How 30,000 People Formed an Impossible Union, with Ethan Bakuli and Rodney Tate

Factually! with Adam Conover

Headgum

Comedy

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 8 April 2026

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s easy to feel powerless with everything going on, but there are normal people out there every day banding together to change the world for the better. Even so, their stories are not amplified as much as they should be. Over the past few years, over 30,000 Michigan home health care workers were able to successfully form a union despite not having a shared workplace, or even having coworkers. It was a feat of monumental willpower that will have a long-lasting, positive impact on all of those involved, both now and in the future. This week we invite you to take a break from the doom and gloom of the daily news cycle as Adam talks with Ethan Bakuli, a reporter who covered this story for Capital and Main, and Rodney Tate, a home health worker and a vocal leader of the campaign.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a headgum podcast.
0:05.0	I don't know the truth.
0:08.3	I don't know the way.
0:10.9	I don't know what to think.
0:13.6	I don't know what to say.
0:16.6	Yeah, but that's all right.
0:19.4	That's okay.
0:21.6	I don't know anything.
0:25.8	Hey there, welcome to Factually.
0:27.3	I'm Adam Conover.
0:28.2	Thanks for joining me on the show again.
0:29.7	And I'm glad you're here because, you know, it's a dark world out there, right?
0:34.1	Every day we are now seeing fascist attacks on innocent people, basic human values,
0:39.2	and the institutions we rely on to keep our society, you know, stable. But even in the middle of all
0:45.2	of that, people are still trying to make things better for their communities. And sometimes,
0:50.9	dare I say often, it works.
0:59.5	But, you know, those stories of average people coming together to actually make the world around them a better place, those stories don't often get told.
1:03.4	Or if they do get told, they don't get amplified.
1:06.3	Or, you know, stories of people who are making the world a better place in a fake way,
1:10.7	like Elon Musk way are amplified when the stories of the real people who are making the world a better place in a fake way,
1:14.4	like Elon Musk way are amplified when the stories of the real people who are taking radical collective action are ignored.
1:17.5	So, you know, today I'm excited to correct that a little bit and bring you a really incredibly
	...

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