It's the Brian Larra Show on WNYC.

Good morning everyone.

I actually want to start the show today

with a thank you and a message of sympathy

and condolence to anyone who personally

knew a frequent guest on this show who passed away last week. I only learned of her passing yesterday. It was

Jane McAlibi, the labor organizer and scholar. She succumbed to multiple myeloma at the much too early age of 59.

Jane was last on the show in April after she disclosed her terminal diagnosis

to talk about a historic organizing win at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee

and to talk about the big picture of Union and other labor rights in her lifetime.

Here's 30 seconds from that appearance putting the Tennessee victory in a historical

and big picture context.

I'm not sure Americans understand that our labor laws are so intensely anti-union that the U.S.

South has become to European and Asian automakers

what Mexico and China have become to a lot of the production

facilities that make clothing, electronics and things like that in the United

States a cheap and compliant source of

compliant really key. Cheap and compliant source of labor is the US South coming

out of a long history we cannot disconnect from slavery straight through to today.

Jane McAlibi here in April. She had been on the show 10 times going back to 2016, the New York Times obituary for Jane included these lines.

Ms. Mcaleavy dedicated her life to increasing working class power.

She believed that worker-driven unions led from the bottom up rather than the top-down were the most effective engines to combat economic inequality.

...