Episode 1/21 A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, & the Fight for Democracy w/ Jane McAlevey & Nomiki Konst

Happy Tuesday! Author and organizer Jane McAlevey joins Sam to discuss her new book, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy, on how workers must continue to fight with broad-based supermajorities across the working class. McAlevey and Sam begin their conversation discussing the state of labor organizing in America during the Trump era and the recent progress of teacher unions across the country. McAlevey explains how Collective Bargain differs from her previous books and the need to reeducate the working populace on unions and their common misconceptions. McAlevey contextualizes the benefits of unions through Silicon Valley labor practices. She describes how tech become a new arena for organizing in 2020, where forced arbitration agreements leave workers with very little agency over their labor or workplace environments. There is no way around collective organizing if tech workers want to change their company’s culture–it cannot happen in a top-down system. Beyond one’s place of employment, looking at the state of the judiciary system and the campaign finance laws, the best (and possibly only) tool working people have in our society is to organize with strategic strikes that shut things down in the streets. That is how workers will win in a post-Trump era.

And Nomiki Konst joins Sam for the Fun Half to discuss: Trump’s grief over Notre Dame, the ‘Middle Class’ Joe fallacy, even Tom Brokaw recognizes it, Bernie’s ground game in Iowa as the Senate Impeachment trial begins, why the Senate Dems resent Bernie, AOC on challenging the Democrats status-quo and fighting for public programs, the stupidity of the NYT split-endorsement, Protestors are frustrating Pete Buttigieg, former Breitbart lackey Kurt Bardella does not speak for everyday Democrats, plus one call from John in San Antonio!

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