Of course, the story of Christian Smalls, the worker who unionized the Amazon warehouse in New York City

An incredibly inspiring story, you know, who doesn't love a David that goes after a Goliath

Goliath?

Yeah, the Philistines were very anti-David

That's true, Goliath does not. Yeah, they were not into it

From New York Times opinion, I'm Ross Douthett. I'm Michelle Cottle. I'm Carlos Lozada. And I'm Lydia Pogri

And this is Matter of Opinion

So this has been a summer of strikes and it's going to be an autumn of strikes as well. It looks like it seems like everybody's striking from Hollywood writers and actors to nurses to coal miners and now maybe the most politically significant strike is the United auto workers and we're all journalists and journalism of course has its own labor issues

So before we dive into the general subject, I wanted to ask have any of you guys ever been on a picket line?

I have not. No, I mean, I think that's probably generational, right? I mean, we're all kind of roughly in that cohort where I feel like there was something of a of a datant, particularly in our profession

We're all too young to have experienced the big newspaper strike that gave birth to the New York review of books and other things

But we're kind of too old and too fancy to be involved in the in the current one in any any big I don't know about fancy, but I'm definitely too old.

I'll go further. I've never been part of a union wherever I've worked has either been not unionized or I've been a manager or in some exempt category. So it was never even an option.

Yeah, I've been on both sides, both a member of the union here at the New York Times and then I've been a big bad boss at various media companies on the other side of the bargaining table.

So yes, that was seen it from all angles. My other question was have you ever hired thinkers and detectives to put an end to labor unrest, Lidia Pograe?

You know, life is long. There's still time. Yeah, so just from the personal to the political. I want to talk more about this uptick of union organizing and strikes and what's behind it.

So why do we think there's so much labor activity and unrest right now? Carlos, you're an economist. You can go for I wish you would stop saying that.

I mean, okay, so there are probably some basic economic reasons the labor markets are tight unemployment is low companies need workers and are still having some trouble filling positions. So that gives a little more power and leverage to labor.

You know, like if you need motives for unionizing or for striking, you have a moment when profits are very strong for say the auto companies or for UPS, which, you know, narrowly averted strike recently wages for the top 1% of wage earners are crying so much faster than for everybody else.

Just like maybe 50 years ago CEOs made, you know, 20 times what workers did now it's closer to 400. So, you know, inequality creates clear incentives for organizing inflation, right? Just coming out of a period of high inflation, it makes sense that people would want, you know, cost of living adjustment clauses in their contracts and also the pandemic, right?

The pandemic made clear how workers in different sectors enjoy very different kinds of benefits and opportunities and wages and that, that sense of kind of rediscovered insecurity, I think is probably nudging people to organize as well. Now, not that explains why precisely now, like what is happening, you know, this year that is making labor have its moment.

I mean, it's probably a matter of timing, I mean, contracts that are coming up and things like that. I think there's also like a lot of kind of emotional valence to this as well. I mean, I, as I was saying earlier, have been on the kind of management side of the table for a number of union negotiations and particularly first contracts for media workers who unionize both at Huff Post and at at Gimlett, which is, you know, a podcast studio part of Spotify that I used to run and, you know, clearly the kind of lunch bucket issues of pay and benefits were important.

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