On the thirteenth of July twenty twenty three, I went on a little website called deadline dot com, had my email open in another tab, got the notice from one of the unions I'm a member of sag AFTRA, and saw that as we had all voted, we were now going on strike.

The reason for the strike, among many others, were things like AI digitization of our craft, and a whole slew of other proposals that if you're a nerd for this you can just look up online.

The point is there were about one hundred and sixty thousand of us going on strike, and it included actors like Isa Ray, who was on tour promoting Barbie.

Stopped the press tour immediately and posted this Barbie is on strike.

So I and thousands of others decided to do what we had to do to support our brothers and sisters in our and fellow unions.

And I laced up my sneakers, I walked to the nearest picket line, which was right here in New York City, grabbed a sign, and spent the afternoon picketing.

And I think, what the unions we're asking for.

There's a rational conversation about how to move forward together on this business that we all want.

It's a real shame that the companies aren't willing to have that conversation.

Unions have always had a target on their backs.

In fact, there's a specific phrase that describes the actions that are used to weaken them.

It's called union busting.

As long as unions have existed, so has the effort to undermine them.

Ironically, some of the most powerful union busters side note, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump have actually been members of my own union, SAG.

After you believe that Ronald Reagan was actually president of SAG before becoming President of the United States.

People who feel threatened by unions naturally want to break them apart.

If working people just understand our power and connect that to demands that we need to live in a safe world going forward, we can actually re build an economy that is based on a worker's agenda and not just the agenda of brutal capitalism that we're experiencing now.

All of which is to say, today I'm speaking with union leader and president of the Association of Flight Attendants, Sarah Nelson.

Together we discuss why efforts to weaken unions keep repeating themselves, and look, when the President of the United States attacks unions, what does that reveal about who really has power in America?

And how can workers, even if they're not in a union, use that power to fight back and remake the system.

Here we go again again, again again.

Hey, I'm Cal Penn and this is Here we Go Again, a show that takes today's trends and headlines and.

Asks why does history keep repeating itself?

Here we go hold on with Hey, can you hear me?

Sarah Nelson has been the president of the Association of Flight Attendants the AFA since twenty fourteen, where she's currently serving her third term.

The New York Times called her America's most powerful flight attendant for her role in helping to end the twenty nineteen government shutdown, and under her watch, the AFA has helped air industry workers stay in their jobs, get COVID relief, and keep the skies safe for you and me.

She's also a huge advocate for women becoming voices in their unions, and most recently, she's been on the road with Bernie Sanders and AOC's Fight Oligarchy Tour.

Welcome Sarah, I'm happy to be here.

Cal can can you give us a quick primer on the history of unions and public sentiment towards them, like historically.

Quick primer?

Okay, Well, Actually, everything that people enjoy today in any kind of social contracts, social security, medicate Ultimately, all of these things were won by unions waging our laws that give certain protections at work that people count on and take for granted, a workplace safety and health.

All of that came from the labor movement, and this was working people rising up and taking action together.

And there was sort of a culmination of that in nineteen thirty four where there were a series of general strikes all across the country, and so what that led to was giving FDR the power to put in place the New Deal.

So unions suddenly won the right to be officially certified in nineteen thirty five, and they were off to the races to organize working people, and that led to the greatest time of shared prosperity in our country that only lasted for twelve years before the corporate elite decided, well, maybe we don't like this so much.

They wanted the stability, and now they don't like it because they're having to share more of what our labor was producing, and so they passed the Taft Heartly Act, which started to erode union power and gave way to so called right to work laws where the union has to provide all the services without people actually paying for that and without having to be long and making it harder for the unions to exist.

Then, you know, fast forward to Ronald Reagan firing the air traffic controllers, the Pack Coast Strikers.

Pet CO stands for the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization.

So just to recap, because so here's here's the thing.

I think a lot of people fall into this category.

I certainly do.

I'm a member of the Screen Actors Guild.

I'm a member of the Writers Guild.

Those are unions that a lot of people know because we had labor disputes the last couple of years.

What I don't know is exactly what you just told me.

So in nineteen thirty four, for twelve years, that was when workers organized, And what you're saying is pushed FDR to take action.

Yeah.

Yeah, not just pushed FDR to take action, but gave FDR the power, the political power to put in place.

I wouldn't say that this, you know, FDR had nothing to do with this.

Of course, it was actually Francis Perkins's Labor secretary, first women in the Cabinet and very proud of that that she was the engine behind all of this.

Women should be leading everywhere.

But anyway, so you had to have those policy ideas.

But it was really the labor movement acting up because there were no protections for working people.

There was no sort of like social norms about if you're providing your labor, you're going to get a basic set of needs in return and be able to have a decent life and be able to give your children the opportunity for an even better life.

Those were the basic principles there.

People were going out on strikes against the coal companies, against trucking companies, against the shippers, against the textile industry, and all of these strikes then also typically included the rest of the community, because it wasn't just the workers in that particular industry that were upset with conditions.

These were conditions that were broadly experienced by everyone in the community, which is I think where we are again today.

Do you have an example of how bad these conditions were, because I think a lot of like when you through a history book, a lot of people are like, holy shit that was allowed, Like how were these conditions?

You know, do you have examples of that that come to the top of your head.

Sure, coal miners having to go in and dig their way into the mines.

They had to buy the tools from the company to do that, and they would only get paid by the weight of the coal that they were bringing out, so they could spend an entire day just digging their way into the mines and not get paid for that, and also put themselves in tremendous risk because there was no safety there.

So there were long term effects like black lung, but there was also minds that caved in or there were explosions, and because they were the sole breadwinner for the family, a lot of times they were bringing their kids with them too.

There were no laws about who could be in there, it was just how much you could haul out.

And at the time, also the other thing that those coal companies were doing was having people live in company towns, so your home was based on whether or not you had a job.

Just your health care like we see today, but that too, you had to see the company doctor.

You were blackballed if you were even talking about a union or talking to an organizer.

There were efforts to hire immigrants so that people couldn't even talk with each other about forming a union, and they were They specifically did that to try to keep unions out of the workplace so they could continue to exploit people, exploit their labor, and run away with all the profits.

That's just one industry.

Yeah, okay, so.

That paints sort of a descriptive picture.

Then workers do manage to organize.

You brought up Reagan, and I do want to ask you about Reagan.

The guy started as a union president but is known for quite the opposite as President of the United States.

How did his attitude towards unions evolve, devolve change during his presidency?

And then how does that connect to pat CO again?

Pat CO is the Professional air Traffic Controllers organization.

Well, so you know, Reagan started the biggest decline of union membership, but also an era where wages were going to remain flat.

And as wages remained flat and the cost of living goes up, people were willing to work more.

So there was really a destruction of any of the parameters around the kind of working conditions that you have and the idea that you could go have a decent life too.

So productivity has gone through the roof.

All of that has gone into the hands of Wall Street, and Reagan created other tools like stock buybacks to be able to shovel cash to Wall Street.

That doesn't really have anything to do with how well the business is doing.

It has everything to do with just shoveling more cash to the shareholders, which in most cases are the executive class or the corporate class.

The other thing that Reagan did was you remove any barrier to exploiting labor.

And he was actually endorsed by the air traffic controllers, and then the air traffic controllers went out on strike and his first year as president, and they were striking for higher wages, but they were also striking for a thirty two hour work week.

Now, I think the other thing that we have to recognize is that there was tremendous racism baked into this.

There was still we've never grappled with the fact that the South is still angry that they can't get free labor, and all of this was about, you know, being addicted to that, being addicted to exploiting people.

So Reagan put that on steroids when he fired the air traffic controllers when they did go out on strike for these demands.

And when he did that, he not only fired them, but he said they could never work in the federal government again, and he sent many of them to jail.

And he told me in America it yeah, I didn't know this, Yeah, And that's why you know, you don't see federal workers walking off the job.

I think a lot of people are like, why aren't they Well, number one, Musk wants everyone to walk off the job because they want to privatize everything.

So maybe you don't hand the boss what the boss wants.

But also, the right to strike for federal workers has never existed.

And I always say there are no illegal strikes.

There are only and successful ends.

And so federal workers did strike right up to Paco when they were fired and sent to jail because it was against the law for federal workers to strike, and that just sent a signal to everyone that not only are federal workers not going to be able to strike, but that the strike is a dirty word that people shouldn't be doing it.

It was described as illegal there, and it gave that tone about the strike across the rest of the country, and that really allowed companies to draw people into strikes that they couldn't win.

There was an absolute effort to sway the public away from unions and have people be really against unions and there in their minds, and so it was very, very difficult to organize during that time.

But also it undercut our basic power and it put on steroids this idea that there could be labor piece, and that what labor piece means is not that workers and the management are sitting down at the table and agreeing together to get solutions, which is what it should be.

What labor peace came to mean that workers would never strike and the union bosses would go into a room and you know, settle on a deal that really undercut the ability for workers to get ahead.

It may be you know, small raiss, but not enough to keep up with inflation for example.

So that's really you know, what has happened since nineteen eighty and what President Reagan put on steroids.

Well, but so they endorse Reagan.

Reagan then clearly busts up their demands, their strike puts them in jail.

Who ended up then directing air traffic when these people were in jail, and was it like a lot of them in jail or was it a symbolic thing and how did that end?

Ultimately?

Yeah, No, it wasn't a lot of them in jail.

It was a few dozen people, mostly leaders.

And so what he did was replace all of them, except that there were people who scatt There was scab labor that went back about twenty to thirty percent.

And then Reagan filled in with military air traffic controllers.

But it wasn't enough.

I mean, what he did was he put in motion.

Well, they were fighting for the thirty two hour recruit.

What Reagan did was make sure the air traffic controllers were going to be working overtime for the next forty years to make up for those staffing losses.

And actually that is the basis of what we're seeing today with airports not being able to take all the traffic, with air traffic controllers being severely understaffed and not being able to meet the capacity demands because they just don't have enough people and we haven't invested in our government systems, and so they have systems that are eroding and breaking on them and having to go back to manual procedures, which means that you've got to have more people doing that, because when you don't have that automation to assist the worker, it's going to take more people with eyes on it.

And that's what Reagan put in place.

And so they limped along for a little while until they started to train up, but they've never recovered from the staffing loss with the breaking of that strike and the firing of the pat Co workers and the destruction of that union.

Yeah, that's a pretty jarring and very clear example of union busting and how defining that.

I mean, not just how defining that was for our country, but the ramifications of that today.

Yes, this is what we're talking about, a public sector union.

How did those perceptions of union efficiency strength maybe the lack there of, like you were saying, it was hard to organize at the time, How did that seep into the private sector sphere when it comes to labor.

Oh, well, the private sector was upset because labor was taking a greater share of the profits.

And when we had that shared prosperity, the average worker was making about forty times less, or you could say the executives were making forty times more than the average worker.

Today it's around three hundred times, so that has, you know, significantly increased.

The private sector was very, very happy to get more control in the workplace, to take back control over the shop floor, because the unions essentially ran that shop floor and usually more efficiently, by the way, and definitely safer.

But they wanted that control back and they wanted the money.

And that's what capitalism promotes too.

So even if you had let's say, somebody who is sort of a benevolent boss and wants to be fair, the pressures of moving those profits to the shareholders becomes so great, and there's pressures down on even those managers who are trying to run a good business to cut corners and to undermine safety.

I can't help but think care about the real destruction of the great American company Boeing with the destruction of the union protections in the workplace.

For those safety protections in building airplanes, Okay, and they built faulty airplanes because there was so much pressure coming from Wall Street to cut corners on safety because it would take longer to do it safer.

And those are the kind of pressures in capitalism that if you don't have a union to push back on, you're in trouble.

I'm super worried about the TSA officers who were at the airports who lost their collective bargaining rights because when they gained these, we all became safer.

They didn't have to have just the pressures of moving people through security quickly so they can spend money in the airport or get on the airplanes.

There's a lot of pressure to do that.

They could raise their hand if they see something that's unsafe or that they're unsure about.

Slow things down, make sure that we're all secure, and taking away the due process that they have with their collective bargaining agreement and their ability to address specific issues in the workplace makes all of the rest of us less safe too.

If you were explaining that to a fourteen year old, right, the idea that we are all less safe because the TSA doesn't have strong union protections or union protections period, how would you explain that.

Yeah, to a fourteen year old.

I mean I have a fifteen year old.

I can't help but think about this that, first and foremost kids in a school understand the idea of fairness, and they also understand that there has to be rules.

So they've been following those rules in school for a long time.

But the other thing that I think is very real and a very real example of this in the schools is that these kids now have to sort of check into school through security procedures because of the concerns of an active shooter and the potential for people getting really hurt at the school if they're not following those procedures.

We've had three lockdowns this year alone in the school year because there were concerns with a gun found or somebody who is shooting outside, and some other concerns around the school.

But I think that the kids understand that you have to have rules.

Everyone has to check a little bit of their own freedom in order to have freedom of movement for everyone, because safety and security has to be there for us to have a free society.

It just doesn't It doesn't work otherwise.

And I think that you know, in that environment where they get to ask questions and maybe even be a little rambentious sometimes and maybe even rebels, they they typically are skill analyzed when they think that someone's going to break the rules because they know that those rules, even if they don't like them, are there for their own safety and their own platform for being able to learn.

I'll be right back with union leader Sarah Nelson.

After this short break, we're back with Here we go again.

I'm with Sarah Nelson.

Okay, so let's talk about the state of union busting today.

Nowadays, most people hear about unions through insanely high profile events like the Hollywood sag and writer strikes, and even then, because of who controls the media companies, those labor disputes were often depicted as you know, multi millionaires groveling for millions and millions of dollars, as opposed to what it actually was, which was working class folks, most of whom are not household names.

But most people don't really have a personal connection to a union member, which is why a lot of those narratives sort of go off the rails.

It was very common in the nineteen eighties, though, Is that correct that most people knew a union member?

How has public perception changed since then?

Yes, nineteen eighty the workforce was essentially twenty percent organized across the entire economy, and that's a significant amount, sort of.

The peak of unionization was around thirty percent in the country, so twenty percent is still you know, there's a lot of control there in the economy.

And what happens is when union workers set a standard in a particular industry, even the non union shops have to come close to matching what's been negotiated if they're going to be able to attract talent and people to do the work at their factory or their company.

So there was significant power still from labor at that time, and there was a check on corporate greed because labor had a real check in our politics.

And when I say that, I'm not leaning towards electoral politics.

What I'm saying is the politicians came to labor.

The politicians wanted labor support and wanted to work for labor because they they couldn't win without that.

They couldn't win because unions were generally popular because people knew what unions did for their family, knew how it gave them the pay and benefits that allowed them to have a better life, that allowed them to give opportunities to their kids, and a lot of people told those stories, and so unions were really important to a lot of families all across this country.

And when you have twenty percent of the people who are working in a union.

Then it's very likely that someone knows at least one union member and.

Are in what ways are all unions similar?

Like what difference could exist between a sag AFTRA and a pat co or do they operate pretty similarly?

So in ways that all unions are similar is that it's the only non self selecting place in America.

The boss chooses who's going to be in the workplace, not the workers themselves.

So you are required to organize if you're going to create any power with people that maybe you didn't choose to stand next to.

And so you have to work through your differences, and unions have to every single day break through racism and sexism.

These are the original tactics of the boss to keep workers at odds with each other and to continue to keep control.

So this is a place where people practice democracy, and that is another problem.

There's no practicing democracy when you have human for your union members doing that, they have to define what their demands are, and they've got to decide that those demands are something that everybody's going to get behind in order to strike.

In order to exercise that power or actually threaten that strike, you've got to have more than ninety percent of the people on board with that.

Think about that, if you told a politician they couldn't get anything done, but they can get elected without ninety percent of the vote, it would never happen, Right, So this is a place where not only do you get to have all these different ideas and people have to figure out how to get along, but also you have to figure out how to come to consensus.

You have to reach agreement around what you're going to fight for.

Busting is very much a current issue.

Once again, we talked about this at the at the top of the pod.

Can you can you give a few examples of how the federal government has been targeting workers' rights?

And I would actually love to know you've in your job, you've worked with secretaries of transportation, president's administrations that sort of run the gamut politically.

From what I know about the tour you just went on with my friend AOC and my old boss Bernie, you and I are probably fairly left of the majority of the Democratic Party.

So can you walk us through what union busting looks like and to which degrees in our politics these days?

Yeah?

Okay, So, first of all, I just think it's important that people take in the four d's of union busting, divide, delay, distract, and de moralize.

Okay, so you're seeing Musk and Trump saying that they're going to take away union rights from certain workers, and they're going to say it's because of national security to leave it in place for customs and border patrol, or they're going to leave it in place for the law enforcement units in the government.

And so that's about dividing workers too, and thinking that workers are in different classes and at odds with each other and should have different benefits.

So they're doing that.

They're finding all kinds of ways to divide people.

They're also you know, firing probationary workers.

I mean, this was about having a whole bunch of people say if I keep my head down, maybe they won't notice that I'm here and I'll get to keep my job, and made people afraid to speak out.

They're delaying results.

So when the courts are saying you got to return people, you know they're delaying responding to what the courts are saying, and that a lot of times we'll just try to outweight people and have people give up, and that goes to the demoralized.

But then there's the distract the email that was sent that on a Saturday night saying you have to justify your job by twelve noon on Monday.

That was a massive distraction from the work that these people are doing.

Cancer researchers who are trying to you know, get cures for us, the air traffic controllers who are trying to keep planes from you know, colliding in the sky.

But that keeps people off balance.

And so these four d's are really what's being a practice by who I think is like the greatest union buster of all time, Donald Trump.

And then more specifically, they are canceled, just outright canceling collective bargaining rights for almost a million people with the stroke of a pen.

And so it's been a progression of these attacks on workers.

First, they canceled the TSA workers contract for forty seven thousand people.

And when labor didn't get in the streets right then and say you're not going to cancel contracts.

This is this is existential to all of us, they said, oh, we got away with that, all right, let's do it for another million people.

And is that is that legal?

Does the president have the executive authority to do that?

It's illegal.

Okay, Okay, what they're doing is illegal and what we're and we're already getting core decisions that are saying that it's illegal.

And so yeah, I don't want I don't want anyone to be confused here.

These are illegal actions.

But what they understand is that just like the union buster of a company, they can break the contract or they can break the law, and then they know that it's going to take a long time for the accountability to come along, and in most cases, workers are going to give up in the meantime.

There's the delay factor, and they know that they're just going to be able to make change in the meantime if they run fast enough.

Is what I'm about to say.

Accurate?

Are they getting away with this level of delay because there's no enforcement meaning if it's illegal for a president or for an administration to union bust in this way, but if there's no jail time, fine penalty, no mechanism to get things back on track, does that fall into delay or is that something else entirely?

Yeah, I mean that definitely falls into delay.

But this is something this is part of what's been missing from our labor law, is the accountability when companies violate labor law today, there's no immediate remedy.

There were strikers coal Mind and Alabama who struck starting in twenty twenty one, and by two years later they had essentially broken the strike, and then they got a decision from the government that that strike was legal from the beginning and that the company was in the wrong.

But it was too late.

Strike was over, people had gone to get other jobs.

The governor had used the state troopers of Alabama and Alabama taxpayers money to escort scabs from other states in to take the jobs of those miners who were striking.

So you know, it's the delays like that and the blatant disregard of the law and workers' rights today that makes it a very very difficult environment in order to organize it.

And when the government in history, when the government has been on the worker's side, the workers have won essentially, and when the government has been against the workers, workers have lost, with the exception of when there were no rules and workers had nothing else to do but fight.

That's when it generated the power and this massive upspring of solidarity all across the country that led to the power that created the New Deal.

Okay, interesting, and I can't get past some of the very jarring safety related ramifications of what you just described.

And I'm wondering if you can explain how detrimental is distraction, this distraction component of the four d's, in particular when we're talking about safety related jobs like air traffic control, maintenance, mechanics, folks like that.

Yeah, I mean, okay, sorry, I'm going to get a little emotional because oh it's okay, yeah, I'm going to think about January twenty ninth, nine days into this administration.

And I'm not saying this is the event is on the administration, But when the black Hawk helicopter collided with PSA Flight fifty three, forty two and sixty seven people died instantly but had to be pulled out of the Potomac so their families could bury.

Them, you know that.

Immediately after that, instead of people together in a time of tragedy, the President said, oh, that was because of DEI hires, like another distraction, which led to you know, real stress in that tower for air traffic controllers who were still directing traffic because you know, the planes didn't stop, it stopped for a little while, but commerce continued, and those there's pressure to get those airplanes back in the air, and politicians wanted to be able to fly into national Airport to come to work or leave and go home from there, and so those those planes didn't stop, and those workers had to keep working while we are, you know, watching our friends be carried home for their last flight, or the air traffic controllers were directing traffic into DCA while they're watching bodies being pulled out of the Potomac and to then, during that same time, have the firing of federal workers, which included support jobs for air traffic controllers and FAA safety inspectors.

That is another massive distraction, and how do you do that in the wake of this other tragedy.

It was even more offensive than ever before, because the first thing that we do when there's an accident is, of course, we mourn the dead, as mother Jones would say, which is a really important step.

But then you fight like hell for the living and you say, never ever again, in the names of the people who died.

We're going to find the cause and we're going to make sure it never happens again.

And that is just not at all.

What happened after that the dismantling of the government agencies and dismantling the support system for those upfront safety personnel.

It's just the opposite of what needed to be happening right then, and it was disrespectful to those families and disrespectful to every other worker who got back on planes to make sure that the economy could keep moving.

I can't imagine working through a traumatic experience like that and then having to keep working through it when you really should be able to not have to do that, and that the protections don't exist.

I have a couple of questions just sort of looking to the future.

But there's this interesting statistic that made it seem like union approval rates are nearing numbers that we may not have seen since the sixties.

So an Economic Policy Institute survey said that seventy percent of the US public and almost ninety percent of young workers, and the ZOSOFT spot for this because I've worked as the youth liaison it in the Obama administration, ninety percent of young workers approve of unions, despite actual membership being way lower.

So how do you make sense of that difference between public support and involvement and do you see union membership growing in the near future.

Is there an opportunity through all this chaos?

Okay?

Okay, So there's a lot there.

So we talked about Ronald Reagan earlier, you know, setting off this destruction of unions and also setting off that you mentioned EPI, very famous chart by EPI that shows union membership on the decline and productivity going through the roof, and then wages remaining flat and the productivity going up and the union membership going down is almost an exact mirror inversion of each other, right, And so what we've seen since nineteen eighty is growing inequality.

Okay.

People have had to work longer days, harder in order to make the same amount of wages, and they've been voting during that time.

And so this is this is part of why we see where we are today.

We have greater income inequality than we did right before the Great Depression right now, and so people have been voting during this time and not seeing a difference in their lives.

But then they started to see the strike comeback, starting with the Chicago teachers in twenty twelve, and that led to the red fur ed strikes starting with West Virginia and crossing the country.

And then there were the auto workers strikes, and there were the grocery work strikes, and so the public was starting to see, oh, I go to the voting booth, and I don't really experience a change in my own life.

My own life is continuing to get worse and worse.

But unions are out here fighting and they're getting results for people that look like me within a couple days.

Now.

I mean, let's be clear, the unions have been organizing and planning for those moments.

It wasn't actually just a couple days of work.

But that's what they see, is real results in a few days or even you know, the writers and the SAG strike more than one hundred days, right, but still very short.

If you line that up with an election cycle where they weren't really seeing results, and as people start to exercise that power, the politics will come to us.

But here's what's interesting in this moment where everyone is so for unions, This is a right moment for union organizing, except the fact that the way to organize is so difficult under labor law today that I think what we're going to get back to is workers forming their unions and just say, you know what, we're not coming to work until you agree to recognize us as the union and until you agree to these four demands in our first contract.

And I do think that that is possible in this moment, and it's possible to build that kind of power that could change things very quickly, because the problems that we have here in society are becoming very very crystal clear right now about who is running away and having a good life and who is getting a worse and worse life because of that.

Yeah, there have been endless up eds and think pieces in the Nation and many other outlets the last several months about the potential opportunity that could come from things being as dire as they are today.

So that's one of those things that I remain hopeful about, not naively, but with a strategy like the one that you outlined by conversation with Sarah Nelson will continue after this short break.

Welcome back to here we go again.

Okay, Sarah, let's identify the exit row of this current union busting moment and look to the future, which is really the thing that excites me.

You know.

Actually, that's a really good metaphor because if you're going out the exit row if you're going out the window exit on an.

Airplane, that's not a very good day.

But when you get out and you're safe, that's a great day.

Everybody feels really happy that they say their lives they have a lease online.

That is the moment that we're in right now.

That's how it feels.

I probably should have opened with this, but maybe not.

I'm just I'm thinking about how many of our listeners, understandably are thinking themselves.

I'm not in a union, So could you explain to someone with no union connection what a union is and why it's still important to care, Like what's at stake for all Americans going forward right now?

Yeah, So we're seeing due process get destroyed, even though this is fundamentally one of the first to find characteristics of our country and probably the most important.

I mean, people are talking about the destruction of rule of law.

I think that there's a lot of working people out there that would say, well, the rule hasn't really worked for me, It's worked for the billionaires, it hasn't really worked for my class.

But due process is something that people can understand.

You have a fair day in court, you have the opportunity to lay out your case and see the evidence against you.

And that's what a union provides.

Otherwise the boss doesn't have to provide that.

So fundamentally, like the principles that the United States was built on, are the principles of a union in the workplace.

And then what it is is it's all of those workers in that workplace saying, yes, you may have total power over me because my employment depends on you continuing to employ me, but we're going to stand together and collectively bargain with you.

We're going to say that we're going to agree to these terms together, and we're going to practice a little democracy around that too.

I mean, we're going to vote on it.

So not every one of us might agree to the terms that we work out together or negotiate together, but the vast majority of people have to in order for that contract to move forward.

And then the union is there to enforce that contract, because as we've seen throughout the years, you can have labor laws, you can have safety laws in the workplace, but if you don't have a union to back those up, and workers try to enforce those on their own, they don't stand a chance.

They can't afford the lawyer to help them they can't afford the time that it takes to enforce it, but you've got that sort of insurance as a union member to be able to do that.

And finally, I would say that it's also a way like I think most people are actually good and they really want to take care of their neighbor and unions are a place where we can do that too.

If somebody is struggling, we can come together and out of many, we can help the one.

And there's incredible power and the building of solidarity around that too, the idea that you could actually make a difference for someone who is struggling because you're coming together and everybody's chipping in just a little bit to help the people who are really struggling and lift each other up.

Because you know, the old adage of unions is an injury to one is an injury to all, which which means that we've got to, you know, lift the most marginalized, the most hurt worker out of the depths of oppression, otherwise we are all in danger of being dragged down there.

That's very well said.

And for those of you who are not union members, you know the emails we get weekly with various pickets or actions or things that we're asked to take to support other unions that maybe have nothing to do with what I do as a writer or a performer, really underscores that.

Right, we sent bus loads of actors during our strike, I think LaGuardia to support you know, I remember that.

That was awesome.

So there are all of these things.

And also hearing you talk, you know, my.

Brother in law is on track to be a union electrician in the South, and when he was looking at the path forward, you know, part of it was like, you know, do I just take this workshop and just become an electrician?

Because if I go the union route.

Yeah, I get paid more, but I've got to do what's essentially five years of schooling an apprenticeship.

And I just remember this conversation so clearly.

I'm like, bro, that five years is going to be very, very tough, and you're going to come out of that knowing absolutely everything, feeling protected and yes, obviously you'll be compensated appropriately.

And he's now almost at the other end of that five years, and I'm so proud of him.

You're going to make me emotional now.

I'm so proud of him.

But it's also just incredible to see how much more he knows and how much safer he's going to be.

Like, it's such a beautiful, amazing thing that I watched that, and I go, I'm not a business owner, but if I was, in what reality would I not want to hire union members to do a job for me as opposed to just like giving somebody two weeks of training and being like here or wing it.

It's just such a crazy to me that somebody wouldn't go that route.

Well, what's amazing is that these apprenticeships are also paid.

No, they're not paid, you know what, They're going to be paid once they're through the apprenticeship, of course, But where else can you go to school and actually earn a living while you're doing it, as opposed to go into debt by paying for school.

So yeah, it's a pretty extraordinary thing.

And I went out and spent some time with some electricians out in San Diego who are union members, and I spent time with their women's committee.

They were called the United Sparks Electricians, and they would go out on the weekends and they got the construction companies to donate the supplies, but they would go out and do nonprofit work and like put install solar panels on a nursing home or on an animal rescue shelter, and they would drive up and they would do this, and the people would step out and say, wait a minute, you're all women, and they would say, that's right.

And the other thing that I would just say is, yeah, I do not want to have an apartment in a building that wasn't built by union labor.

I don't want to walk through an airport that wasn't built with union labor.

It's not necessarily safe.

And why would we put that on the workers first of all, to put themselves in jeopardy in an unsafe workplace, but then also the product.

You know, how would you feel if you built a building that collapsed and you know, killed hundreds of people.

So, I mean, it's full circle all the way around in our communities.

I just I guess I have the only remaining question I have for you continuing to look to the future.

I mean, we talked about union busting, and now you've just left me with a really strong feeling of empowerment for people listening.

What should we be prioritizing in this particular moment and in this fight and what needs to change as we move forward.

Yeah, So fundamentally, if you are feeling hopeless and powerless, you need to know that the oligarchs have money and control, but they do not have power.

We can generate our power.

Nothing moves if labor doesn't move.

Mother Jon's a great labor organizer from one hundred years ago, when she was crisscrossing the country fighting child labor.

She said, the capitalists say there is no need of labor organizing, except the fact that they themselves are continually organizing shows us their real beliefs.

The capitalists want the most amount of labor for the least amount of money.

Labor wants the most amount of money for the least amount of labor.

If you would understand that you hold the whole solution in the palm of your hands.

If, for example, every worker word to simply hold up and stop working, the capitalists would yield to any and all demands because the world could simply not go on.

And she was basically describing a general strike.

But I think it's really important for people to take that in and understand that actually, in this moment where it feels like everything is spiraling out of control, and oligarchs are taking over and we may not even have a democracy anymore.

That actually, workers can take control, just like we did in twenty nineteen during the government shutdown, and say you're not going to distract us with the idea that this is about a southern border wall, with your racist fear mongering.

We know what this government shutdown is really about is trying to privatize every function of government, and so labor's going to take control.

We're going to get ready to strike.

And once that was fully defined and a few flights started to cancel in LaGuardia when air traffic controllers could no longer safely do their jobs, a thirty five day government shutdown with no end in sight was over in a couple hours because the GOP was so scared that labor was going to get a taste of our power and understand that that was going to upend everything and change all of the dynamics in our economy.

So this is a moment of opportunity in COVID.

We got the government to spend money to fix the problem, to give people money to keep people in their homes, and to give the child tax credit to get people through that time.

But this is another moment of crisis where we can do the same thing.

We are facing a burning earth, we are facing the climate crisis, and so if we working people just understand our power and connect that to demands that we need to live in a safe world going forward, we can actually rebuild an economy that is based on a worker's agenda and not just the agenda of brutal capitalism that we're experiencing now.

So it sounds like here we go again.

Of it is that there's immense opportunity in this time of turmoil, and that's beautiful, and I appreciate you sharing that.

We're going to hang on to that beauty.

Cal So I'm grateful that you're willing to walk us through it because I think for listeners who tune into a podcast like this, like we want the skill set right, We want to sort through all the noise that's out there and figure out how to like actually make an impact with frankly limited time.

So what you said is I think super helpful.

So thank you.

Let me just close with this.

You've got to define the problem, got to set your demands, got to backup your demands with what you're willing to do, and you got to add it urgency.

Those are the components of getting change and getting solutions, and so we can do it if we follow that template and understand our power.

Well that was Sarah Nelson, International President of the Association of Flight Attendants.

To keep up with the work Sarah is doing to fight for safer skies and stronger contracts, you can follow her at Flying with Sarah.

Here we Go Again.

As a production of iHeart Podcasts and Snaffoo Media in association with New Metric Media.

Our executive producers.

Are me kalpen ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Elissa Martino, Andy Kim, Pat Kelly, Chris Kelly, and Dylan Fagan.

Caitlin Fontana is our producer and writer.

Dave Shumka is our producer and editor.

Additional writing from Megan tan Our consulting producer is Romin Borsolino.

Tory Smith is our associate producer.

Theme music by Chris Kelly, logo by Matt Gosson, Legal review from Daniel Welsh, Caroline Johnson and Meghan Halson.

Special thanks to Glenn Basner, Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein and everyone at iHeart Podas tests but especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman and Nikki Etor.

Thanks for listening, See you next week.