Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background the show
Speaker 1: where we explored the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. One of the most remarkable controversies around
Speaker 1: the exercise of power that took place during the entirety
Speaker 1: of the COVID nineteen pandemic was the struggle in the
Speaker 1: United States between teachers and some jurisdictions who were afraid
Speaker 1: to go back to school because they were concerned about
Speaker 1: catching COVID and some parents who really wanted their kids
Speaker 1: to be back in school. At the center of these
Speaker 1: debates were teachers unions themselves, one of the most significant
Speaker 1: remaining forms of labor unionism in America today and also
Speaker 1: in certain respects among the most controversial. To discuss the
Speaker 1: question of public sector unions power, COVID nineteen and where
Speaker 1: we're going on this complex of difficult issues. We're joined
Speaker 1: by Randy Weingart. Randy is the head of the American
Speaker 1: Federation of Teachers, the second largest teachers union in the country.
Speaker 1: That makes her one of the most powerful, visible and
Speaker 1: vocal union leaders in the United States today, and she's
Speaker 1: also a person who, as a lawyer, has a powerful
Speaker 1: understanding of the constitutional and legal issues around unionism, as
Speaker 1: well as the history of unionism and its rise at fall. Randy,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being I want to talk
Speaker 1: to you about the grand topics that you've been so
Speaker 1: engaged in over the last fifteen months, but I also
Speaker 1: want to go to the bigger picture. I don't just
Speaker 1: want to talk more about COVID and closures, but I
Speaker 1: want to talk about what has happened to unions, both
Speaker 1: private sector and public sector unions over recent decade and
Speaker 1: what that's meant for the power of workers taken as
Speaker 1: a whole. So I guess the place I want to
Speaker 1: start is with a kind of middle level question. Having
Speaker 1: lived through and been a central actor in the very
Speaker 1: intense debates around school closing and school openings, do you
Speaker 1: think that the power of at least public sector unions
Speaker 1: like the AFT has increased or decreased through the process
Speaker 1: of the last year and a half. That is a
Speaker 1: really good question. I think that understanding of who teachers
Speaker 1: are and what they need to do the work to
Speaker 1: help students has increased, and I think the needing to
Speaker 1: have organization and a union, as a Philip Randolph said
Speaker 1: so many years ago as a way to create power
Speaker 1: that has increased, certainly amongst workers if you watch what
Speaker 1: the right wing does. Certainly our power has increased. But
Speaker 1: oftentimes what the right wing does is to pretend we
Speaker 1: have far more power than we really do, to try
Speaker 1: to slay that as opposed to actually listen to what
Speaker 1: we're saying. So I'm balanced. I think the answer is yes,
Speaker 1: But it's certainly not enough power to actually ensure that
Speaker 1: working people and working communities, particularly parents, kids, and those
Speaker 1: who make a difference in their lives like teachers and
Speaker 1: emergency medical workers and meat packers and things like that,
Speaker 1: had the safety conditions that they needed for us to
Speaker 1: actually navigate through COVID better than we did. Is it
Speaker 1: fair to say, Randy, that in just about every case,
Speaker 1: at least the ones that I know of, teachers unions
Speaker 1: in the end one the fights about back to school,
Speaker 1: or I don't know of an instance. Maybe I'm wrong
Speaker 1: where a union was essentially coerced back to work when
Speaker 1: it wasn't ready to do so, or do I have
Speaker 1: that wrong? I think where there were unions that had
Speaker 1: decent relationships with parents and with superintendents, and in states
Speaker 1: that understood that safety was a real concern, like safety
Speaker 1: was the way back in. I think that we did
Speaker 1: win because we were able to show that safety was
Speaker 1: the way back into schooling, not the obstacle to school
Speaker 1: But there were lots of different places across the country
Speaker 1: where there are no unions and where governors pretended that
Speaker 1: COVID didn't exist, but where there were unions, where people
Speaker 1: saw that safety really was the way in. I do
Speaker 1: think we were able to reopen schools safely for in
Speaker 1: person learning. The issue about in person learning was never
Speaker 1: the debate and the dispute. Any educator pre COVID would
Speaker 1: have told you how important in person learning was. I
Speaker 1: do think that COVID has made the case for why
Speaker 1: unions are important, because who else is going to protect
Speaker 1: the safety and well being of the workers and of
Speaker 1: the people who use public services and who use private
Speaker 1: manufacturing services like beat processing plants. Randy, what do you
Speaker 1: think of as the costs of those victories? So I
Speaker 1: hear you saying, and this sounds sensible to me that
Speaker 1: both for people who are in unions and for people
Speaker 1: who need them but aren't in them, one of the
Speaker 1: big lessons off COVID was without a union to protect
Speaker 1: you you can be put in a situation where you
Speaker 1: have to return to the workplace under conditions which you
Speaker 1: don't experience as safe, and that seems like a powerful argument.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, there was pretty clearly some public backlash,
Speaker 1: at least among upper middle class parents about the thought
Speaker 1: that the school unions, the teachers unions, were too powerful
Speaker 1: in the sense that there was a genuine dispute about
Speaker 1: whether kids should go back to school and when, and
Speaker 1: as you were saying, the unions did for the most
Speaker 1: part win those fights. Now, obviously one of the things
Speaker 1: about exercising powers you can't make everybody happy all of
Speaker 1: the time, and you have to act on behalf of
Speaker 1: your constituents. But I'm wondering how you think about the
Speaker 1: overall costs to teachers unions of the victories that you want,
Speaker 1: again conceding that they were victories and also that it
Speaker 1: was probably good that you won. Nevertheless, there's still some
Speaker 1: real world downsides. So look, I think that the fact
Speaker 1: that you saw the tensions between parents and teachers were
Speaker 1: really terrible. This is part of the reason why you
Speaker 1: hear be hesitating when somebody says is it a win?
Speaker 1: Is it a loss? Teachers want what kids need, and
Speaker 1: most of the time, for us to be successful in
Speaker 1: educating kids, parents need to be our partners. So when
Speaker 1: you see dissonance in that and that there was a
Speaker 1: real disagreement, particularly you saw in upper middle class households,
Speaker 1: that is a real problem and we need to reconnect together.
Speaker 1: But I think what also happened is that you see
Speaker 1: the inequality of how COVID affected people, because in black
Speaker 1: and brown communities, where COVID affected people much more lethally,
Speaker 1: you see much more of a shared understanding. And frankly,
Speaker 1: in poll results that we've seen, we've done parent polling
Speaker 1: with several other groups, there's overwhelming support in that polling
Speaker 1: for educators, education unions, and for public schools. So I
Speaker 1: think you saw a real divide based upon how COVID
Speaker 1: actually impacted people's personal health and their community's personal health.
Speaker 1: In places where it didn't have the kind of impact,
Speaker 1: you saw a real friction. In places where it had
Speaker 1: real impact, you saw much less friction because there was
Speaker 1: a shared lived experience. And I think that the least
Speaker 1: thing I'd say is one of the things that we
Speaker 1: saw that was done better in other countries than in
Speaker 1: America was that in other countries the public health concerns
Speaker 1: and the honesty about them and the transparency about it
Speaker 1: and how to deal with the public health concerns created
Speaker 1: a shared community, which it didn't in the United States.
Speaker 1: Do you think that the sense that many teachers have
Speaker 1: of not being fully appreciated in all that they do,
Speaker 1: that is to say, not having the ordinary person understand
Speaker 1: the full range of things the teachers do was exacerbated
Speaker 1: by the struggles that in some places, as you were describing,
Speaker 1: did happen over COVID. I mean, I certainly had the
Speaker 1: sense from my friends who are public school teachers that
Speaker 1: they felt much more misunderstood even than they usually do,
Speaker 1: in this last period of time. Yes, I would actually
Speaker 1: divide it up into three different periods of time March
Speaker 1: twenty twenty through June July twenty twenty, the fall of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty through basically November December, and then the winter
Speaker 1: spring of twenty twenty one. And I think what happened
Speaker 1: was between March and June of twenty twenty there was
Speaker 1: a shared sense of teachers and parents that we're in
Speaker 1: it together. We're all trying to figure out these remote platforms.
Speaker 1: We're trying to do the best we can, and there
Speaker 1: was huge appreciation for teachers because parents at that point
Speaker 1: had a front row seat because they're listening on the
Speaker 1: computer to what a teacher is doing, trying to pull
Speaker 1: things out of kids, trying to make kids feel okay,
Speaker 1: trying to do that. So I think that you saw
Speaker 1: actually more appreciation than teachers normally get. Between March and June,
Speaker 1: when the data started coming in over the summer to
Speaker 1: the fall, combined with Trump and Divorce's refusal to actually
Speaker 1: implement with fidelity the CDC guidelines or give us any
Speaker 1: resources to actually do that, you saw data that basically
Speaker 1: said kids don't get as affected, and Trump and Divorce
Speaker 1: were saying, okay, because kids don't get as affected, all
Speaker 1: of you have to be back in school, with no
Speaker 1: understanding that the teachers were affected and their lives could
Speaker 1: be at risk, and unlike nurses and doctors, were getting
Speaker 1: none of the safeguards that they needed. So that's when
Speaker 1: you saw a lot of real stress and adjita because
Speaker 1: teachers always wanted to be back in school. We saw
Speaker 1: that impolling results throughout the year that if we could
Speaker 1: get the safeguards seventy to eighty percent of MIND members
Speaker 1: said I want to be in school, because we know
Speaker 1: how important that was. The real place which huge stress
Speaker 1: was January through probably March or April, before the vaccines
Speaker 1: were seen as such a game changer, because essentially what
Speaker 1: you saw was that parents were saying to teachers, I
Speaker 1: don't really care whether you feel like you're going to
Speaker 1: get sick or not. My kids need to be in school,
Speaker 1: and teachers who are saying, I want to be in school,
Speaker 1: I just don't want to get sick. So I need
Speaker 1: the safety safeguards and so we need the layered mitigation,
Speaker 1: the testing, and then ultimately the vaccines. And so by
Speaker 1: April and May things had really flipped around. But January,
Speaker 1: February March were very tough. I love that analysis. Do
Speaker 1: you think part of what was so bad January February
Speaker 1: March of twenty twenty one is that there was also
Speaker 1: an emerging view, which I think is still not definitively
Speaker 1: the consensus, but an emerging view among epidemiologists that at
Speaker 1: least for elementary school kids, they were very unlikely to
Speaker 1: be even asymptomatic carriers who were going to pass on
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen when I speak to epidemiologists now about what
Speaker 1: could have been done differently. One of the things they
Speaker 1: say is, we didn't know it at the time, but
Speaker 1: if this ever happens again, we might have been able
Speaker 1: to keep open schools at the elementary school level. And
Speaker 1: so was that part of what was happening at that
Speaker 1: period of time that that view was starting to filter through.
Speaker 1: I think that view had started to filter through last
Speaker 1: summer through September and October, which is part of the
Speaker 1: reason why we as a union kept saying let's reopen
Speaker 1: elementary schools fulsomely and hang back on middle and high school.
Speaker 1: But I think the dissonance was that the government, the
Speaker 1: people who were supposed to be out there basically saying
Speaker 1: this is what we know about the science, this is
Speaker 1: what's happening, they weren't trusted for a whole mess of reasons.
Speaker 1: What you're seeing because of the disinformation in the United
Speaker 1: States is that you had lots of cross information, and
Speaker 1: I think that made things much much worse. But we
Speaker 1: saw it as well in the battery of experts we
Speaker 1: were talking to, and part of what we were trying
Speaker 1: to do was create trust and transparency that if we
Speaker 1: had these safeguards in elementary schools, meaning the mass, the
Speaker 1: physical distancing, decent enough ventilation that we believed, our union believed,
Speaker 1: I believed that we could actually keep people safe in
Speaker 1: elementary schools because of what the epidemiologists were telling us.
Speaker 1: Randy drawing back a little bit from the particularities of
Speaker 1: the last year and change, and that must be hard
Speaker 1: to do, having been probably twenty four seven, three sixty
Speaker 1: five living through them, I want to ask you about
Speaker 1: the broader trend seen in sort of broader historical terms.
Speaker 1: The last fifty years have seen an enormous decline in
Speaker 1: the power of private sector unions, that is, the unions
Speaker 1: that do their negotiating every day on the opposite side
Speaker 1: of the table from classic capital right from management of
Speaker 1: private entities. But while they have declined, public sector unions
Speaker 1: that negotiate typically across the table from governments, have not
Speaker 1: declined to the same degree, and in some ways have
Speaker 1: actually done reasonably well for themselves, measured, for example, the
Speaker 1: maybe not by the fight you had to go through
Speaker 1: over the last year and change, but by your outcomes. Well,
Speaker 1: let me just put it this way. Union decline didn't
Speaker 1: just happen simply because of globalization or because of the
Speaker 1: Third and fourth Industrial Revolution, there is a fifty year
Speaker 1: assault on unionization. The managerial interests and capitalists interests in
Speaker 1: the country made a decision that shared prosperity was not
Speaker 1: one of their goals. Now fast forward to now, people see,
Speaker 1: including many capitalists, that when you have this level of inequity,
Speaker 1: there's a real problem in the country. And you have, frankly,
Speaker 1: the president who is more supportive of unions as an
Speaker 1: economic theory for lifting wages and lifting voices and prosperity
Speaker 1: of workers than probably any other president beforehand, inclusive of FDR.
Speaker 1: Now what happened in the public sector is that take teachers,
Speaker 1: who are now more unionized than any other group of employees.
Speaker 1: They understood that individually they had no power or very
Speaker 1: little power, and so they understood that getting together and
Speaker 1: trying to create some power was important in order to
Speaker 1: have better incomes, better conditions, and being able to do
Speaker 1: their jobs better. And so you see that as well
Speaker 1: with other public sector unions. But the point is, we
Speaker 1: do not have the kind of power that the right
Speaker 1: wing attributes to us. They attribute it to us so
Speaker 1: that they can try to slay us. What we've seen
Speaker 1: in the last ten years is that unions have gotten
Speaker 1: more popular. You see this in the Gallop polling every
Speaker 1: Labor Day, and that's because people want to have some
Speaker 1: degree of agency over their lives. If we use the
Speaker 1: collective wisdom of educators and use collective bargaining to try
Speaker 1: to actually make education better than that a win win situation.
Speaker 1: But is also true of people who work in private
Speaker 1: sector unions. But one of the big differences is that
Speaker 1: the public sector is negotiating with people who are elected,
Speaker 1: and so the public sector unions can participate in trying
Speaker 1: to vote for support and encourage the election of public
Speaker 1: servants who will be responsive to the unions interests and needs,
Speaker 1: whereas if you work in a private sector union, you don't,
Speaker 1: for the most part, yet to participate in electing management.
Speaker 1: Surely that's a significant part of how public sector unions
Speaker 1: justifiably exercise power, is it not? So? As a member
Speaker 1: of a union, Noah, who actually pushed for reforms in
Speaker 1: New York City that our members could no longer run
Speaker 1: for school board, I think that's a false equivalency and
Speaker 1: a false reading of power. I think that the issue
Speaker 1: has been that in the private sector, we are down
Speaker 1: to less than seven percent of people in unions, and
Speaker 1: therefore we don't have the density that we used to
Speaker 1: have in terms of community. I think the issue is
Speaker 1: that what unions end up doing, both in the public
Speaker 1: and the private sector, is that we try to get
Speaker 1: people who are pro working people elected in positions of power.
Speaker 1: So I think that that's just a canard that is
Speaker 1: used to try to undermine having unions throughout the nation.
Speaker 1: From the standpoint of classic Marxian analysis, unions were an
Speaker 1: attempt to solve the social problem of the struggle between
Speaker 1: labor and capital. To at least more moderate people influenced
Speaker 1: by Marx let's say, socialists or social democrats, labor unionism
Speaker 1: seemed like it was supposed to be, in its glory period,
Speaker 1: say up through the early nineteen sixties, a kind of
Speaker 1: semi permanent solution to this struggle. Now, as you said,
Speaker 1: fewer than seven percent of private sector workers are unionized,
Speaker 1: and that means that capital has won just a tremendous
Speaker 1: victory over labor. So isn't that a tragedy from the
Speaker 1: standpoint of labor, I mean, doesn't it tell the story
Speaker 1: of labor unionism as mostly having a succeeded for some
Speaker 1: period of time, but then historically no longer continue to
Speaker 1: succeed with the public sector unions almost as a kind
Speaker 1: of accidental survival because they're not fighting against capital directly.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to answer it in the same way
Speaker 1: as I answered it before, because I think that the
Speaker 1: labor movement in the United States is different than Marxian
Speaker 1: in theology. The labor movement in the United States was
Speaker 1: about trying to create a voice and trying to empower
Speaker 1: working folks to actually have a bigger piece of the
Speaker 1: economic pie. And in modern labor parlance, those of us
Speaker 1: who have been in the public sector, when we have
Speaker 1: higher density, we have better outcomes in terms education. You
Speaker 1: see it in terms of Massachusetts versus Mississippi. And so
Speaker 1: what I would say is in the private sector, when
Speaker 1: you have higher density, you see it in terms of
Speaker 1: higher wages and things like that. So if the public
Speaker 1: good writ large is how working people can have a
Speaker 1: better piece of the economic pie, how they can have
Speaker 1: their piece of the American dream, then unions are aligned
Speaker 1: with that and are trying to make that happen. But
Speaker 1: if you don't have enough density, you're not going to
Speaker 1: make that happen economically. We'll be right back, Randy. I
Speaker 1: want to ask you about something that's been very much
Speaker 1: on my mind. In light of the debates over critical
Speaker 1: race theory in the sixteen nineteen project, a number of
Speaker 1: states have adopted or proposed legislation that would prohibit the
Speaker 1: teaching of certain points of view, or at least what
Speaker 1: they those statutes try to present as a certain point
Speaker 1: of view. Now, at one time, it was an interest
Speaker 1: of unions in teachers unions and of many individual teachers
Speaker 1: to fight against legislation that would restrict what a teacher
Speaker 1: could or couldn't teach. In the famous Scopes monkey trial
Speaker 1: which involved the ASAU, not a union, but nevertheless, you know,
Speaker 1: the original party there was the teacher who taught evolution,
Speaker 1: allowed himself to be convicted of teaching evolution in order
Speaker 1: to produce a test case, claiming initially a free speech
Speaker 1: right to teach whatever he wanted to teach. Now that's
Speaker 1: not exactly the way the law has evolved. But I'm
Speaker 1: wondering from the standpoint of your union, when you see
Speaker 1: laws that are past that restrict what teachers can teach,
Speaker 1: that say, a certain point of view cannot be taught.
Speaker 1: Do you take a stance against that, or do you
Speaker 1: see that as sort of part and parcel of legislation
Speaker 1: and lots of states that dictates curriculum and that therefore
Speaker 1: appropriately tells teachers what they can and can't teach. No,
Speaker 1: we take a stance against that. We take a stance
Speaker 1: against that for a few reasons. One, there's a big
Speaker 1: difference between K twelve and higher education in terms of
Speaker 1: the freedom to teach and the latitude over academic freedom.
Speaker 1: So we know in the main that in pre K
Speaker 1: through secondary through high school, state laws require a certain
Speaker 1: curriculum and we should have latitude within that curriculum to
Speaker 1: meet the needs of kids. However, this has become just
Speaker 1: like I would say the biology versus the evolution debate
Speaker 1: that was exemplified by the Scopes trial. We're now into
Speaker 1: a moral issue. And the moral issue is how do
Speaker 1: we teach honest history and teach the truth? And what
Speaker 1: these laws are actually doing is that they are limiting
Speaker 1: what our kids will get and mostly helping our kids
Speaker 1: become critical thinkers. And so I think that Mark Milly,
Speaker 1: the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it
Speaker 1: incredibly well when he was getting roasted about why the
Speaker 1: military would engage in conversations about diversity, an inclusion, and
Speaker 1: dealing with racism. He wanted to understand White Ridge, and
Speaker 1: he wanted to understand why there would be this kind
Speaker 1: of insurrection on January sixth that could have decimated our democracy.
Speaker 1: And that is the same thing that a high school
Speaker 1: teacher would want to do for our kids. We would
Speaker 1: want the weeks after January sixth to try to understand it,
Speaker 1: to impart that understanding to our students, not to tell
Speaker 1: them what to think, but to give them the skills
Speaker 1: and knowledge, which means that you have to look at
Speaker 1: an issue from all sides, including what has happened in
Speaker 1: terms of our history that necessarily can make people uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: So what has happened here is that in this zeal
Speaker 1: to have a cultural war, what these laws are going
Speaker 1: to do are going to actually stop us, or attempt
Speaker 1: to stop us from helping to teach kids how to
Speaker 1: think and to understand history. This is more reminiscent of
Speaker 1: what they would do in China than what we should
Speaker 1: be doing in the United States. Can I just ask
Speaker 1: before we close, Randy, how reciprocal. Do you think of
Speaker 1: this issue as being so if there are teachers who
Speaker 1: teach a perspective on say, the history of race in
Speaker 1: the United States, that you and I would substantively disagree
Speaker 1: with and think is wrong, but which is a perspective
Speaker 1: of opinion, of interpretation of facts rather than facts, and
Speaker 1: they're in school districts that have a curriculum that requires
Speaker 1: a different approach, an approach that say you and I favor,
Speaker 1: would you similarly or would the unions similarly support the
Speaker 1: rights of those teachers to express their opinions in the classroom.
Speaker 1: There's a difference, Noah, between going to be trying to
Speaker 1: be very clear about this. Telling kids what to think
Speaker 1: is not our job. Engaging kids in understanding critical thinking
Speaker 1: and being able to discern fact from fiction is our job.
Speaker 1: And so there are lots of different viewpoints in terms
Speaker 1: of this work. But basic integrity, basic honesty about facts
Speaker 1: that have happened in the past, there's a line there. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if someone is a holocaust denier, I think
Speaker 1: that is inappropriate. Well, that's a matter I think we
Speaker 1: can agree that's a matter of fact. Right. So the
Speaker 1: issue here is we're talking about for example, take sixteen nineteen.
Speaker 1: Is that a fact that in sixteen nineteen was the
Speaker 1: first year that ships carried waved Africans to this country,
Speaker 1: and using that as a jumping off point, I think
Speaker 1: that's perfectly appropriate. The issue about whether or not one
Speaker 1: then teaches is their systemic racism in each and everything
Speaker 1: that we do. I think that's something that happens in
Speaker 1: law schools and something that happens in higher education. But
Speaker 1: in K twelve we start with the fact of what
Speaker 1: enslavement was and what that means and what the effects
Speaker 1: have been. So answer is I think we have to
Speaker 1: have a wide birth in terms of whatever people's personal
Speaker 1: ideology and opinions are, but ultimately we teach fact and
Speaker 1: the consequences of those facts, not our personal ideology. Randy,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for your fascinating commentary there, and
Speaker 1: more importantly for your hard work over the last year
Speaker 1: and for talking to me about these issues. So frankly,
Speaker 1: thanks Noah. Listening to Randy Weingarten, I was actually pretty
Speaker 1: surprised by the extent to which she depicted the teachers
Speaker 1: Union's efforts during COVID as effectively a win. I understood
Speaker 1: her argument that if you're somebody who feels that you
Speaker 1: have no protection from your employer. COVID probably brought home
Speaker 1: to you, very, very clearly the value of a union.
Speaker 1: And I also understand from that perspective that probably members
Speaker 1: of teachers unions who were worried about being pushed back
Speaker 1: to work and were not pushed back to work are
Speaker 1: reasonable in construing the union's successes as victories. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, it also seems possible that losing a struggle
Speaker 1: with upper middle class parents who can be, even if
Speaker 1: they shouldn't be, disproportionately influential in local politics may actually
Speaker 1: be costly to teachers unions when the time comes for
Speaker 1: the next big fight about working conditions and salaries. Randy
Speaker 1: was very forthright in acknowledging that it's important to control
Speaker 1: not only outcomes, but also narrative and the challenges to
Speaker 1: understand what the right narrative is to take away from COVID.
Speaker 1: In that sense, it may be that her argument that
Speaker 1: COVID should best be understood as providing an opportunity to
Speaker 1: remind us of how important unions are is part of
Speaker 1: her very savvy effort to control the narrative in a
Speaker 1: way that will be advantageous to the unions. Similarly, I
Speaker 1: was struck by Randy's argument that the true job of
Speaker 1: the exercise of power today is to exercise power for
Speaker 1: the common good. The optimist in me and the idealist
Speaker 1: agrees with her entirely. In this day and age, you
Speaker 1: can't just win a fight and expect that to mean
Speaker 1: you're going to win in the long run. You need
Speaker 1: to win the fight and show the world that the
Speaker 1: fight that you've won actually effectuated circumstances that are better
Speaker 1: off for everybody. My final thought is just an observation
Speaker 1: on how extraordinary it is that in this day and age,
Speaker 1: when fewer than seven percent of private sector workers are unionized,
Speaker 1: public sector unions such as teachers unions, remain such an important, significant,
Speaker 1: and vibrant part of the American political scene. Whether you
Speaker 1: observe that split screen phenomenon from the left and see
Speaker 1: it as not enough, or from the right and see
Speaker 1: it as too much, it remains a fascinating aspect of
Speaker 1: how labor unism has evolved in America and how it
Speaker 1: operates against the backdrop of power today. Randy has written
Speaker 1: an interesting article saying that by this fall, all schools
Speaker 1: should be open with everybody vaccinated and being tested. That's
Speaker 1: the right kind of optimistic. Note to remind me again
Speaker 1: that I'm trying to reformulate my covid era sign off.
Speaker 1: So for today, let me say to you. Then, until
Speaker 1: the next time we speak, breathe deep, think deep, and
Speaker 1: try to have a little fun. Deep Background is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Mola Board,
Speaker 1: our engineer is Ben Tolliday, and our showrunner is Sophie
Speaker 1: Crane mckibbon. Editorial support from noahm Osband. Theme music by
Speaker 1: Luis Gara at Pushkin. Thanks to Mia Lobell, Julia Barton,
Speaker 1: Lydia Jeancott, Heather Faine, Carlie Migliori, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: and Jacob Weissberg. You can find me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Noah R. Feldman. I also write a column for Bloomberg Opinion,
Speaker 1: which you can find at Bloomberg dot com slash Feldman.
Speaker 1: To discover Bloomberg's originals later podcasts, go to Bloomberg dot
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Speaker 1: Deep Background.