Month: September 2022

Briefings

Background Briefing: September 5, 2022

On By gram

 

Good News For Labor With 71% of Americans Approving Unions

We begin on this Labor Day with the good news for organized labor from a recent poll that finds 71% of Americans approved of unions since the low unemployment rate that developed during the pandemic has altered the balance of power between employers and employees, creating an environment conducive to union membership that has resulted in the formation of unions at several major companies. Joining us is Lane Windham, Associate Director of Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor and co-director of WILL Empower (that’s Women Innovating Labor Leadership). She is the author of Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide.

 

Thom Hartmann on The End of Neoliberalism and the Renewal of Social Democracy

Then we speak with Thom Hartmann, the host of the nationally and internationally syndicated talk show The Thom Hartmann Program, carried on SiriusXM and radio stations nationwide and broadcast in video on Free Speech TV. Talkers Magazine named him America’s #1 most important progressive host and the host of one of the top 10 talk radio shows in the country every year for over a decade. A four-time recipient of the Project Censored Award, Hartmann is also a New York Times bestselling author of thirty-two books, translated into multiple languages, including The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream, and we discuss his latest book, The Hidden History of Neoliberalism: How Reaganism Gutted America and How to Restore Its Greatness.

 

How Anti-Union Corporations Delay Contracts After Unionization

Then finally we speak with Steven Greenhouse, who was a reporter for The New York Times from 1983 to 2014 where he covered labor and the workplace for nineteen years. He also served as a business and economics reporter and a diplomatic and foreign correspondent. He is the author of The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker and Beaten Down, Worked Up THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF AMERICAN LABOR, and we discuss his article at The Guardian, “Starbucks and Amazon accused of dragging their feet on union contracts.” We examine the need to pass the PRO Act because even when unions win contracts, corporations, using their legions of lawyers, drag out the implementation of unionization for years.