What’s The Power Of Labor Organizing? with Kim Kelly

Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness

Sony Music

Science, Self-improvement, Comedy, Education, Society & Culture

4.9 • 21.5K Ratings

🗓️ 11 May 2022

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This fall, pro-union sentiment in the US rose to 68 percent—the highest it’s been since 1965. We’re living through a major moment for labor organizing, and we have so many questions! How did we get here? Who got us here? And what’s at stake for workers across the country today? Kim Kelly joins Jonathan to discuss the power of collective bargaining, worker solidarity, and her new book FIGHT LIKE HELL, an intersectional history of labor movements in the US. Kim Kelly is an independent journalist, author of FIGHT LIKE HELL: The Untold History of American Labor. She has been a regular labor columnist for Teen Vogue since 2018, and her writing on labor, class, politics, and culture has appeared in The New Republic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Baffler, The Nation, and many others. Previously, she was the heavy metal editor at “Noisey,” VICE’s music vertical, and was an original member of the VICE Union. A third-generation union member, she was born in the heart of the South Jersey Pine Barrens, and currently lives in Philadelphia with a hard-workin’ man, a couple of taxidermied bears, and way too many books. Want to learn even more about the US labor movement? Follow Kim on Twitter @grimkim and on Instagram @kimkellywriter. Pick up a copy of FIGHT LIKE HELL, out now! And check out Kim’s FIGHT LIKE HELL reading list, which you can access for free on her Patreon. Join the conversation, and find out what former guests are up to, by following us on Instagram and Twitter @CuriousWithJVN. Jonathan is on Instagram and Twitter @JVN and @Jonathan.Vanness on Facebook. Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com. Love listening to Getting Curious? Now, you can also watch Getting Curious—on Netflix! Head to netflix.com/gettingcurious to dive in. Our executive producer is Erica Getto. Our associate producer is Zahra Crim. Our editor is Andrew Carson. Our socials are run and curated by Middle Seat Digital. Our theme music is “Freak” by QUIÑ; for more, head to TheQuinCat.com. Getting Curious merch is available on PodSwag.com. Headshot Credit for Kim Kelly: Elizabeth Kreitschman

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Getting Curious. I'm Jonathan Van Ness and every week I sit down for a gorgeous conversation
0:05.8	with a brilliant expert to learn all about something that makes me curious. On today's episode
0:11.4	I'm joined by Kim Kelly where I ask her do we care enough about labor organizing?
0:20.3	Welcome to Getting Curious. This is Jonathan Van Ness. I'm so excited for this episode our guest is incredible
0:25.7	Her name is Kim Kelly. She is a journalist, author and organizer based in Philadelphia
0:31.5	Her new book Fight Like Hell. The untold history of American labor is an intersectional history of labor movements in the US
0:39.8	The center's women people of color LGBTQIA plus people disable people sex workers prisoners and the poor
0:48.6	Hi Kim, how are you? Hi, I'm so excited to talk to you and to tell your listeners about the incredible history of this country
0:55.6	That they might not know about but totally deserve to okay
0:58.6	We really want to know about that and also my kind of guiding question is not only what is the history of
1:06.3	like US labor organizing but more like
1:10.3	Do we care enough about labor organizing and I think that's a really interesting question because it's like
1:18.5	I feel like I don't understand it enough
1:20.8	I feel like I don't care about it enough
1:22.2	I feel like it's because I started off as an independent contractor
1:25.8	So I was always just like you know my hair dresser like what am I like?
1:29.7	What are we gonna do like I don't get it, you know and your work like really flies in the face of that assumption
1:36.8	So first of all to just like set the scene in the book you note that pro-union
1:42.8	sentiment in September 2021 was at 68% the highest it's been since
1:49.2	1965 and that's really interesting because we saw all of these corporations
1:55.6	like Quinn toppling their income is
1:58.9	People were losing all of their livelihoods and and like having such a hard time encountering jobs
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Sony Music, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Sony Music and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.