. So, so that’s one thing, but secondly, yes, there are white male workers, uh, in and out of unions by the way, who are reactionary or Trumpites. And, uh, I think there it’s like, frankly, it’s like the stuff in east Germany, you, you know, where you, you know, the rise of, you know, uh, or other places or ducks to where you have industrial Cline and Northern England where, you know, you have.

This, um, this sense that, well, a traditional institutions of liberalism did the work. So we’ll, you know, we’ll, we’ll move duke go to move to the Right. So you have to make the traditional institutions of liberalism, whether it’s the union or the, or the state or, or whatever, make it work. And by this trying to do that, uh, you know, that’s why there’s been a certain left wing enthusiasm for this guy.

Uh, it seems to, you know, whether that happens or not. Um, so I think, I think that’s true, but I would like more. Push. I’m not for writing off the white working class or such as it is, but I, but we forget, we really forget that the, the working class today, the people who are working in Amazon, working in McDonald’s working in Walmart, working in your local hospital, they are women, people of color and immigrants.

I mean, that’s the working class.

Right. Right. And, and many of them now are working from home. Right. I think that people have at call centers.

Well, the, not the ones who were sort of white or pink collar jobs, they are not the, not the ones who were doing the service economy. That’s part of their, what’s been put off, put upon them, but yeah, there is people at home. Yes, that’s absolutely the

And so how do we think about that? How, how does that, can we imagine a union movement for people who are in as you call them pink collar, right? Relatively low paying jobs at home, taking care of children at the same time, do they fall into this?

Well, th th they do well. Yeah. They’re harder to organize, obviously, wouldn’t you have a scattered workplace and of course companies aren’t stupid. So they kind of construct work, which is fragmented or fissured, that’s the reason, that’s the word where they aren’t even officially. Uh, I’m an employee of affirm.

You’re you’re, you know, you’re, you’re working for a subcontractor that’s, that’s harder to do. It’s still true. It’s still true with what Mark’s and everyone else said, you have put people together in a workplace and, you know, You know, something is possible there rather than when we’re scattered about that.

I still, I don’t quite think that the, uh, the, uh, internet and zoom and the world of zoom quite brings people together as much. Although I have to say that you you’ve had some remarkable things in Silicon valley. Um, and, and let me just send something about that. The motivation of unionism, it doesn’t have to be for dollars and cents and, uh, you know, in a better, you know, dollar nine an hour, The people in Silicon valley, when you’re 60,000 people at Google who walked off the job, because they didn’t like the, uh, the, the, the gender politics of the leadership or, or, or their, or they, they, they even forced, I think, Google to, um, to reverse some of its policies on helping.

Um, the Pentagon, I believe, uh, you know, identify people so you could, whatever the issue is that brings people together collectively. I mean, that’s what helps create, you know, form an organization. And, um, uh, the problem is we, that, that, that we still have, um, so many obstacles to the actual legal formation of these organizations that that’s still there.

And, um, uh, that’s, that’s, that’s part of our problem.

And I wanted to ask you about that in particular, what are the obstacles we would need to remove in order to allow. What you would see as fairer unionization.

Well, there’s a number of things. For example, uh, the capacity of, of employers to intimidate workers, uh, in, in a variety of ways of captive audience meetings, uh, firing them and saying the reason we’re firing you has nothing to do with the union, but we’re firing you anyway. Uh, uh, delay, delay, delay. That is the, the, uh, when, when you, when you finally do a majority go for a union, the companies just delay the first contract and that demoralizes people.

So those are just a few things. Now. Now the, the proactive protecting the Right.

door. Um, uh, you know, does reform any of those things. Um, the Republicans are completely against it, so it doesn’t have a chance in Congress. Uh, but you know, but when I want to get that, even if you passed the, the best possible liberalization of the labor law, it wouldn’t work unless you really frightened, employ.

Into the realization that it’s in their best interest or to, to, to recognize the union. I mean, in the thirties, the revolution was a, was a word tossed about we weren’t going to have a revolution in America, but we were going to have a radical movement, a lot of. Oops. Let’s not do that. And, uh, and, and, and, and then, and then actually what they did, they rushed to sign contracts with the American Federation of labor, the more conservative of, of the two big labor movements in the thirties.

Why be happy to have a Walmart sign, a contract with the most conservative trade union that they could find like today.

It’s a, that’s a great, great example. So, so we always try each week, um, Nelson to bring this historical perspective that you’ve shared with us as again, as no one else. Can we try to bring that, uh, into the present and really think about how it can be used? By people who are, are out trying to make a difference today.

And so what would be your advice to actually many people? Uh, Zachary and I know here in Austin, Texas, a fast-growing city, one of the fastest growing cities in the country where there’s a lot of efforts at union organization, because there is a labor shortage and there are many workers who are still being poorly paid despite that labor shortage.

And there’s a great deal of money. And all the major corporations are here from Google to Dell, uh, to Samsung and others. What. What are your recommendations to them? If they’re trying to help workers through unionization today, what should they be?

Well, I think obviously publicity is the first thing, and I think we do have a lot of talented, uh, sort of as it were organic intellectuals of the working class. And that would include most of the people in the academy who are kind of having sort of semi proletarian eyes anyway, over the years. And I think that them therefore a kind of two and that’s been happening for doing more of it.

To publicize what’s going on into to, um, uh, to, to, to see these issues, um, that are there in terms of class issues and not so much well that they are race racial and class issues. Inter inter inter imbricated together. No doubt about it, but I think there’s some times we, we, we, we fixate on the, the, the, the specifically racial or ethnic character of, of the, of the working class depression.

And don’t see it as a more generalized, um, um, Uh, class one and secondly, is, is naming and shaming. This has been a, this has been a tactic of the left for, for decades and I’m for naming and shaming, uh, companies, uh, you know, whether in Austin and elsewhere, uh, employers that are, you know, clearly being agregious or hypocritical or what have you, but I know, but I have to say, Jeremy, I don’t have a magic solution.

I, I, I’m not landing is getting off the train, you know? I mean, I wish I did. I wish I did, but anyway,

Well, that’s, that’s super helpful because I think one of the issues is ignorance. I mean, I find that, uh, there are many people who care about inequality, but don’t think about labor issues. And I think one of the, as you said, one of the

Yeah.

is that

And the union and the union movement is, is, is, is the mechanism for the, for the abolition or the reduction of inequality. And I think it’s the most effective one. And the most direct one, you know, one of the problems with, with federal policy or even state, even when you state policy, it takes so long.

To get itself down to the, to the people who, who, who are the beneficiaries. And then when they, when they get it, they don’t know why it happened, but a union is right there. They have to struggle for it. They know Y Y you know, they’re getting a dollar an hour more. They know they understand it and, and, and, and unionism.

Tremendous impact on consciousness. Not because they, they listened to speeches or had get leaflets, but it cost the very act of doing something together with someone else is a consciousness transforming thing, which, which, which. The a certain kind of a narcissistic individualism, uh, you know, it, it, it reduces that and, and, and you begin to see a kind of collectivity.

I mean, we see that today with this terrible thing on the, on the backseat, back to the resistance to vaccination people, don’t see the collective necessity of that. But when you, when you have, when you’re in a union, if you want to strike, you know, damn well that everyone has to stick together,

Right, right. It’s it’s community building or the, I guess the phrase use now social capital, right? Nelson, Zachary, as, as a young person who watches all this. These issues. I know. H how do you think about unionism or do you share Nelson’s view that this is a direction we need to think more about today? I do a hundred percent.

I think part of the problem though, is that w the, the image of the union that we’re still operating with today, even people, my age it is is that the Rogers and Hammerstein, like 1920s union of the pajama factory, it’s not, not a modern

Good,

I think. I think we need to, we need to update. We need to, we need to bring our imagining of unions.

Up-to-date I think that’s right.

Absolutely. I agree with you a hundred percent. Absolutely.

And Nelson, this is why we need you to keep writing. So, so you can help us update our image of the unions, right?

Jackie, write that up.

Well, I think this is a perfect note to close on, uh, Nelson. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and insights with us. And I mean, I want to encourage all of our listeners to read your books and your articles as we’re trying to bring a Renaissance and attention to the workplace in our country today.

So thank you, Nelson for joining.

Oh, you’re welcome. Indeed.

And Zachary, thank you for your, for your poem. And thank you. Most of all, to our listeners for joining us for this week of this is democracy.