Strike! Reality checking the labor movement.

Unf*cking The Republic

UNFTR Media

Government, News, Politics

4.9 • 683 Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2023

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Strike! Union actions are everywhere. High profile work stoppages from the Screen Actors Guild to the United Auto Workers have put the labor movement front and center in ways we haven’t seen for decades. How powerful is the impact of these actions? You’re not going to like my take on it. But we need to have some authentic dialogue about the labor movement, the corporate class and new strategies required to stem the tide of increasing inequality.

Chapters

Intro: 00:01:15

Post Show Musings: 00:33:21

Outro: 00:45:05

Resources

Associated Press: United Auto Workers threaten to expand targeted strike if there is no substantive progress by Friday

Automotive News: GM CEO Mary Barra's 2022 compensation: $29M

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Annual work stoppages involving 1,000 or more workers, 1947 - Present

St. Louis Fed: Civilian Labor Force Level

Detroit Free Press: GM to reinstate a dividend and start stock buybacks, signaling confidence

GM Authority: GM Employees Receive Record $12,750 Profit-Sharing Check

Social Security Administration: National Average Wage Index

Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung: The French Labour Paradox

AFL-CIO: Collective Bargaining

NBER: Impacts of Right-to-Work Laws on Unionization and Wages

OECD: United States: Main indicators and characteristics of collective bargaining

Forbes: Remote Work Statistics And Trends In 2023

MckInsey & Company: Freelance, side hustles, and gigs: Many more Americans have become independent workers

CNBC: 61% of Americans say they are living paycheck to paycheck even as inflation cools

NLRB: Board Issues Decision Announcing New Framework for Union Representation Proceedings

Democracy at Work

Mondragon

The New Yorker: How Mondragon Became the World’s Largest Co-Op

Economic Policy Institute: CEO pay has skyrocketed 1,460% since 1978: CEOs were paid 399 times as much as a typical worker in 2021

Aspen Institute: Building and Sustaining Worker Cooperatives in the US

Worker Participation: Countries

UNDP: How Do Labor Unions Affect Inequality And Efficiency In Latin America And The Caribbean?

UNFTR Episode Resources

Understanding Socialism: Part One.

Labor Unions: From Pullman To Kellogg’s. Labor’s Long, Hard Road

The Clinton Years (Parts I, II, And III)

Corporate (Ir)Responsibility: Part One.

Book Love

Nelson Lichtenstein: State of the Union: A Century of American Labor

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Transcript

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0:00.0	historic labor strike against the three largest car manufacturers in the U.S. enters its fifth day today, and it could grow in size by the end of the week.
0:11.2	The president of the UAW Union warns more workers will be...
0:15.8	...writers and producers maybe zeroing in on a deal to end a writer's strike this lasted months.
0:21.5	David Faber joins us now.
0:23.7	I guess it's not totally out of the blue.
0:25.6	Did you have an inkling before you started hearing about this yesterday that there was – I was pessimistic.
0:32.7	Well, all we're asking is for everybody to be fair.
0:35.5	That's it.
0:36.2	Just fair.
0:36.8	And, you know, everything's
0:39.0	gone up, but our wages. And so it's like, you know, we're all not Tom Cruise.
0:46.7	Don't forget, when the auto companies were in trouble, it was the workers who built them
0:51.6	out right alongside the American public.
0:59.5	And they took incredible concessions, including this tier system that means that some of the workers,
1:04.5	the majority of the workers actually are making far less pay, do not have the secure retirement,
1:06.9	do not have the secure health care in their retirement.
1:08.7	And they're fighting to end all of that. They're fighting to turn around the wrong direction that this country has been going in.
1:15.2	This is the story of a political pundit who looked at the world around him and just said, fuck it.
1:22.6	Gives the middle finger to authority and says, kiss my ass.
1:26.5	But instead of a revolution revolution he started a podcast
1:29.8	just what the world needs
1:32.5	another basic white guy
	...

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