Celebrate Pandemic Workers. Then Fight Like Hell for Their Rights.
The Mother Jones Podcast
Mother Jones
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2020
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Every night, Americans across the country clap and make noise for the essential workers keeping our country afloat. But when the clapping ends, the deadly work continues, sometimes under deadly conditions. The pandemic has exacerbated the absence of essential workplace protections for these workers—in meat processing plants, supermarkets, and packing warehouses. On this episode of the podcast, two Mother Jones reporters talk to two top economists who are trying to change the way labor works in the United States: former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and President Obama’s former top economic adviser, Gene Sperling. From the inaction of the labor department, to the role of unions, to economic dignity for low-wage workers, these two insiders have a lot to say about the state of labor in the United States. The pandemic has exposed the lack of worker protections in times of prosperity, much less in times of crisis. The question is: how quickly can change really come?
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choicesTranscript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Every night around 7 p.m. from rooftops and balconies, |
| 0:07.8 | backyards and suburban streets, |
| 0:09.8 | you might be among countless Americans |
| 0:13.0 | gatherings honor health care workers. |
| 0:16.2 | This is the sound from our producer's rooftop last night, |
| 0:19.6 | but we all know deep down in the long run clapping alone won't be enough. |
| 0:26.0 | What happens in the long term? |
| 0:29.0 | When the clapping and the banging and the hooting and the hollering all ends. |
| 0:33.0 | How do we protect essential workers then? |
| 0:36.0 | This is the Mother Jones podcast. |
| 0:41.0 | I'm Jimmy King in Brooklyn. |
| 0:43.4 | On today's show, on today's show, |
| 0:52.0 | on today's show, the pandemic has revealed deep economic injustices. |
| 0:58.0 | Essential workers living paycheck to paycheck forced to make dangerous decisions about their health to keep food on the table. |
| 1:05.9 | Today's show is about how we can seize this moment to push for what needs to change. |
| 1:12.1 | The former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and |
| 1:14.8 | President Obama's former top economic advisor, Jean Spurling. What they've |
| 1:20.4 | learned about how the pandemic has X-rayed society, how they diagnose the problems, |
| 1:26.8 | and what prescriptions they have for a cure. |
| 1:29.8 | Stick around. |
| 1:35.0 | Okay, so we are two months into this pandemic and I'll admit it. |
| 1:45.4 | Okay, so we are two months into this pandemic and I'll admit it I'm having a hard time. I live 3,000 miles away from my family I live, and I'm not great with money. But then I think, at least |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Mother Jones, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Mother Jones and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.