Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1: Tracy, you know, a few episodes that we've done lately
Speaker 1: from different angles has suggested to me, like we really
Speaker 1: need to talk more about, well, the sort of the
Speaker 1: labor aspect of building cars, the labor aspect of like
Speaker 1: sort of this renewed industrialization in the US.
Speaker 2: Right, because there is this whole discussion going on about
Speaker 2: whether or not the manufacturing process of evs is significantly
Speaker 2: different to gas engine cars. And I think there's an
Speaker 2: ongoing debate about whether or not you need fewer workers
Speaker 2: in order to make an electrical vehicle rather than say
Speaker 2: a traditional combustion engine.
Speaker 1: Right, So you know this to my mind, So we
Speaker 1: just did the recently did an episode with Corey Kanter
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg and Effort. We talked about this. We talked
Speaker 1: about it back in April at the econ Twitter event
Speaker 1: where there was a lot of talk about this sort
Speaker 1: of like pressure to drive down costs for batteries. But
Speaker 1: it also came up, you know, we talked to Jared
Speaker 1: Bernstein of the White House, and I think there's this
Speaker 1: tension because obviously the sort of organized labor is this
Speaker 1: really important pillar of the Democratic Party and for the
Speaker 1: White House. And at the same time, there's this question
Speaker 1: about whether this push that the administration is making is
Speaker 1: going to leave a lot of workers behind or cost
Speaker 1: a lot of jobs as part of this transition.
Speaker 2: Right there is this ongoing tension between wanting to create
Speaker 2: a vibrant and competitive ev industry and battery making in
Speaker 2: the United States, but also attaching better work conditions to
Speaker 2: it for workers, like how do you actually compete against
Speaker 2: cheap labor in say China or Mexico when it comes
Speaker 2: to making evs or batteries while sort of making sure
Speaker 2: that your workers have good wages, good living conditions and
Speaker 2: all of that.
Speaker 1: And then of course there's the fact that the uaw
Speaker 1: their contract with the Big three automakers gm Ford in Stalantis.
Speaker 1: I believe it expires September fourteenth, so that is a
Speaker 1: date that is fast approaching and setting aside evs and
Speaker 1: Bidenomics and industrialization, all these things we talk about, this
Speaker 1: has been a sort of summer of intense labor action
Speaker 1: that is a pretty intense contract negotiation at ups with
Speaker 1: the Teamsters seems to have been resolved averted without a strike,
Speaker 1: but there is a lot of labor activity that seems
Speaker 1: to be happening right now.
Speaker 2: Hot union summer. Can we say that No, I'm.
Speaker 1: Sure it's been said. I guarantee it exactly.
Speaker 2: But this actually reminds me. I mean, one of the
Speaker 2: earlier episodes we did during the pandemic was about labor
Speaker 2: power in previous pandemics. I think we were talking about
Speaker 2: the Great Plague from the Middle Ages and what happened
Speaker 2: after that, But that was that's a big theme of
Speaker 2: that particular historical event, which is if you lose a
Speaker 2: big chunk of the workforce, while suddenly all the remaining
Speaker 2: labors are empowered and they can start asking for better conditions,
Speaker 2: and so to some extent, you know, fast forward to
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, we are basically seeing the continued outcome
Speaker 2: of a lot of the disruptions from the pandemic plus
Speaker 2: some of these new efforts from the Biden administration.
Speaker 1: And the unemployment rate is low, there's still a lot
Speaker 1: of jobs, and inflation is high, so people rightfully expect
Speaker 1: to have wages the cost of living improve their cost
Speaker 1: of living so they're not falling behind all right, many
Speaker 1: things coming together at once, so we really need to
Speaker 1: do an episode on exactly this topic. And I believe
Speaker 1: we have two perfect guests. We are going to be
Speaker 1: speaking with Dan Vicente, he is the director of Region
Speaker 1: nine at the UAW. And we are also going to
Speaker 1: be speaking with Alex Press, a staff writer a Jacobin
Speaker 1: magazine who's been covering labor action for a long time.
Speaker 1: I always talked to Eli. I want to understand something
Speaker 1: that's going on with the labor movement. So Dan and Alex,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on the Outlaws podcast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks so much for having us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me, buddy.
Speaker 1: Dan, let me start with you. What is the what
Speaker 1: do you do? What does it mean that you're the
Speaker 1: director of Region nine at the UAW.
Speaker 5: So I am the chief executive for all of the
Speaker 5: auto workers in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Central and Western
Speaker 5: New York. So we cover a wide range of sectors
Speaker 5: to include the auto sector, but higher education workers, cafeteria workers,
Speaker 5: casino dealers in Atlantic City, public defenders in Philadelphia County,
Speaker 5: Delaware County, and Pennsylvania. All sorts of things represent all
Speaker 5: sorts of different workers throughout.
Speaker 4: The three states.
Speaker 2: I want to get into some of the current goings on,
Speaker 2: I guess with UAW. But before we do, maybe Alex,
Speaker 2: could you set the scene for us in terms of
Speaker 2: some of these disputes that we've seen this summer, Like
Speaker 2: what is generating feels like more proactive union activity in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Three, I mean, big question.
Speaker 6: You know, there have been a handful of labor disputes
Speaker 6: that Joe mentioned in his introduction, where really in the
Speaker 6: past we would have seen unions and workers either accepting
Speaker 6: concessions or fairly divided over what to do in the
Speaker 6: face of employee pressure, and then this summer we've really.
Speaker 3: Seen unity unions going on the offensive.
Speaker 6: I'm thinking here specifically, of course, of the UPS contract
Speaker 6: that the teamsters have just negotiated. The rank and file
Speaker 6: haven't voted on it yet, but the details that are
Speaker 6: out thus far suggest that UPS basically blinked right. They
Speaker 6: offered you know, incredible advances both in wages, working conditions.
Speaker 6: You know, as Sean O'Brien, the new president says, no concessions, right,
Speaker 6: which is really different than how things used to be
Speaker 6: for labor. Obviously, Similarly in Los Angeles with the actors
Speaker 6: and writers, those that are on streng Here. Again, in
Speaker 6: all of these examples that I'm giving you, hear a
Speaker 6: couple things. One is that you know, there's a tight
Speaker 6: labor market still, Unemployment is low, inflation is high. People
Speaker 6: have reasons to both sort of stand up and fight
Speaker 6: as if they often put it or leave if a
Speaker 6: job is no good, right. I mean, during the pandemic,
Speaker 6: we saw high quit rates, and in part that was
Speaker 6: about workers feeling confident that they could find better jobs elsewhere.
Speaker 3: And so this sort of the way people often praise.
Speaker 6: It is that they used to be quitting and going
Speaker 6: other places, and now they're staying and making their jobs better.
Speaker 6: And so we're seeing those you know going on the offensive,
Speaker 6: fighting for strong contracts where you do have a union,
Speaker 6: you know, fighting for a.
Speaker 3: New union where you don't have one.
Speaker 6: And so I often attribute to you know, a couple
Speaker 6: factors here, just to make it kind of a in brief,
Speaker 6: I usually say that a lot of these workers, especially
Speaker 6: the younger ones you know, have kind of been radicalized
Speaker 6: in certain ways over the past ten years. Bernie Sanders
Speaker 6: here is a big part of the story when you
Speaker 6: talk to the young unionists rather than the leadership They'll
Speaker 6: often point to Bernie Sanders' presidential campaigns is when they
Speaker 6: first sort of encountered class politics and this idea of, you.
Speaker 3: Know, the labor movement, what is a union? They didn't know.
Speaker 6: And then you get them going through the pandemic where
Speaker 6: things are sort of clarified as far as the lines
Speaker 6: and the risk of the amount of risk that workers
Speaker 6: face versus their employer, and you get people saying that
Speaker 6: they felt they had nothing left to lose, and so
Speaker 6: that's you know, the interesting thing about the labor movement
Speaker 6: is that runs on a slightly slower timeline than say
Speaker 6: electoral politics, so you kind of have to wait a
Speaker 6: couple of years to see what's going to happen. Right,
Speaker 6: It's based on contracts, It's based on an extremely slow
Speaker 6: process of organizing a union. And so I would always
Speaker 6: tell people, as the Sanders campaign was kind of coming
Speaker 6: to an end in twenty twenty, just wait a few
Speaker 6: years and we will see what becomes of this. And
Speaker 6: I think all of those factors together you get the
Speaker 6: picture of what we've seen this summer.
Speaker 2: Long and variable lags in labor politics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very very very well put. So I mean, as
Speaker 1: you say, Okay, so the Sanders campaign sort of awaken people,
Speaker 1: maybe radicalize people. Dan, Can you talk to us a
Speaker 1: little bit about how you got in your role? So
Speaker 1: I believe you were elected in March of this year,
Speaker 1: the same time that the new UAW president, Sean Fame,
Speaker 1: was also elected. And I guess one of the words
Speaker 1: that like other parties are their tickets. Can you talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about that process. A word that I
Speaker 1: keep seeing is like more militant is a word that
Speaker 1: comes up. But can you describe, like a little bit
Speaker 1: about like how that electoral process worked and what the
Speaker 1: people your allies sort of pitched to as the UAW members, Like,
Speaker 1: what was your pitch to the members that said, Okay,
Speaker 1: elect me instead of whoever else?
Speaker 4: So, yeah, we just had an internal election.
Speaker 5: A lot of the big unions of gross country have
Speaker 5: had recent elections, and we've seen in pretty much all
Speaker 5: of the unions that there is new leadership being elected
Speaker 5: to these positions. I started in twenty seventeen in a
Speaker 5: union shop and now I sit on the international Executive
Speaker 5: And the only reason that I am here being so
Speaker 5: new to the game, is because there is a general feeling,
Speaker 5: primarily from the younger workforce, that the path end of
Speaker 5: the middle class that used to exist for our grandparents
Speaker 5: and parents generation no longer exists. Like Alex was saying,
Speaker 5: it used to be pre pandemic that these companies could
Speaker 5: tell our employees listen, we can replace you in a minute.
Speaker 5: After the pandemic, where we're all deemed essential, where we
Speaker 5: all had to work through the pandemic, we were deemed
Speaker 5: essential workers. And coming out of the pandemic, we know
Speaker 5: the realities. You can't replace us, and we are the
Speaker 5: essential workers. You need us to make the products that
Speaker 5: make you money. We don't need you as much as
Speaker 5: you need us. And so there's been an awakening in
Speaker 5: the labor movement. And the other part of that is,
Speaker 5: you know, there has been more radical political movements over
Speaker 5: the last ten years, as Als was saying, with the
Speaker 5: Bernie Sanders left and stuff, But there's also a huge
Speaker 5: part of our workforce that aren't really politically partisan one
Speaker 5: way or the other. What they do know is that
Speaker 5: their standard of living has gone down, their lives are harder,
Speaker 5: and the companies we worked for are making record profits.
Speaker 5: It's not a sustainable system for not just a union
Speaker 5: or a company. Before our society. So there is a
Speaker 5: new generation coming up and we are more militant. We're
Speaker 5: more militant because we've been waiting for politicians, one party
Speaker 5: the other to come and save us, and they have
Speaker 5: done nothing for us.
Speaker 4: So we are angry and we feel that we're going
Speaker 4: to have to do it ourselves.
Speaker 1: So just real quickly, specifically, when you ran for in
Speaker 1: Region nine, or when the pre when your president Shawn
Speaker 1: Fein ran like, what was your message specifically to the
Speaker 1: rank and file that you would deliver that in your view,
Speaker 1: prior union leadership did not.
Speaker 5: It was It was a simple message. It was I'm
Speaker 5: from the shop floor. Just four months ago, I was
Speaker 5: working two plastic extruders in Pennsylvania. I was a committee
Speaker 5: man elected in my local, but I had never had
Speaker 5: a position in the international. And my message to our
Speaker 5: membership within the region was the previous incumbents have become
Speaker 5: too comfortable with management. They've been around too long. The
Speaker 5: union leadership has been around so long, they've cosied up
Speaker 5: the management. They've negotiated as concessinary contracts, and they forget
Speaker 5: what life and the struggles are of working men and
Speaker 5: women on these floors.
Speaker 4: And we have to run against the incumbency because it's easy.
Speaker 5: To say that management has major life harder and giving
Speaker 5: you grappy contracts. It's harder to say that the union
Speaker 5: owns a part of that, we're responsible for that as well.
Speaker 5: And it's tough to look in the mirror and say
Speaker 5: our institution has failed. But the new leadership ran on
Speaker 5: a platform and we're not going to continue to fail.
Speaker 5: If anything, the COVID nineteen late bear the inequities in
Speaker 5: our society and we're not going to continue to just
Speaker 5: I don't know if I can curse in this pot.
Speaker 4: Yes, but we're not going to continue each shit. That's fine.
Speaker 2: You wouldn't be the first person, of course. You know
Speaker 2: you mentioned dissatisfaction with previous union leadership a couple of
Speaker 2: times now, particularly from the sort of younger generation of workers.
Speaker 2: And one thing that I keep hearing coming up in
Speaker 2: context is the word tiering. Can you explain what teering
Speaker 2: is in this context?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So tiered wages were introduced in the Big three
Speaker 5: auto manufacturing contracts during the recession, They've existed in other
Speaker 5: unions contracts for some time.
Speaker 4: Or basically, what it.
Speaker 5: Is is, if you're hired ask a certain date, whatever
Speaker 5: that X date is, you could be paid ten, twelve, thirteen,
Speaker 5: fifteen dollars less an hour than the person working right
Speaker 5: next to you that was hired on why dates, So
Speaker 5: depending on when you were hired dictates your wages.
Speaker 4: So you'll never make the maximum amount of money.
Speaker 5: As people hired before you, You'll never get to the
Speaker 5: same benefit level as the people for you, and you
Speaker 5: could be in a tiered progression. It could be what's
Speaker 5: called an in progression wage for up to seven years.
Speaker 2: What was now for that? I struggle to understand how
Speaker 2: that would ever really be accepted as fair. But what
Speaker 2: were people saying, like, what were the reasons?
Speaker 5: It was introduced during the recession, So dor indoor recession,
Speaker 5: we were both forced and willfully took concessions basically to
Speaker 5: save the big three legacy auto manufacturers from not ceasing
Speaker 5: to exist.
Speaker 4: They were in such a bad financial position that they
Speaker 4: could have collapsed entirely.
Speaker 5: So we you know, we understand that the relationships in biotics,
Speaker 5: so we need them and they need us, so we
Speaker 5: agreed to the concessions, and that's when tiered wages were introduced.
Speaker 5: That's one costs of living adjustments were suspended. The pensions
Speaker 5: were for us all sorts of things, and as an institution,
Speaker 5: we were under the assumption that, yes, we have to
Speaker 5: make these concessions now to save our employers.
Speaker 4: We get that, but over time we.
Speaker 5: Will build back, you know, over multiple contracts, we'll get
Speaker 5: back inch by inch.
Speaker 4: Butok we were given up to get back to a
Speaker 4: level of what wages and benefits that we.
Speaker 5: Had had pre recession, and it just turns out that
Speaker 5: in the fifteen years since then they haven't given us.
Speaker 5: So it was inevitable that we were going to get
Speaker 5: to this point.
Speaker 1: Alex, how corrosive, you know, when you talk to people
Speaker 1: across the different unions UAW, but also otherwise, how corrosive.
Speaker 1: And I believe that UPS also had a tiered system.
Speaker 1: But how corrosive is that in terms of Okay, here's
Speaker 1: two members of the same union at the same company,
Speaker 1: very different sort of lifestyle and career trajectories due to this,
Speaker 1: pay trajectories due to this, and just generally this sort
Speaker 1: of like I guess, the way Dan described it almost
Speaker 1: felt like a sort of like union leadership capture, in
Speaker 1: which the leaders, the past leaders of the union feel
Speaker 1: like they may have just as much responsibility to the
Speaker 1: management to the company as the members of the union. Like,
Speaker 1: how consistent are some of these things across the sort
Speaker 1: of multiple labor actions we're seeing these days.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean I think you got to it a
Speaker 6: little bit in your question about tears as far as
Speaker 6: the corrosiveness. But it's very easy to imagine, right, like
Speaker 6: you are on the assembly line, or say, for maybe
Speaker 6: your listeners, you are at the desk looking at your computer, at.
Speaker 1: The keyboard line clicking seriously our quotas of clicks.
Speaker 6: Okay, keep going in, sir, Yes, and your coworkers on
Speaker 6: either side are doing the same thing, right, assembly line
Speaker 6: or office job, whatever, but they are making.
Speaker 3: Double the amount you make, right.
Speaker 6: I mean it's very hard not only to make sense
Speaker 6: of that, but also it's very hard to build any
Speaker 6: kind of trust and organizing relationship with those co workers.
Speaker 3: Right. It builds this resentment.
Speaker 6: It really corrodes a union from the inside out, right.
Speaker 6: I mean Dan was speaking to this that you know,
Speaker 6: a union needs the rank and file to actually one
Speaker 6: view the union as something that they can trust and
Speaker 6: that that is them that they lead, but also something
Speaker 6: that is going to you know, sort of fight for
Speaker 6: equal pay, fight against sort of arbitrary boss discrimination. And
Speaker 6: a lot of workers will tell me, whether it's at UPS,
Speaker 6: whether it's at the Big Three, whether it's anywhere with
Speaker 6: a tier that this just feels like unequal pay for
Speaker 6: equal work, and obviously that has a long history of
Speaker 6: being unacceptable. Also, it is often then racialized in that
Speaker 6: the workers who.
Speaker 3: Are in the earlier, the more.
Speaker 6: Recently hired tiers with lower pay or often more you know,
Speaker 6: less white, more women, and so this really creates all
Speaker 6: kinds of problems within the workplace. And just one little
Speaker 6: example here is that you know UPS, when the Teamsters,
Speaker 6: we don't have to go into all the machinations here,
Speaker 6: but the Teamsters ended up accepting a UPS contract during
Speaker 6: the last negotiations. That's created a new tier of driver
Speaker 6: called twenty two fours. That's the name of the clause
Speaker 6: in the contract that creates them.
Speaker 2: Is this the ones driving like in their own cars?
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 3: No? No, that's entirely different.
Speaker 6: Twenty two hours though, were so they had worse benefits,
Speaker 6: lower pay, you know, they topped out way lower than
Speaker 6: the permanent driver, the regular tier. And there was a
Speaker 6: huge uproar when this tenet of agreement came out during
Speaker 6: the last negotiating cycle and the members in fact voted
Speaker 6: it down. Numerically, the majority rejected this ups contract last
Speaker 6: negotiation rounds, but the younger Hoffa, James Hoffa Junior, forced
Speaker 6: this contract through using a very arcane clause in the
Speaker 6: Teamsters constitution, one that even you know, when I would
Speaker 6: speak with very long time kind of militant rank and
Speaker 6: file like teams to reformers, they hadn't even been aware
Speaker 6: that this clause existed, and it was about, you know,
Speaker 6: if you don't have x percentage of the workers voting
Speaker 6: and voting by why amount, then you can kind of
Speaker 6: force a contract through.
Speaker 3: And that's what Haffa did.
Speaker 6: He forced this contract in, and that is what leads
Speaker 6: to the next several years where his successor loses to
Speaker 6: Sean O'Brien who had broken from Haffa's regime during these negotiations,
Speaker 6: and Sean O'Brien had said, you know, I'm sick of
Speaker 6: these concessionary contracts. He ends up allying with a number
Speaker 6: of reformers within the union and he runs to take
Speaker 6: over the presidency of the team Stars on the on
Speaker 6: several messages, but one being that he is going to
Speaker 6: negotiate the strongest ups contract ever and get rid of
Speaker 6: this tier.
Speaker 3: And he has done that. That is in the TA,
Speaker 3: but that.
Speaker 6: Really becomes the defining kind of story for the Teamsters
Speaker 6: reform as well.
Speaker 3: And Dan Jen mentioned it.
Speaker 6: But his slate when they ran for the UAW and
Speaker 6: won all of their seats, I believe all seven leadership seats,
Speaker 6: their slogan was no corruption, no concession, no tears.
Speaker 4: So I mean it is that is correct.
Speaker 5: I just going to say if I can, what Alex
Speaker 5: was talking about about previous union leaders jamming agreements down
Speaker 5: the thirds of their members. That's not just unique to
Speaker 5: the Team six. That has been a longstanding issue in
Speaker 5: a lot of traditional legacy unions is that the top
Speaker 5: leadership feels like they have the authority to force agreements
Speaker 5: on the rank and file members. And a huge part
Speaker 5: of our platform is that we will not do that
Speaker 5: under any circumstances, because the institutions exist of certain members
Speaker 5: not perpetuate itself.
Speaker 2: You know, Joe I worked in a unionized labor force once.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Financial Times had a very active journalism union,
Speaker 2: and this discussion reminds me that one time, the union accidentally,
Speaker 2: I think it was accidentally published everyone's salaries in the
Speaker 2: news room. It was fun. Yeah, it was anonymized, but
Speaker 2: it was They divided it by gender and age, and
Speaker 2: I think they were trying to make a point about
Speaker 2: how women were sort of systematically underpaid. But you can
Speaker 2: imagine all hell broke loose. Everyone was upset with literally
Speaker 2: everyone years. I found out I was one of the
Speaker 2: two lowest paid women at the FT at that time,
Speaker 2: So that was fun. But this story does have a point,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, when you're leading these types of discussions,
Speaker 2: it seems like you are representing lots of different types
Speaker 2: of workers, and some of those workers might have a
Speaker 2: good deal and others might not. And Alex mentioned at
Speaker 2: the beginning of this conversation that it feels like in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, a lot of workers are coalescing, they're
Speaker 2: coming together, they're sort of uniting. Obviously, being in a union,
Speaker 2: how are you getting that kind of consensus when it
Speaker 2: feels like, you know, some people still have it a
Speaker 2: lot better than others.
Speaker 5: So there are certainly some union members, regardless of which
Speaker 5: sector you work in, that have you know, quote unquote
Speaker 5: better agreements than other ones or better situations, but it
Speaker 5: doesn't At this point, it really doesn't matter what secord
Speaker 5: you work and where you work, even if you have
Speaker 5: it better than a fellow union member. Say say you
Speaker 5: represent a Boeing facility. They're wage wise, they make very
Speaker 5: good wages, they make better wages than General Motors. But
Speaker 5: as far as like the day to day and securing
Speaker 5: of work and what does the future look like, there's
Speaker 5: no security here. So there are issues that are universal regardless,
Speaker 5: and at this point, particularly since coming out of the
Speaker 5: the pandemic, whether you're making more of that a General
Speaker 5: Motors or a ford worker at this point is irrelevant
Speaker 5: because we're seeing these companies that we've work for across
Speaker 5: every sector, making record profits, and yet our standard of
Speaker 5: living is going down, not going up.
Speaker 4: I have people right.
Speaker 5: Now coming into my facilities that are working forty hours
Speaker 5: a week in Big three auto manufacturers and have to
Speaker 5: get EBT cards to feed their families. But yet Forward
Speaker 5: and General Motors, it's the lantis want to tell me
Speaker 5: we're a family, the one team, and it's just bullshit
Speaker 5: that it is not an equitable situation. Our contracts no
Speaker 5: longer meet the needs of working families and cannot allow us.
Speaker 4: To remain in the working middle class.
Speaker 5: And in the past we've negotiated from a place of
Speaker 5: trying to preserve jobs.
Speaker 4: Where we're at now is we are trying.
Speaker 5: To preserve the American middle class, and we're not asking
Speaker 5: what we're putting forward our demands.
Speaker 2: Alex, do you want to take that as well, just
Speaker 2: because I'm thinking, you know, you brought up that point
Speaker 2: earlier that it seems like people are able to coal
Speaker 2: us around issues a bit more like, how are they
Speaker 2: actually achieving that unity within their own ranks?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, I'll give an example that might feel
Speaker 6: out of left field, but just to illustrate how sort
Speaker 6: of cross sector, cross industry this moment is. So, I
Speaker 6: was just in Los Angeles reporting on the SAG AFTERRA
Speaker 6: and WGA strikes, and you know, I speaking to a
Speaker 6: lot of people in the picket lines, and you know,
Speaker 6: much more visibly than any other unionized workforce actors and
Speaker 6: writers have you know, some of the most successful members
Speaker 6: that are outliers, right, and then they have the majority
Speaker 6: of the membership who are not household names, not people
Speaker 6: we would know. You know, Tom Cruise is a member
Speaker 6: of sag after it, right, and so talk about like
Speaker 6: some members are doing.
Speaker 3: Very well while others aren't.
Speaker 6: And you know, the Writer's Guild gets around this problem by,
Speaker 6: for one, they try to involve the sort of leading members,
Speaker 6: the folks who are doing very well in the negotiation process,
Speaker 6: you know. And so so I thought of this example
Speaker 6: while Dan was talking because one of the people I
Speaker 6: spoke to at length is Mike shr who wrote The
Speaker 6: Good Place he created you know, the Parks and rec
Speaker 6: who was a key writer on the Office. This is
Speaker 6: about as successful as a television showrunner as there is
Speaker 6: in this country, right. You know, it's rare that a
Speaker 6: writer is a household name, but a lot of people
Speaker 6: know who Mike Sure is. And you know, when I
Speaker 6: was speaking to him on the picket line, I was
Speaker 6: asking him, you know, why he had decided to kind
Speaker 6: of get involved in the fight. Like he's on the
Speaker 6: negotiating committee for the Writer's Guild of America. He is
Speaker 6: very actively, you know, present in this strike even though
Speaker 6: he's a very successful guy. And you know, he said
Speaker 6: that it had been made clear to him that, you know,
Speaker 6: the studios, much.
Speaker 3: Like Dan said of Big Three.
Speaker 6: You know, these are massive corporations that have quite a
Speaker 6: bit of money, if not sort of the level of
Speaker 6: profit that their investors want, that they aren't sharing it
Speaker 6: with the younger members, the people who are far less
Speaker 6: successful than Mike. And he told me, I wouldn't have
Speaker 6: the career at all that I have now if the
Speaker 6: system that exists now were the system that existed when
Speaker 6: I started. And he went through the exact kind of process,
Speaker 6: which you know, might seem absurd compared to talking about
Speaker 6: auto workers, but you know, writers are a production line
Speaker 6: like anyone else. And he talked about how when he
Speaker 6: started on the Office, the creator, Greg Daniels, had walked
Speaker 6: him through how to do the job, how to write
Speaker 6: long form television, how to get to know the different
Speaker 6: types of work done on set, how to understand rewriting
Speaker 6: scripts versus throwing them out, all of these very technical
Speaker 6: job details.
Speaker 3: Like any other job. And they did that because.
Speaker 6: They had the sort of budget and the time and
Speaker 6: the income for that sort of kind of mentorship and
Speaker 6: cross generational kind of learning and teaching.
Speaker 3: Of the of the work.
Speaker 6: And he says, you know now that can't happen with
Speaker 6: these younger writers. They aren't brought on set, they are tingent,
Speaker 6: their contracts are shorter issues that when you get down
Speaker 6: to the bare bones, sound like I could be talking about.
Speaker 3: Auto workers or UPS workers.
Speaker 6: And so it's really interesting that, you know, I hear
Speaker 6: the you know, when you sort of abstract away the detail.
Speaker 6: It is similar fights across every industry. And I actually
Speaker 6: remember saying to Mike Sure on the picket line. I
Speaker 6: was telling him about this strike in Eerie, Pennsylvania, that
Speaker 6: I had been at these wobtech workers or on strike
Speaker 6: members of UE, and they were having issues with a
Speaker 6: tear and they had these younger workers who were so
Speaker 6: broke that similarly to what Dan said, you know, they
Speaker 6: can qualify for EVT even though they have you know,
Speaker 6: union jobs at a heavy manufacturing plant that is extremely profitable.
Speaker 6: And Mike, you know, was laughing on the picket line.
Speaker 6: He's like, Wow, it really is the same everywhere, huh.
Speaker 3: And so it's.
Speaker 6: Really not hard to sort of see these relationships between
Speaker 6: these processes. And just like Dan was saying about, you know,
Speaker 6: sort of getting how to get buy in for a
Speaker 6: reduction of tiers or otherwise kind of fighting back, you know,
Speaker 6: these processes at the sort of knitty gritty level, are
Speaker 6: getting Mike Sure on the negotiating committee so that you
Speaker 6: have him inside the house rather than out. You know,
Speaker 6: with these more industrial facilities, it's building up the understanding
Speaker 6: that you know, you are fighting for future workers. That
Speaker 6: actually abandoning your younger membership just because you happen to
Speaker 6: be in the higher paid tier is going to hit
Speaker 6: your pension at some point, it's going to destroy your union.
Speaker 3: So on and so forth. And also it's morally wrong.
Speaker 3: So but that is the nitty gritty of organizing, for sure.
Speaker 5: If I can, just if I can jump off of that,
Speaker 5: please for one thing, Please what Alex mentioned about Greg Daniels,
Speaker 5: bringan and younger writer and teach him about how to
Speaker 5: do the job and stuff. Another thing that we're seeing
Speaker 5: in the manufacturing sector and with the auto manufacturers and
Speaker 5: manufacturers in general don't like to talk about, is that
Speaker 5: as union laborers, we are painting a lot. We always
Speaker 5: want more and more and more. We don't care about
Speaker 5: the into the companies. We only care about more stuff
Speaker 5: for ourselves.
Speaker 4: That couldn't be further from the truth.
Speaker 5: Our more senior workers are concerned at this point because
Speaker 5: by the time we get these new people coming in
Speaker 5: the door, trained up to be proficient at the jobs.
Speaker 5: They're leaving to go work at Dollar General because they
Speaker 5: can make more money. They're leaving to go work at
Speaker 5: Walmart because they can make more money, and air conditioning,
Speaker 5: which not as physically demanding on your body. And so
Speaker 5: they paint us as these like you know, leftist laborers
Speaker 5: that just want more money. But we do care about
Speaker 5: these manufacturing institutions. We do take pride in building vehicles
Speaker 5: in this country. We don't want to lose all the
Speaker 5: people we're training up to go work.
Speaker 4: In retail jobs. But you set the wages.
Speaker 5: And if you say you care about the companies that
Speaker 5: management tells us all the time we're a family, and
Speaker 5: that care about these institutions, then you need to listen
Speaker 5: to what your good faith partners are saying, which is,
Speaker 5: we are not going to remain viable manufacturers if we
Speaker 5: don't have a workforce that can do the work because
Speaker 5: you pay them less than Dollar General with us.
Speaker 1: So I mean you sort of anticipated my next question.
Speaker 1: So I tried to read the twenty nineteen UAWGM agreement.
Speaker 1: I think I found the file was like seven hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty pages. I have to admit I didn't like
Speaker 1: read the whole thing in detail. I tried to skimmit,
Speaker 1: but sort of top line, beyond all that stuff, ripping
Speaker 1: beyond the tiered workforce, Dan, what do you sort of
Speaker 1: talk to us just about, like, what are the big priorities?
Speaker 1: I mean, we're you know, just a little over I guess,
Speaker 1: just a little over a month until the current contract expires.
Speaker 1: What are the sort of like big priorities that you
Speaker 1: and your union hope to achieve in these negotiations?
Speaker 4: Well, and what we hope to achieve.
Speaker 5: The President's office laid out pretty clear and they just
Speaker 5: put out a list of membership demands I believe yesterday.
Speaker 5: We want to obviously end the tiered wages within our facilities,
Speaker 5: and not just the tiered wages that are in the
Speaker 5: contract book. We have multiple different facilities within the families
Speaker 5: these companies. We have General Motors Components holding companies which
Speaker 5: make end fifteen to twenty dollars less an hour because
Speaker 5: they make parts instead of producing main engines or.
Speaker 4: Body body parts.
Speaker 5: We have multiple tiered wages throughout the entirety of the
Speaker 5: Big Three and it's all broken up. So we want
Speaker 5: the tiered wages to end. We also want the cost
Speaker 5: of living adjustments to be unsuspended, because they didn't get
Speaker 5: rid of cost of living adjustments during.
Speaker 4: The recession, they suspended them.
Speaker 5: We want to reinstate the cost of living adjustments in
Speaker 5: our contracts because our wages are not matching inflation, and
Speaker 5: these companies are not in a financially precarious situation. They
Speaker 5: are making and posting record profits. Forward just recently posted
Speaker 5: their net income for the second quarter as one point
Speaker 5: nine billion dollars. General Motors adjusted earnings for the second
Speaker 5: quarter was three point two billion dollars, and Stilantis, which
Speaker 5: reports their profits every six months, report in the first
Speaker 5: half of the year twelve point one billion dollars in
Speaker 5: profits of thirty seven percent increase over the last year.
Speaker 5: So we feel like these companies are very capable of
Speaker 5: reinstating cost of living adjustments. We also want to see
Speaker 5: increases into our retire pensions because they haven't seen increases
Speaker 5: in almost twelve fifteen years. And again, we don't feel
Speaker 5: that anything that we're asking for is outrageous. We're not
Speaker 5: asking for these companies to turn us into the millionaires overnight.
Speaker 5: We're just asking them to pay equitable wages that allow
Speaker 5: us to live stable lives. I mean stilant is just
Speaker 5: at the opening of negotiations just recently, the chief negotiator
Speaker 5: had the audacity to say that the younger generation lights
Speaker 5: the flexibility of having a side house. I can't believe
Speaker 5: those words came out of his fucking mouth. The fact
Speaker 5: that we had people working forty fifty sixty hours a
Speaker 5: week and yet oh no, they like the flexibility. You're
Speaker 5: having to drive uber too, just so they can pay
Speaker 5: their bills. It was a slap in the face and
Speaker 5: just shows how all disassociated they are with their general workforce.
Speaker 5: And if they think that we're all one happy family,
Speaker 5: I don't know what universe.
Speaker 2: They live in it, Dan, can I ask you about
Speaker 2: the ev concerns specifically, and this is something we alluded
Speaker 2: to in the intro. There does seem to be a
Speaker 2: controversy brewing over what type of labor is needed or
Speaker 2: desired to produce electric vehicles versus traditional cars. Can you
Speaker 2: walk us through that issue how you see it?
Speaker 5: Sure, so we're not naive transitioning to electric vehicles is
Speaker 5: going to be absolutely necessary.
Speaker 4: But I mean, the climate is warming.
Speaker 5: Our members run a huge range of political positions.
Speaker 4: But whether we like it or not, the transitions have Yeah.
Speaker 2: I read that the UAW was instrumental in the first
Speaker 2: ever Earth Day, which I did not know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and we firmly believe that there does need to
Speaker 5: be a transition to electric vehicles. We're concerned about is
Speaker 5: that that transition is going to be a continuation of
Speaker 5: just this endless race to the bottom of wages, so
Speaker 5: it's going to require less jobs. We know that what
Speaker 5: we want to see is that these battery parts and
Speaker 5: as we transition into electric vehicle manufacturing and stuff, that
Speaker 5: these jobs fall under UAW Master agreements, which gives us
Speaker 5: job security, which allows our more senior members if they
Speaker 5: so desire, to transfer into these jobs, and that the
Speaker 5: wages mirror the wages that we make in the internal
Speaker 5: combustion engine. It's manufacturing. Where we have concerns is that
Speaker 5: there is massive investment going into these facilities, tax payer
Speaker 5: dollars and investment on behalf of the I mean, the
Speaker 5: Energy Department just loan nine point tis billion dollars to
Speaker 5: forward to build battery plants in the South and write
Speaker 5: the work states, and the Biden administration didn't require any
Speaker 5: sort of guarantees of those jobs being do a w
Speaker 5: jobs or being any union jobs at all. They basically
Speaker 5: just said, hey, forward, please be please be nice to
Speaker 5: these workers and let them have a vote if you
Speaker 5: feel like it.
Speaker 4: And so we don't find that acceptable. So we're willing
Speaker 4: and ready to work with.
Speaker 5: These companies to assist in the transition to an electric
Speaker 5: future as long as there is equity in those jobs
Speaker 5: and they allow us wages that can we can maintain
Speaker 5: middle class lifestyles.
Speaker 4: I don't feel like anything about that is is a huge.
Speaker 1: Ask, Alex. Do you perceive that organized labor is sort
Speaker 1: of trying to think how to phrase this question, but
Speaker 1: get squeezed within sort of progressive priorities. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's want to have like a robust economy.
Speaker 1: Things are good for workers because unemployment rate is below
Speaker 1: or percent and climate change is really important. So we
Speaker 1: really need to make sure that we accelerate the sort
Speaker 1: of electrification of vehicles, et cetera. And that pressure, whether
Speaker 1: it's at the UAW or elsewhere, gets put on organized
Speaker 1: labor to sort of, I guess play ball in a
Speaker 1: nice way with other liberal or progressive priorities.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean I think there's a long history of that,
Speaker 6: particularly around environmental concerns, you know, and it's really unfortunate because,
Speaker 6: you know, as Tracy mentioned, the sort of funny fact
Speaker 6: that the.
Speaker 3: UAW was involved in the first Earth Day.
Speaker 6: I mean, a lot of workers care about the environment, right,
Speaker 6: and it is very unfortunate that they're sort of pitted
Speaker 6: against one another in this way. I mean, in the
Speaker 6: case of what's going on right now with the UAW
Speaker 6: and the EV plants and the Biden Administration's various the economics,
Speaker 6: the bidenomics that either have strings attached or don't in
Speaker 6: the case of certain of these ev plants. You know,
Speaker 6: I think there's a lot of pressure on the UAW
Speaker 6: to not be seen as someone who is holding up
Speaker 6: you know, climate transition of policies, you know, the that
Speaker 6: the environmental movement has been sort of advocating for a
Speaker 6: long time. There's this sense that, oh, they are just
Speaker 6: one constituency, but they're a small one compared to you know,
Speaker 6: the entire country which needs you know, these this transition
Speaker 6: to evs. But that's really not how to think of it, right,
Speaker 6: I mean, these these workers, you know, I've always said
Speaker 6: that if you want a just transition and a green
Speaker 6: new deal. They're going to be the key people that
Speaker 6: you actually need to shift over there, because they're the
Speaker 6: ones who are going to be building the machinery. I
Speaker 6: mean often they end up being the ones that are
Speaker 6: on the front lines with whistleblowing about polluting vehicles or
Speaker 6: otherwise sort of you know, environmental concerns. I mentioned the
Speaker 6: eerie plant that I was at recently. Those workers want
Speaker 6: to build green locomotives. They know the technology is there.
Speaker 6: They're the people along the assemble line are sick of
Speaker 6: breathing in the pollution from polluting locomotives. They're the ones
Speaker 6: that kind of have the leverage and the knowledge to
Speaker 6: talk about how to transition. But when labor is sort
Speaker 6: of treated in this way as like, oh, they're sort
Speaker 6: of junior partners to the environmental movement or sort of
Speaker 6: people who don't really understand the bigger kind of scientific
Speaker 6: necessities of this transition, I think you're going to find
Speaker 6: exactly what you're finding here, which is that these are
Speaker 6: working class people who are not going to put up
Speaker 6: with the sort of reduction in for their wages which
Speaker 6: these companies are very much using. The ev transition to
Speaker 6: achieve and you're never it's never going to be a
Speaker 6: realistic transition. I mean, because when we talk about power
Speaker 6: for the left, it is institutions like the one Dan
Speaker 6: is in the leadership of who actually have the kind
Speaker 6: of organizational capacity to push for their demands and get
Speaker 6: things done. And I think a lot of people in
Speaker 6: the climate movement might be surprised to see what that
Speaker 6: looks like come September. To me, I think it's really
Speaker 6: tragic that it kind of putet gets set up in
Speaker 6: this way that people might look at the uaw's you know,
Speaker 6: for example, it's hesitation to endorse Biden and say that
Speaker 6: they're being you know, sort of unrealistic or difficult, or
Speaker 6: does that mean they're endorsing someone on the right.
Speaker 3: They're just looking out for working class people.
Speaker 6: And I think if anyone is going to push for
Speaker 6: a stronger kind of attachment to any of Biden, Biden's
Speaker 6: sort of you know, whether it's the IRA or any
Speaker 6: other programs that are loaning you know, almost unlimited capital
Speaker 6: in the form of tax credits to these people building
Speaker 6: these plants, we want someone like the UAW to put
Speaker 6: that pressure on.
Speaker 3: How else will we get stronger packages. So that's my
Speaker 3: view on these things.
Speaker 4: I couldn't agree more and about what Alex just said.
Speaker 5: You know, my membership are the vast majority of us
Speaker 5: are not hartisan ideals.
Speaker 4: What we absolutely are.
Speaker 5: Tired of, though, is a politicians paying of simply lip service.
Speaker 5: I am tired to death of hearing how the Biden
Speaker 5: administration is the most pro labor, most.
Speaker 4: Best friend is my best friend. I'm tired of hearing
Speaker 4: it because when you give out billions of dollars of
Speaker 4: taxpayer investments with no guarantees of those jobs falling under
Speaker 4: our master agreements, which would make.
Speaker 5: Those all our jobs, that doesn't feel like you're my friend,
Speaker 5: but it doesn't make me feel like you're my buddy
Speaker 5: jail okay. And so we have not endorsed the president yet,
Speaker 5: and I think I think that's the best move that
Speaker 5: our international president, Sean Faine could make. I am willing
Speaker 5: to talk to anyone running. I want to talk to
Speaker 5: Cornell West, I want to talk to Chris Christy. I'll
Speaker 5: talk to anyone who has my back because right now,
Speaker 5: our union, our institution, is feeling like the traditional Democratic
Speaker 5: Party doesn't necessarily.
Speaker 4: Have our back and We're not dumb. Like I get a.
Speaker 5: Feeling sometimes that these politicians think like we are uneducated
Speaker 5: and we're just we're not the most intelligent people. We
Speaker 5: understand it's election here. We understand it's going to come
Speaker 5: down to Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia. We understand that. And if
Speaker 5: you think we're just going to co sign and just
Speaker 5: rubber stamp checks and rubber stamp endorsements, you are highly mistaken.
Speaker 5: We need guarantees that the transition into the electric people
Speaker 5: future is going to secure our members right to the
Speaker 5: American middle class. And if you're not willing to assist
Speaker 5: us in that, I guarantee you there are other people
Speaker 5: that will.
Speaker 2: I just have one more question, which is, you know,
Speaker 2: if the Biden administration says they want evs to be
Speaker 2: a thing that are produced in the United States, and
Speaker 2: if car makers want to be competitive on this new technology,
Speaker 2: if they say, you know what, we're competing against other
Speaker 2: manufacturers in Mexico or in China, and so we need
Speaker 2: to cut costs, we need to be competitive. Like, how
Speaker 2: do they achieve that while working with the union. What's
Speaker 2: the optimal outcome here from your perspective? And do you
Speaker 2: see evidence that some of the car companies are sort
Speaker 2: of I guess, playing the worker off against each other
Speaker 2: and different jurisdictions.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, I do.
Speaker 5: I have Ford manufacturers from the subcontinent of India reaching
Speaker 5: out to me through social media.
Speaker 4: They're under attack by Ford in those countries.
Speaker 5: These companies are constantly telling us, oh, well, we have
Speaker 5: to remain viable options for manufacturing.
Speaker 4: We have to remain flexible in the marketplace. As I said.
Speaker 5: Earlier, the massive record breaking profits that you are recording
Speaker 5: primarily made in the North American plants. Mind you, we're
Speaker 5: not saying that you have to hurt your investors. We're
Speaker 5: not saying that you you can't still return a profit.
Speaker 5: We're saying that you have to share the wealth. I
Speaker 5: would like to point out that Jim Farley, the CEO
Speaker 5: of Ford for last year in twenty two made twenty million,
Speaker 5: nine hundred and ninety six one hundred and forty six dollars.
Speaker 4: Okay, but where the problem.
Speaker 5: Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, need twenty nine
Speaker 5: million dollars in twenty twenty one. But yet our wages
Speaker 5: and healthcare is what's holding the companies back. And mister
Speaker 5: Carlos Tavares, the freeman himself made a freaking twenty four
Speaker 5: point eight million dollars in twenty twenty two. Yet we
Speaker 5: the workforce need to remain flexible and viable. We're just
Speaker 5: not going to We're not going to continue to listen
Speaker 5: to this narrative that, oh, well, we have to compete
Speaker 5: in these unfair marketplaces and stuff. Then lobby are politicians
Speaker 5: to have stronger laws that don't allow these foreign companies
Speaker 5: to undercutry.
Speaker 4: It's not going to be on the backs of our employees.
Speaker 3: I just want to I just want to underline that.
Speaker 6: I mean those numbers that DAN was thrown out about
Speaker 6: the CEO pay. You know, just to be clear here
Speaker 6: as far as viability and how these the Big three
Speaker 6: and their and their partners in these joint ventures are
Speaker 6: paying dan's members. You know, there's one joint there's one
Speaker 6: battery plant that opened in Warren, Ohio, between G and
Speaker 6: a Korean battery maker LG. You know, they voted to
Speaker 6: join the UAW almost unanimously in December of last year.
Speaker 6: So the as far as I know, the union hasn't
Speaker 6: negotiated a first contract, but the workers there had starting
Speaker 6: pay of sixteen dollars and fifty cents, and they top
Speaker 6: out to twenty an hour after seven years. I mean
Speaker 6: again with the inflation, we have seven years and then
Speaker 6: you'll get twenty an hour. So I just want to
Speaker 6: explain here underline with that example, just how bad these
Speaker 6: jobs are, right, I mean, it is not realistic to
Speaker 6: expect an institution like the UAW looking out for its members,
Speaker 6: people like Dan to say that this is okay as
Speaker 6: kind of a means of undercutting the very hard won
Speaker 6: standards that the UAW got in Auto which set the
Speaker 6: standards set the pace for the you know, manufacturing jobs
Speaker 6: across the United States.
Speaker 3: When you know, in the last century.
Speaker 6: They see this as you know, the transition is a
Speaker 6: great way for these companies to undo with the standards.
Speaker 3: And I think it's hard to argue with that.
Speaker 1: Dan, real quick, what's whipsawing? And I know this has
Speaker 1: existed before some of the EV tension, but talk about
Speaker 1: that and talk about this, you know, as it relates
Speaker 1: to sort of playing workers off of each other.
Speaker 5: Sure, so, whipsawing is a term that we use in
Speaker 5: manufacturing in which companies and conglomerates they force local unions
Speaker 5: or manufacturing plants to basically undercut em bargain against other
Speaker 5: manufacturing plants throughout the United States for investments. Right, So
Speaker 5: if General Motors is putting in a new generation engine,
Speaker 5: they'll go to the different engine plants and say to one, hey,
Speaker 5: the plant down and I don't know South Carolina.
Speaker 4: Is willing to give us this in wages. What are
Speaker 4: you willing to give us?
Speaker 5: If you're not willing to give us a better deal,
Speaker 5: then that investment work is going to go down to
Speaker 5: South Carolina and not into New York State.
Speaker 4: So they pit us against one another to battle for investments.
Speaker 5: They do that from state to state, but they also
Speaker 5: do that across international boundaries. They try to get us
Speaker 5: the battle our Canadian counterparts and uniform and the auto
Speaker 5: manufacturer at plants in Canada and against the Canadian or
Speaker 5: excuse me, the Mexican auto workers unions. They try to
Speaker 5: bank us battle each other for a race to the
Speaker 5: bottom onto the lowest wages and worst benefits.
Speaker 4: It's going on forever.
Speaker 1: Dan and Alex, thank you so much. I really appreciate
Speaker 1: both your perspective. I learned a lot very helpful context
Speaker 1: in this sort of final month or so of negotiations perhaps,
Speaker 1: so appreciate both of you taking the time and coming
Speaker 1: on Oddlin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for having us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having us us.
Speaker 1: Yeah that was great, Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah that was really interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, Tracy. I really enjoyed that conversation. I
Speaker 1: mean there's a lot there obviously, and I just feel
Speaker 1: like it's not a perfect story, but there are many
Speaker 1: things happening at once, so that make this a really
Speaker 1: interesting sort of lens and thing to pay attention to it.
Speaker 2: Guess, yeah, absolutely, I kind of I just want to
Speaker 2: do an episode on union politics. I find them so
Speaker 2: interesting and I really I would love to be a
Speaker 2: fly on the wall of presumably the room when the
Speaker 2: union comes up with like a list of not demands
Speaker 2: but asks, and like why they want certain things versus
Speaker 2: other things, And is there a whole bunch of like
Speaker 2: game theory involved. Do you shoot high and expect to
Speaker 2: negotiate down a little bit or do you, you know,
Speaker 2: hold the line against the big three. There's so many
Speaker 2: different angles to pick out, also lots of new terminology
Speaker 2: like whipsaw.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like that was a totally new one
Speaker 1: for me. I did not realize the degree to which
Speaker 1: plants were sort of played off of each other in
Speaker 1: that way is really interesting. I also thought some of
Speaker 1: Dan's points were really interesting about labor retention, and especially
Speaker 1: like the last three years, particularly which a bunch of
Speaker 1: companies suddenly woke up to the fact that an endless
Speaker 1: stream of workers is not a guaranteed like birthright a
Speaker 1: venue company. Right, Like, suddenly companies realized they had to
Speaker 1: fight for labor, and that, you know, without this sort
Speaker 1: of like strong continuity, that there's this danger of like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: why not just go work in a Walmart or a
Speaker 1: Dollar General and maybe get paid close to the same amount,
Speaker 1: except it's not backbreaking work and at least the facilities
Speaker 1: are more air conditioned.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: I am surprised that wages for new workers in car
Speaker 2: manufacturing haven't gone up more. And I mean, you've sort
Speaker 2: of seen the opposite and a lot of other industries
Speaker 2: where the new workers have been able to negotiate much
Speaker 2: more attractive salaries and contracts than some of the older
Speaker 2: workers who have been there for ten or twenty years.
Speaker 2: But in cars it seems to be the complete opposite.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, I mean I remember that the UAW was basically
Speaker 1: forced to take these concessions in two thousand and nine
Speaker 1: because they're like, look, these companies are not going to
Speaker 1: exist in months if you don't like you structure the contract.
Speaker 1: But to hear about how like still, you know, fifteen
Speaker 1: years or fourteen years later, they're still dealing trying to
Speaker 1: get some of these things undone from that period I
Speaker 1: thought was really interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, all right, negotiations are coming up now, is yes,
Speaker 2: it will be really interesting to see what happens.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel this was very helpful and now maybe I'll
Speaker 1: actually understand what I read over the course of the
Speaker 1: coming month or so A.
Speaker 2: Right, shall we leave it there.
Speaker 1: Let's leave it there.
Speaker 2: This has been another episode of the Authoughts podcast. I'm
Speaker 2: Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1: And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at the Stalwart. Follow our guests on Twitter. Alex Press
Speaker 1: She's at alex and Press. Dan I don't think is
Speaker 1: on Twitter, but UAW Region nine is on Twitter at
Speaker 1: UAW Region nine. Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen
Speaker 1: Arman and Dashel Bennett at Dashbot, and check out all
Speaker 1: of the Bloomberg podcasts under the handle at podcasts. For
Speaker 1: more odd Lots content, go to Bloomberg dot com slash
Speaker 1: odd Lots, where we have a blog, transcript and the newsletter,
Speaker 1: and check out the discord discord dot gg slash odd logs.
Speaker 1: There's a transportation room in there where I'm sure people
Speaker 1: will be discussing this episode. Lots of card talking.
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