Jacobin Show: Labor in Limbo?
Jacobin Radio
Jacobin
4.7 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 8 April 2022
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jen Pan sits down with Jacobin columnist Ross Barkan to discuss his latest article, “Working-Class Politics Without the Working Class,” which takes a critical look at the Working Families Party. Next, Jen turns to speak with Chris Maisano about the future of the labor movement and his latest piece in Jacobin, “The Liminal Left’s Bid for Power,” in which he analyzes the conflicts and potential bright spots that arise within a new left that is young and highly educated. What does that mean for our chances of building a mass working-class coalition?
Find Chris Maisano's pieces in Catalyst and the latest issue of Jacobin here:
https://jacobinmag.com/2022/02/the-liminal-lefts-bid-for-power
https://catalyst-journal.com/2022/03/is-the-labor-movement-back
And Ross Barkan's piece in the latest issue of Jacobin here:
https://jacobinmag.com/2022/02/working-class-politics-without-the-working-class
Subscribe to Jacobin for just $10: https://jacobinmag.com/subscribe/?code=JACOBINYT
Music provided by Zonkey: https://linktr.ee/zonkey
The Jacobin Show offers socialist perspectives on class and capitalism in the twenty-first century, the failures of liberalism, and the prospects of rebuilding a left labor movement in the US. This is the podcast version of the show from April 6, 2022.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Music |
| 0:29.5 | Hello, you are watching the Jacobin Show and I'm Jen Pan. |
| 0:33.0 | Before we get started today, I just want to quickly acknowledge two pieces of very good news. |
| 0:39.0 | Number one is that the Jacobin Channel hit 100,000 subscribers last Friday. |
| 0:44.0 | So that's amazing. |
| 0:46.0 | Thank you so much to everyone who has subscribed to our channel, who has watched our videos, liked our videos. |
| 0:52.0 | And of course, thank you to our YouTube members, all of you combined, really make this channel possible. |
| 0:58.0 | And you know, getting to 100k of course means that our producer, young kale, gets a physical plaque in the mail from YouTube. |
| 1:07.0 | He obviously deserves it a lot. |
| 1:10.0 | He's been steering this channel from day one and I think you guys all know that he's behind pretty much everything that happens on this channel. |
| 1:19.0 | So yeah, again, you know, thank you to all of you for watching, for liking, subscribing. |
| 1:25.0 | And of course, thank you to kale for doing Jacobin. |
| 1:29.0 | So the other thing I wanted to quickly shout out is that I think as you guys all know by now, a statin island, Amazon warehouse, one their union election last Friday against pretty remarkable odds. |
| 1:43.0 | They're now going to be the first unionized Amazon location in the US. |
| 1:49.0 | And I think that there's really a lot of hope that, you know, much like we've seen with the Starbucks unions, this first Amazon union could kickstart a wave of other Amazon warehouses filing for union elections in the, you know, days, weeks, months to come. |
| 2:05.0 | And the reason why I'm bringing this up is because on today's show, I am actually going to be talking to Chris Myzano about the state of the labor movement right now. |
| 2:14.0 | And really how we should be thinking about it, because I think on the one hand there, there's a lot of understandable excitement and energy around these new unions and around, you know, strikes and labor activity in general. |
| 2:27.0 | But I think it's important to remember that this is all also happening at a time when union density is at the lowest it's ever been. |
| 2:35.0 | I think there's no question that the labor movement is still very much facing an uphill battle. |
| 2:41.0 | So, you know, very excited to talk to Chris. |
| 2:44.0 | He had some great comments about how we should really be thinking about these recent strikes and union elections in the context of organized labor more broadly. |
| 2:53.0 | So, that's coming up. Stay tuned for that. |
... |
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