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Abandon all hope ye who subscribe here. Varn Vlog is the pod of C. Derick Varn. We combine the conversation on philosophy, political economy, art, history, culture, anthropology, and geopolitics from a left-wing and culturally informed perspective. We approach the world from a historical lens with an eye for hard truths and structural analysis.
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The Pulse of a Movement: Insights from the 2024 Labor Notes Conference
Embark on a journey to the heart of labor's battleground with Kellen Gildersleeve and Nurse John, as they unpack the electrifying atmosphere of the 2024 Labor Notes Conference. From the rousing victory of the United Auto Workers in the South to the diverse experiences of unionists across the country, this episode captures the pulse of a movement on the rise. Feel the energy as Kellen recounts their inaugural conference experience, and draw on Nurse John's seasoned insights to deepen your understanding of the labor movement's evolving terrain.
As we navigate the contentious debates and strategic confrontations that shape the labor landscape, our conversation reveals the urgent need for inclusive policies and the integration of temporary workers into union ranks. Discover the innovative solutions suggested for empowering healthcare workers against a backdrop of increasing casualization, and consider the complexities of establishing a labor party that truly represents the workforce's varied factions. This episode doesn't just highlight the challenges; it offers a roadmap for unions to navigate negotiations, political lobbying, and the quest for meaningful reforms.
Looking toward labor's future, we confront the potential upheaval of losing federal oversight and the importance of fortifying union strategies and member-led movements. Listen closely as we dissect the subtle shifts within American labor unions, the strategic nuances of unionizing in sectors tied to social reproduction, and the foundations necessary for a general strike. This isn't just a discussion—it's a clarion call to all workers, reminding us of the enduring power of collective action and the mantra that resonates throughout the labor movement: "organize, organize, organize.
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Host: C. Derick Varn
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles
Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn
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Hello and welcome to VARM blog. I'm here with Kellen Gildersleeve and Nurse John, last name redacted. So we are talking about the Labor Notes Conference for 2024 for those poor sods who find this years later on YouTube and we are going to be discussing the state of labor, what there is to be excited about, what there is to be hesitant about, what the misrepresentations are, because a lot of this comes out at Labor Notes, given Labor Notes general orientation. So I'm going to let you both introduce yourself and then we'll talk about what you guys experienced at the conference. So we'll start with Kellen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Hi, I'm Kellen Gildersleeve, she, they. I went to the labor notes conference for the first time this year. I've been doing labor organizing in my workplace since 2020. And I have been interested in doing that since way before then. But kind of saw the opportunity whenever COVID happened. And, yeah, as a you know, as a socialist and the leftist, I wanted to take that opportunity to see what was going on at Labor Notes, see what I could learn and try to network. I don't think I have networking skills yet, but learning so. But yeah, I'm a nurse, I work in labor and delivery here in Austin, Texas, and I'm looking to grow the labor movement here in the South.
Speaker 1:Awesome, all right, and John last name redacted.
Speaker 3:I mean at this point I think people know who I am. I'm John Hieronymus he him pronouns. I am a PACU nurse at university of Chicago medical center on South side of Chicago. I am also a member of our forum caucus in our union, shift Change, and we're both in National Nurses United or our part of that union is California Nurses Association, national Nurse Organizing Committee and also former member of DSA like a street medic, longtime kind of like leftist-ish person.
Speaker 3:And you know I've been involved with my union going back to at least 2015 or so I'd been working at the facility in the union. I've been working at a union facility for some years before I kind of got involved but didn't really get involved in like the labor aspect of our union, which is like a thing that maybe doesn't sound very intuitive Really until like 2018, 2019, as we're running up into our 2019 contract bargaining campaign. I'm also a sometimes we call them nurse reps or shop steward, as people might know us outside of our particular union when I'm in the good graces of my union. But you know, from time to time you kind of fall in and out of that sort of thing based on how pleased the people above you are. So, yeah, and I'm running for the Council of Presidents of National Nurses United.
Speaker 3:This is my second run for uh office in our union um, but this is not because I have a burning desire to be the face of my union, but because of all the issues that we've seen inside of our union um, and my first labor notes conference was in 2022, where I learned a lot of stuff about how to uh build a caucus and how to run for uh office and how to, you know, become a rank and file agitator, I think in the best sense of the term. So 2024 is my second Labor Notes. I was more of a participant. It was also very interesting and very different from my first experience.
Speaker 1:All right, I've never been to Labor Notes. I also am a union rep. Completely different field, completely different kind of union. I won't say my actual union because it would betray my job site and, given the nature of where I live and what I do, that would be unwise. But I am in a teacher's union in the Mountain West and for those of you who are real barn heads, you know what state it is, but that's all you're getting. And for those of you who are real barn heads, you know which state it is, but that's all you're getting.
Speaker 1:So I do speak as both a rep, but I will also preface that with my union is weird.
Speaker 1:It is even more conservative than generally teachers unions are, given the nature of the state and the particular structure of the charter of the unions in my state and the cost associated with the union means that rural school districts are overrepresented, even though they have like one fifth to one twentieth the workforce, like one fifth to one 20th the workforce, Um, so that that uh, uh, just put it in perspective, when the, when AFL, CAO stuff happens, usually, uh, my union endorses the same as the police union, um, as opposed to everybody else.
Speaker 1:So that tells you a little bit about where I'm coming from and I I bring that up because I think when you're in a very conservative union it can be. When you hear a lot of the excitement coming out of things like Jacobin for just join whatever union, however, and it's all going to be great, you get a little jaundiced about it. But it also means that you probably are too jaundiced in certain ways and can be a little bit like distrusting of positive labor developments because you don't hear any yourself. So I'm just putting that out there for everybody as an exposure of my biases. So I'm going to start. We can answer any of these questions. We probably go start Kellen, go John, and just you know what were the big themes you saw at labor notes this year in particular.
Speaker 2:Did you say big themes? Yep, okay, so well. There was a lot going on Um. I think there was a big focus on um, the United auto workers when that happened that weekend, um, it, it. It just coincided with um, this huge meetup, and um whenever they won in the that plant, um, that Volkswagen plant and um, so it was on Friday when that happened and the rest of the conference. We were all celebrating that Um and so I think that um, that was a theme.
Speaker 2:Um in terms of organizing the South, that was one of the panels um that I got. I got the panel that I got the opportunity to speak on, um, which was really fun. Um, and there was one of my fellow panelists was um a member of UAW and, of course, um, palestine was a huge um theme. Throughout. Everyone was talking about what labor can be doing um to stand up for our colleagues in Palestine, um, and there was a like rally and a demonstration. There was like a couple of people who got detained and then like de-arrested. Apparently, john and I were like at dinner whenever this was all happening.
Speaker 2:Um, there was an in terms of like the workshops um that were being offered. There was a lot of stuff about democratizing your union, Um. A lot of stuff about um, uh, specifically um, like using specific strategies, um for campaigns, um. But yeah, I think, um in terms of what I ended up focusing on um, because, honestly, it was overwhelming to me. I've never even been to any conference in my life and it was just like sensory overload, um, but I just try to focus on things about healthcare and things about um union democracy, um, because I want to be a part of of um improving the autonomy within within our union, um, which I think is something that labor notes did give me some great resources for. Yeah, john, what else do you have to add about themes that you saw this weekend? Or, derek, if you had any questions?
Speaker 3:I would just echo that there was a lot I mean. First off, this year's Labor Notes is like the largest Labor Notes conference in the history of Labor Notes. So we watched it fill up incredibly fast, like we were notified that Labor Notes was looking like it was going to fill up quickly inside of a Kellen and I are both inside of a shared Labor Notes healthcare worker chat that you know. Get registered, get in um, because it's going to fill up. And it really was. It was like it was. You know, if this is your first con, uh, conference like this, it's kind of like a jumping in in, like a really big way. Um, so, like you would regularly just like the size of it and the number of people and like the enthusiasm was like really kind of like a next, a bigger step up from when I was there in 2022, like conference rooms overflowing into the hallways, um, it was. It was like very. It was like very. I could see where it would be overwhelming for a lot of people. Um, the saw the palestine solidarity was stuff that I saw a lot of. I um was able to participate in. I was able, I was brought in to kind of help facilitate one of the discussions about different palestine solidarity, organizing um across different sectors, um, but also like um a thing.
Speaker 3:A theme that I heard repeatedly across labor notes were, you know, building member led unions, like a callback to when labor in America was like this very kind of like bottom-up militant, like muscular sort of force in society. Seeing things like in Chicago we had Brandon Johnson, our nominally socialist mayor, give one of the speeches, or you know confrontational Palestine solidarity actions, very much in tension with people who seemed like they were trying to push the idea that like there's a home for labor inside of the Democratic Party. I heard on a panel. You know it's like well, if you want Medicare for all, you've got to vote. Thankfully, though, the moderator was like well, let's talk about how much power is tied up and how much capital is tied up in healthcare, in the health finance industry, and comparing that to the same amount of capital tied up in slavery, and that produced an interesting. Well, if we're gonna like, if we're really serious about this, we need to actually build organization and power um that's capable of like disrupting things, um, on a much larger level than I think we've been seeing up to this point. Um, and yeah, so like people being uh arrested outside at literally as Brandon Johnson's giving his speech, people surging into Brandon Johnson's speech, having their credentials, know the local police to uh get these people released, like um, like literally, like a friend who has a teacher like ripped the door open, um, and let those people into that space and kind of causing a ruckus. That also is being said.
Speaker 3:There are plenty of moments where people decided that, um, the little, like this much smaller talks, like I was one of the talks, and what to do the day after you win an election, right, um, and like one person really taking that moment to kind of make some like a kind of like a sectarian moralizing point about, like to the uaw board member who is like, um, who was at the front talking about what it's like to be like a rank and file person in leadership, um, which kind of like.
Speaker 3:It's kind of like that tension between time and place and it's like I get that like why this person did that and this person is a uaw member trying to, you know, get the attention of someone in leadership, um, and the person in leadership making the points like, well, like the, the factory, the cult factory that makes ar-15s that are getting sold to settlers, like there isn't like any energy on the shop floor to stop what they're doing and we expect everything to really come from the shop floor if we're going to be really like democratic about it and that not really being a very satisfying answer in that moment and also maybe a not great point being made, that's like implying that somehow grad workers don't have, like don't really have the same connection inside of labor to like make those things happen, and so I don't know, like moments like that where people are kind of talking past each other, um, in different parts of labor, like being in that space together was like a thing that I kind of really noticed.
Speaker 3:But also part of our presence at labor notes involved a lot of not being at labor notes, which was, you know, we took advantage of it as an opportunity to kind of go actually like campaign for our own you know internal elections, which I think was like that ruffled its own feathers and was really cool in an opportunity that you know I don't think we would have gotten otherwise there's a lot there, um.
Speaker 1:So I find it interesting that at labor notes, of all places, someone would be telling you to vote for the democrats, for medicare for all in 2024. That seems like a 2018 mistake I'll say.
Speaker 2:I'll say there wasn't a ton of that energy. I think that for the most part, a lot of people were building and um motivating the idea of creating our own labor party and there was a lot of of discussion about that Um. But yeah, there there is still like a lot of especially, you know, staff of of our unions can sometimes be um, a little bit more prone to um, you know, talking up the connections that our union have, has um or a union might have with, like politicians, um, and I think that that's that can be confusing um for rank and file that is not sure about um politics, you know. I think it's an interesting thing to see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a lot. I mean, one of the things that I've noticed about my union, and then I think it's super frustrating to deal with, is that our union is a non-hostile negotiation team, which, yeah, I don't love I know that as standard, but I don't love it and it is a lobbying organization, effectively, and we spend way, way more time on the lobbying, and a lot of what the lobbying ends up being, frankly, is just trying to defend the immediate, frankly, cash flows of the union. Um, and that's not without a place. I mean, you know, I'm in a, I'm in one of the reddest states in the country, even more than Texas, although, because we're so red, ironically there actually is a Republican party that the union can, can work with, whereas, like there really kind of isn't in Texas. It leads us into a very weird place, though, where people start asking, like, well, what does the union do for us other than give us an insurance policy? And I do think modeling up with politics off and I don't mean like no, obviously I think politics is important to a union, but modeling it up with electoral politics and endorsements seems to be dangerously close to what arrived as to the like union delegitimization of the 1970s, which is which was a a big thing that I think you know, the entire career of Kim Moody has been trying to reverse in some ways. Moody has been trying to reverse in some ways.
Speaker 1:So I want to ask you a little bit about that, that tension though, about an independent labor party. So there's two, there's two questions I'll have you guys address which one you want to first. One is what would a independent labor party look like coming out of the unions itself, and how was that discussed at Labor Notes? And then two, and separately how do we talk about temporary workers in the union, such as the large influx in the UAW of graduate assistants and teaching assistants who very much need a union? I think a lot of people who poo-poo that do so wrongly. But I do see the logistic problems of having a union that is largely temporary work, particularly when you're trying to build long-term organizing skills that can be transferred down. So you can address whichever one of those questions you want to first and whoever wants to take them.
Speaker 2:Well, for temporary workers, you know, for dilution of our bargaining unit. Currently, on my floor, just at the hospital I work at, most of our shifts are staffed with 50 to 70% travel nurses and that just means that we're constantly training new people. It can be really exhausting, but, besides the increased workload, it just means that they're not going to be able to stand with us, or it's harder for them to stand with us on business when it comes to like drawing a line, business, when it comes to uh, like drawing a line, and um, and then, furthermore, of course, we've got the strike break nurses that come in during our strikes and and work at our hospital, um, um, which you know it is necessary, but um, uh, unfortunate Um. So, yeah, I I think that I don't know what the solution is to that Um, I wish that these agencies could, um, they could be unionized, but I guess they're like, often contract work.
Speaker 2:So, john, I don't know if you know anything about that Um, but in terms of what I heard about the um, the idea of a new party, a new labor party, um, there was, I think, uh, an organization called workers strike back. That was specifically like networking, about that and, you know, getting people's names for, like an email list or whatever, and I think a lot of people I did hear a couple of people like talk about it in their questions in the Q&A section, which often end up being statements, of course, but I think that it's something, that it was worth getting the conversation going, so it wasn't always irrelevant, but, yeah, I want to hear what else, what else John has to say about those things too what else, what else john has to say about those things too.
Speaker 3:So, um, I think, like to the temporary worker thing. I think there have been moments in time in the past when temporary workers, like casualization of work, isn't like a new phenomenon, like if you go far enough back in any, like in any moment, where there's like a working class, like casual work is like it. It's almost like a default for capital. Until you get enough, like until you get the work processes organized enough that you and that classes organize themselves well enough to pull to basically force and end the casualization. And like. For me, like thinking about casual work because I work at a university hospital, we have a grad workers union that just got recognized there in ue.
Speaker 3:Um, we have workers who are like adjunct faculty, who work on contracts, but their contracts tend to stretch out a lot longer than, say, the average grad worker's time at, like, a university. The thing that I've seen as a solution is having an active space where members from different unions can come together underneath one boss and share our collective knowledge about what's going on and how to jumpstart and make sure that people aren't behind or having to catch up Kind of like shortening the learning curve, I guess, um, that's one way that you can manage that sort of thing. Other ways in the past there have been union hiring halls, um, that have been effective for organizing um, like lumberjacks, like I always think of that, like the story of the I like organizing supposedly the most unorganizable workers in the United States, which are transient lumberjacks.
Speaker 3:Yeah, transient workers throughout, like you know, the the Northwest, and so it's like in my mind, it's like if that, if that could be done, or if that can't, it has been done in the past. If that could be done, or if it has been done in the past, maybe it can be done again, maybe in a different way, but with taking some of those principles. But I've also heard arguments from people who I really respect. That's kind of like conceding the battle right when we're like we need to fight off and maintain what we have and I don't say maintain what we have, but like mean in, like yeah, like oh, we've got to defend this like kind of narrow idea of what unions are, where unions are appropriate, but more like in the broader sense, especially in health care, where, um, there is like an idea.
Speaker 3:It's like you, if you're working in a hospital, you're going to work there for like, not for like like six weeks or six. You're going to work there for like, not for like like six weeks or six months. You're going to work there for maybe six years. Um, and that like there's a I've I've come to believe that there is a concerted industry effort to try and casualize as much hospital labor as possible. Um, including, um, including, uh, possible including nurses. It's interesting because nurses tend to have, I think, the deepest roots in any hospital or healthcare entity. And now we're seeing doctors get into unions and this was a cool thing. There were doctors in our healthcare worker meetup. There weren was a cool thing. There were doctors in our healthcare worker meetup.
Speaker 3:There weren't a lot, but they were there and like there was two of them there was two of them and it's my goal to get help get like doctors from residents from University of Chicago who just voted to unionize with CIR, to labor notes and into our um, our university of Chicago labor uh chat, because residents are actually going to be even more casual and even more temporary workers than uh, than the grad workers, because grad workers at least if they're working on a PhD, they may be there for like five you know six eight years, um, whereas like residents can be out too, like if you're an ER resident or you know certain like certain residents aren't around very long.
Speaker 3:So like bringing those people in and getting them talking to people who have been in a union, at an institution for longer and who are going to be there for the long haul you know, for your entire career, I think is one way to kind of combat that. There for the long haul, you know, for your entire career, I think is one way to kind of combat that. So that's just like my general thought on that.
Speaker 3:I'm not a big labor party guy. That doesn't mean that I don't think it's a great idea. I just think, like we have so much work ahead of us in terms of, like you need a basis for a labor party first, and that means having a really powerful labor movement Right and as much energy as there was at labor notes. I don't feel like we're anywhere near that right now. And so I'm a big, like you know, crawl before you walk, walk before you run, kind of guy. But also I think that, like, if you can build a labor party in the United States, you probably have a lot of power already. And so, like I'm the big fans, like why bother with the labor party when if we have that kind of power we can just like take it over?
Speaker 2:But you know, that's just me being, you know, a leaning into my yeah, leaning into my anarchist, wobbly kind of inclinations.
Speaker 3:It's like, you know, our power is at work, um, that's where all of our power really lies. And, uh, getting pulled into these kind of like you know mechanisms of state power seems to be like giving up something important. That doesn't mean that I don't like. When we ran in 2023, um, one of our uh, one of my uh, one of the people I ran with, eric Koch he's a nurse out in California. Every time we got on an appearance, he was like we need a labor party and it's like all right, I actually had to have a conversation. What does that mean to you, eric? And he explained it to me. I was like, okay, I get that.
Speaker 3:I just want to make sure I understand where you're coming from, because I can mean a lot of different things to different people. So, and also to be clear, I want to make sure we clarify I'm speaking as an individual, not as, like, a representative of any particular organization or anything. I was at Labor Notes doing work for my, for our group, shift Change, but, like, I'm not speaking on behalf of shift change. Shift change has a lot of different kinds of people in it, everything from liberals to. You know, far left, far lefties, kind of mid lefties, all sorts of groups, people in there who are have all sorts of different points of view. So I don't want anyone to get the impression that I'm giving any sort of like line, for us speak on behalf of view.
Speaker 1:So I don't want anyone to get the impression that I'm giving any sort of like line for speaking on behalf of us. Yeah, I think there's a couple more things to parse out. Thank you for answering both those questions. On temporary labor, I have often wondered why we don't establish for lack of a better term guild unions for them, because we also need them to transition and maintain some relationship with those unions as they go into more stable work later. And that would ultimately get for the unions that are currently hosting the TA work.
Speaker 1:I mean, there's a cynical part of me, okay, I will say there's a cynical part of me that thinks that, like, one of the reasons unions go into TA stuff, of course, is to help graduate students who are highly, highly exploited, and adjuncts who are highly, highly, highly exploited.
Speaker 1:I mean, the exploitation levels, uh, within, within the labor pool itself in universities, is a little bit astounding, um. But beyond that, um, there is a way in which, also, if, like, you're kind of cynical and you're a labor bureaucrat, then, like, temporary people are great because they're never really challenged you but they're sourced income, um, and so I've gone back and forth about what I think is going on there. The uaw's rank and file move in leadership has made me feel better about this strategy because it was tied into the graduate students, not not primarily, I don't want to misrepresent it. It was mostly the main auto workers union, but it was related and, for example, the response to Palestine now is possible in the UAW because of the graduate school. Otherwise it would be maybe illegal and so it gets complicated in that and I don't know that we should care about legality, but I know a lot of labor union lawyers really do so.
Speaker 2:I was going to say union, union staff cares about that because they don't want to be spending our funds on, you know, spending our funds on, you know, lawsuits, which I understand, but it's also like, you know, there's there's legality and there's morality and ethics and we really need to be pushing for what?
Speaker 1:heavy on the ethics, right? Yeah, um, I mean, I don't want to go super romantic on the illegalist period of labor, but I do point out that the muscular period of labor was when they were mostly illegal, so we can. I do think it's a lot to parse there, though, and I've been thinking a lot about temporary nurses too. My mom was a first-to-prison nurse and then both a hospital nurse and an agency nurse, so not quite the same as these travel nurses, but I saw a lot of the shenanigans around that and it wasn't great. Um, but the the I have thought a lot about the use of travel nurses, because from a short-term mentality it actually doesn't make a lot of sense. Um, like, the travel nurses actually come at a pretty high premium in a lot of ways, but from a long-term mentality it kind of does, and so I was trying to like I was thinking about this the other day, cause someone was like well, why would the hospitals like hire travel nurses that pay, that take way more per hour and cost way more than long-term staff? And I'm like well, because it breaks up organizational patterns and also makes your staff more transient and makes it have less tie in the community. So the community might respond if you have a mass nurses layoff, whereas if you have travel nurses they're not tied to the community, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1:So in the short run it's a high cost, but in the long run it's a power move and I have thought a lot about that reorganization because we're in a particularly bad time in American healthcare and I think a lot of people kind of know it but they don't really know it. It's getting for all that people like to complain about the socialist countries having insane wait times. It's getting three, four months out to get a checkup because there's so few staff right now and that doesn't look to be reversing. There's some other stuff that the Biden administration has done kind of quietly, such as ramping down Medicare and Medicaid payments and stuff like that that has affected things. How do you see the unions responding to this? And I'm going to tie this into something else that's been brought up why is member led unionizing so important to the response to things like this? So I'm going to let you two answer that First off.
Speaker 3:I like when we're talking about like the casualization of like nursing in particular, as like a strategy. I was at in 2023, I was at a conference called it was called the health autonomy convergence, and there was one of my favorite talks which was like one of the most contentious and it was like so this is supposed to be like generally, a bunch of radicals working in health care. It was one of the largest gatherings of of radical nurses, I think, in decades, like hundreds of nurses and other health care workers, but like nurses made up the majority of people there. Um, and we had a talk at the end of this event called Are Travel Nurses Scabs? And it was really interesting how to me, how contentious that discussion was, because I mean, obviously to me, like a scab is someone who, like crosses the picket line, but like there's like a bigger question, like we're saying it's's like what is the role of these people in this moment? And we had travel nurses who are in that discussion and nurses who are not travel nurses in that discussion, and like there was a like a somewhat uncomfortable back and forth between both groups where people are like, well, you know, being a travel nurse, like I can like do whatever I want. I have like all this freedom to like help organize this convergence thing and I was, like you know, as someone who is like on the opposite end. I'm not a travel nurse, I don't think I ever will be. I have been an agency nurse back in the day, which is different Like and having organized similar things, I'm just like you're kind of like like there seems like a bit of a self serving sort of logic among certain people when it comes to that sort of thing.
Speaker 3:I do want to say it was wild how many people were saying I keep working at, you know, picking up contracts in unionized facilities, and that was something that I pointed out.
Speaker 3:It's like you understand that you're working, you know you're working as you're picking up union, you know contracts, union facilities, you're picking up contracts, you're picking up contracts. All these people are working in union facilities and I mean, yeah, they can say like well, they really like appreciate me being there. I'm like, I'm glad they appreciate you being there. I can bet that it would be a better place to work If the working conditions were such that like people didn't quit and then like there being this conscientious effort there's like understaffing that happens conscientiously by management to make working conditions um difficult. And then uh, and then you see, you know, every day you get bombarded on social media with offers to pick up these travel nurse contracts and for a time I don't think it's quite as intense, but you used to be able to make an extraordinary amount of money in the pandemic and in the aftermath of the pandemic, working as a travel nurse.
Speaker 3:I think that's not nearly what it was. I think the money for that kind of dried up to a certain extent, though I do believe there's still like attempts to do this, talking about how this is all impacting. You know our actual health care system. You know, at the one that talked to us at the future building the future health care system we need, and thinking about, like union, how unionized workers relate to this kind of question. Thinking about, like union, how unionized workers relate to this kind of question, you know there were people in the audience but heartbreaking stories about their inability to access healthcare or how accessing healthcare created this really enormous financial burden. And this you know. I have done Medicare for all organizing, and this is a thing that I think is like not going away, in spite of the fact that no one seems to want to talk about it in any real sense. Like there are people who think, you know, vote for the Democrats so you can get Medicare for all, but like that's not on the table in the way that it was, even in 2020.
Speaker 1:was even in 2020 and, um, like there are people who are, the more democrats are in power, the less likely you are to have talk about medicare for all.
Speaker 3:I've just I've just just noticed it someone pointed it out at that talk that they're like. It seems like someone from new york was like. It seems like as soon as there's democrats are in power at the state level, all discussion around creating a statewide version of Medicare for all at the state dries up. So it's like you can tell that there's a cynical arm of like, the like and I mean I think it's all cynical but like I think that there's a deliberate strategy to use these things in progressive blue States to kind of help corral people into this idea that like if they can use it to attack republicans when republicans are in power in those states because republicans do get in power in like in various blue states and they kind of use it as a crudgel and then as soon as like they're, as soon as they're back, like the Democratic Party is back in, all that discussion dries up. No one's interested in talking about it, moving it forward. Same thing happens with like ratio legislation, which is a big thing for nurses. We're always trying to push for California's only state in the United States a nurse-patient ratio bill. That has some teeth and I take that back. New York has a new one. They just got it a couple of years ago, but the California one's kind of the gold standard, and I want to point out, when we're talking about illegalism and breaking rules to get things done, like our union, specifically California Nurses Association, did an extraordinary amount of rule breaking to make that happen and playing some of the toughest political hardball that a union I think has played in a very long time. And they did that largely by abstaining from engaging, I think, with like endorsementsments, with the normal endorsement and lobbying game.
Speaker 3:Um, and as our union has changed because it like the person, I think, who was really kind of the brains behind that retired and she was replaced with, like you know, someone who came up through staff, um, we have seen our like the. The people who are like staff in our union believe the appeal of our union is that we can get ratios, nurse patient ratios. They say that that's the key thing. Um, not our ability to win like strong contracts or you know like high, you know high wages. Um, through you know, like you know, industrial action, but through passing ratio legislation and the. There is absolutely no strategy in our union for um, for enacting ratios, either at a state by state or at a federal level. It's all lobbying, it's all endorsements and there's no discussion around organizing massive strikes or any sort of massive direct action.
Speaker 3:California Association of Nurses occupied Sacramento, took over the state house. They were doing direct actions on the front lawns of, uh, hostile politicians. Um, these are the things that I think that if our union was serious about this stuff, we would be happening now. But it's clearly not, and that's one of the reasons why I got so fed up with how our union was being run. So, yeah, like I don't think that following the rules I agree with Kellen that you know there's a certain like ethics of solidarity and mutual aid.
Speaker 3:That is like key to building powerful unions but we need to be understanding that the rules, as they're constructed, are not in our benefit. They not for us. They're for kind of keeping us in, in line and figuring out how to smartly navigate those rules so that we can um, so that we can get what we want. I think is like a really key question that I see I think is happening and like I think the uaw strike strategy was playing with those rules in a way that I think was really was playing with those rules in a way that I think was really interesting. Um, we need to be having. This is like a thing that I'm sure these discussions are happening but maybe they're not. I don't know, cause I don't I'm not a part of them all the time where you, uh, what does it mean to build the kind of capacity to bend and break rules in a way that gets you what you want without putting yourselves at so much risk that you're going to all end up like destroyed?
Speaker 1:in jail or losing your union charter or whatever. Um, yeah, I, I think a lot about that. Uh, the example in my field is, you know, the quote red state revolt, which unfortunately has kind of washed up on the shores of everyone fucking quitting but, um, but those actions were initially largely illegal, and particularly in the states that they were in. I mean, when you look at the Virginians and those states, those states have strong, no strike rules and a lot of the I mean, like you know, a lot of the South has no public sector unions at all. Um, cause they're state by state illegal. Um, and it leads to some weird things. I mean, when you look at the TA's union right now, if you were to look at like Georgia, alabama and the Carolinas, you have this weird scenario where, like, elite schools are unionized, scenario where, like, elite schools are unionized but public schools cannot be so, um, it's actually in some ways, uh, damaging the, the, uh the view of, um, say, grad unions, because they're seen as an elite problem, and I've talked to people about it and it's somewhat frustrating. It's kind of predictable though, um, but I think that's a very minor problem. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, uh, we, we are finally seeing some admittedly minuscule union growth in the south um, which is a good, which is a. You know, we kind of have this mason dixon wall since mate one, like it's, it's that old and it's been pretty thoroughgoing, and so that's exciting and that's largely come from the UAW being kind of brave and doing some really interesting strategies.
Speaker 1:I, however, do have one caveat I want to put on that, and that is that the auto industry is still a relatively shrinking industry, even when you include new, uh, buildings and stuff in the Southeast Um. And so what? Um, I guess at least the two questions where do we see as possible growth? One of the things that I remember from the last labor notes conference, uh, was this excitement about unionizing service. Um, the service sector, which is uh for those of you who don't know, despite all that you've heard about it and left in liberal presses is like 1.5% union density or something ridiculously small like that. It's tiny, but it also is basically the largest sector of workers, and I've even thought about like could the UAW try to do something in regards to that, with all the contract and temporary work downstream from them in the auto industry, because the vast majority of the auto industry is like franchise and shop work and so that's not really incorporated into the UAW's purview.
Speaker 1:But it seems like the same strategy you might use to get the temporary workers more involved you might use there too, but you know I'm not in the right sector to give them advice on that. So it's something I think a lot about about. Do we see such? You know, it seems like the big thrust this time is that labor union leadership, the staffing bureaucracy which was kind of the focus of a lot of, say, dsa organizing work after they got into the McAlevey kind of organizing schema as they go into staff, it seems like Labor Notes has realized for the health of the union movement that's probably not a great idea and that seems to be kind of what you guys are indicating to me in the themes of this conference. Yeah, do you see like that as part of a larger strategy to getting union density up is actually getting it back to be member led and not staff led? How would you two respond to that?
Speaker 2:I mean, that's definitely the led by a teacher from San Antonio who they had. They had this union. That was, you know, a public sector union, where these teachers could not, you know, are, were not allowed to strike, but because they, you know, use the organizing model, they were involving more people. They have more numbers, so they have more power, they were able to, you know, go on strike anyway and get all of these wins. So their argument was saying the reason that we were able to do all those things is we increased democracy.
Speaker 2:And it wasn't this thing where they were just like, okay, you know, free for all, we're just gonna let everybody like, all have, um, you know the same say like there was, there was a steering committee, you know there was. There was people who had a goal with this, but they were able to basically activate the power of their coworkers because it didn't feel like this service that was saying you know, we have seen in the past that even within our own union, tactics that are activating a lot of nurses we're getting thousands of nurses out to these actions, you know, at the state house or or whatever can be much more powerful. So so, yeah, I think that it was a huge theme and I think it's definitely just a stance that Labor Notes has, and so a lot of their, a lot of the people who are leading these discussions, were steering the conversation in that direction.
Speaker 1:I don't know if that answered that question actually.
Speaker 3:Kind of yes, john, you have anything to say about that? Yeah, I mean, I think that every um, every leader that was um, you know from a rank and file uh movement inside their union was extolling how changing and this is like a thing that we've heard in labor note spaces before. It's not just like taking over the union and then is like a thing that we've heard in labor note spaces before. It's not just like taking over the union and then being like and then you get to x, you know, execute your will. It's about changing the internal culture and organization of the union. Um making like making the culture of the union democratic is like really key to like having um, to making these things like durable. And that includes like building union caucuses and caucuses being actually like um democratic spaces for people to kind of like learn how the union's supposed to work and then how to bring themselves up into um you know uh union leadership.
Speaker 3:We've seen in nurses unions. When nurses have gotten elected without caucuses to kind of back them up, they kind of get pulled right back into the same orbit that they were before and that's kind of like a function of like you need to have that militant minority. That's permanently kind of like always keeping an eye on things, always looking to bring new people in and always like calling into question like people who are in leadership. Um, so, yeah, those were like definitely like. That was a big part of the discussion, like all weekend long, um, and you know. But that is also tempered by the fact that when we rolled up, uh, you know, with our group, one of our members, uh, from new york, was going through the speakers list and was just circling name after name of um union staffers who are presenting themselves as union members because they're all in like staff unions, like speaking on panels.
Speaker 3:It wasn't like a majority by any means, but it was like definitely there and that was like a thing that, like, if you're not, I think that there's this like like anything interesting and big enough. There's going to be all these tensions, like there's definitely people who, um and this happened with members of our union who came in specifically, kind of like to counteract the narrative that our union isn't like rank and file led giving a very different kind of like view of what it means to like be in a union and what it like, you know, it's like literally told by a participant. Well, you know, like nurses are nurses are lazy, they'll work like extra shifts, but then they won't show up for the thing and it's like well, you know, the question is is like, how much say do they have and how, the how all these decisions are made?
Speaker 2:Right. Why aren't they showing up? Why do they not feel like that's an avenue for advocacy, like what is stopping them from engaging?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. And this is like, just like this is like the tension inside of this. In this movement, there are going to be people who, just like, who don't understand that member led is a strength. They see democracy as an impediment to whatever their will is. Often, I think, their will is to ingratiate themselves to, you know, various like you know political figures, um and but, like, if you actually are working on improving everyone's welfare inside the union, which is, I think, should be priority number one, um, then you're going to end up, I think, seeing a lot more engagement.
Speaker 3:And we had many stories of people using the democratic process as like a way of building member engagement and getting people excited. And inside of our own work, we've seen people get upset, you know, because their stakes. When people don't care, they don't show up because there's no stakes to them. But when there are stakes and they feel like they have a sense of being able to direct things, they get very passionate and very excited and they will fight over things in productive ways. So, you know, I think that it's one of those things where it's not fully out there. I don't think people fully understand yet inside of labor how important it is. There's still lots of staff who don't think that this is the way to go. They would rather have staff-led unions.
Speaker 3:Um, I think that this is partially, you know, like people, I think, misreading mccavely. Um, mccavely, that's her name, right, she's on death store and we, we do care about her very much. We've, we've done readings of her work. Um, but at the same time, like, if you're coming into this perspective of I'm going to be the hero staffer who's going to make all the decisions, and then everyone's going to think I'm amazing, you're not going to be, you're going to kind of run roughshod over like everyone else's. You know who the? You know the members are the union. This is the thing I keep saying. It's like the members are the union.
Speaker 2:This is the thing I keep saying it's like the members are the union and a point that that teacher had made in that and kind of like my favorite talk that I had been to that weekend about democratizing their union. He was saying that you know, it's OK for rank and file members of the union to make mistakes and I think that that is um. One of the things that you know staff has a problem with is they're like we have this program, we have this messaging, we're really tight on messaging and we're being really disciplined which I understand about being disciplined but there often doesn't leave a place for feedback and then it's just another person disenfranchising us and that does not feel good and nurses know that and so they're not going to show up to be further disenfranchised.
Speaker 1:I have some horror stories about that kind of stuff. So when stakes got high during the pandemic, the unions were largely seen as non-responsive. In fact, in some ways in my state they were seen as less responsive than HR, and alternative teacher organizing began to be pop up on various Discord, facebook servers et cetera, and union leadership and I'm not making this up turned it over to administration to have it shut down. And it was only because I refused to be a scab that I did not leave my union at that moment. It was so bad that a lot of staffers actually quit over it.
Speaker 2:So sad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that kind of stuff happens and it's. You know, public sector unions are a little bit of different bees where our charters are often regulated and interfered with by state law, but I don't think it has to be this way. So like I have even the NEA spit which I am technically a member of, but like I am super not a fan of our national, like super, duper, duper, duper, not a fan of our national. But there are good NEA branches in certain states because they have embraced member leadership, because they've affected charter changes to include, to exclude administration, not that the administration shouldn't have their own union, they should. They just shouldn't be in ours because it's a conflict of interest and in a lot of, like my state, non-licensed professionals are not in our union but administration is right, which is a disaster. Unlicensed professionals are not in our union, but administration is right, which is a disaster. Right Because they also do stuff like play us against unlicensed staff and try to do all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:But in the states and a lot of this is actually in some of the poorest parts of the Midwest they have actually. You know, chicago is a big example they completely broke with the nea but there's been even within the nea places in wisconsin and in um uh neighboring state, I don't know rust belt area around wisconsin, um, where there have been taking takeovers of the union at local level that have been really effective and pretty good at negotiations, and things that they did was like getting the lunch staff and stuff into the teachers union, not as a separate thing altogether, but, as you know, because in some states the education unions are effectively guild unions like, because you're actually only arguing for licensed staff. In other states it's all workers. These are things you really have to deal with, and I think it's similar in healthcare, because in some States nurses unions are just nurses and some States they're general healthcare, et cetera.
Speaker 2:So I was going to say there was I think that was another theme that I did notice over the weekend, especially in these healthcare meetups is it really made me reflect on, you know, choosing to organize with a union that was only going to represent nurses at our hospital, when I know that my coworkers that are not nursing staff are also, you know, need to be organized for the same working conditions that are affecting them, working conditions that are affecting them, and I could, you know, hear the anecdotes from these facilities who are wall to wall organized and what they could achieve. And so I was kind of like man, I feel like that was, you know, I don't like no regrets or anything, but I was like I wish I would have known kind of the power of that um, before we fully committed to, you know, organizing with this, um, only nurses, um, I still think that, you know, we can exert a lot of power this way and I think that if we were going to win in the South, it was probably a solid strategy.
Speaker 3:It just made me, you know, kind of gave me pause a little bit I do want to say that, um, that that is not something that has to be like a permanent like feature of any union. You can go from being a trade union to going to be a wall-to-wall and unfortunately, in health care there are very few unions that do wall-to-wall that I would put any interest or time in. I mean, you got it's basically seiu um, you have some cwa locals which are pretty solid um, and you have uh, some teamsters, uh locals um, that will do wall-to-wall. And I think the thing is that we have and this is what Labor Notes is really great at is that they give you all these tools for actually how to do the thing like, how to actually take your union and take it in a completely different direction. These are things that, if I hadn't gone to labor notes, I wouldn't know about.
Speaker 3:All of your actual like union rights that um are, like you know, kind of like legally enshrined, so, like, the difference between being in a union and versus like being in like something, like some sort of you know uh political organization that or like maybe like an NGO advocacy organization, is that there are explicit like rights in terms of like being able to being able to take over your union.
Speaker 3:There are modicums of control around or, like you know, democratic processes and oversight, and if a union is far enough outside of those rules, you can like kind of like call, call the referee in a way that you can't maybe from, like you know if you're in, say, like you know the Sierra club or or DSA or whatever. That doesn't mean that it's like that you know the sierra club or uh, or dsa or whatever. Um, that doesn't mean that it's like that you know. Ideally, as a uawd person said, in 2022, it's like the fact that the state came in and intervened and now we're where we're at. Like you never want the state to be coming in to intervene your union right, and but that doesn't mean that sometimes it's just like the only way to get to where you need to be. So there are people who, I think, have a misconception that unions that are corrupt are kind of corrupt forever, and I mean, the UAW is the disproof of that.
Speaker 3:Right, you think, I mean you think, but you know, I think the thing is is it as as daunting as it can seem to like to do something like go through a reform process, like you have to if you have any pretense at all that you can be an actor in the world and like change things and make the world a better place, like if you're in a union and you're unhappy with it, like I can guarantee you you're not the only person unhappy with it. Probably the problems you're seeing are being seen by lots of people. This is the thing that we have seen time and again. It's like the things happening in my facility are happening in other hospitals all over the country and so it's kind of on us and incumbent on us to organize around those issues and build coalitions of workers inside of um, our unions, to do something about it.
Speaker 3:I've seen many people who just don't, who have bought into kind of like the idea that like well, this is how it always is and this is how always be, and that's too hard or whatever.
Speaker 3:And it's like someone one of my co-workers has like a you know, she talks to her co-workers and she's been a supporter of our group and she's like well, you know, like you you're really upset about the union, but are you upset enough to learn how it works? Right, and that's kind of what you have to be. Is you have to be upset enough to figure out how this stuff works and then actually do the work of like finding people, and this is like the. The strange thing to me was finding out that, like the people who talked the most about wanting to change the union, um, the people who are most like openly political in terms of their like, you know, their socialist politics or whatever seem to be the least capable or willing to do the actual work of building like a, a coalition inside of our union to do anything. And as soon as I stopped focusing on those people and start focusing on my actual coworkers or you know, like that's when things really took off for us.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm not just going to slag on the DSA, but my interaction with the DSA here locally was that they were all staffers. So it's which is probably unfair, it's just, it just.
Speaker 2:I'm a member of the DSA.
Speaker 1:But it's okay. So, and also I want I know I'm coming down hard on staffers there are there are good staffers out there, like I think.
Speaker 2:I think most of staffers are probably awesome.
Speaker 1:You know, it's just power structures just mean that the certain people get to the top, and that happens in unions too, unfortunately yeah, I would say that what I've noticed is a lot of the good staffers, and some of them actually one of my favorite ones, who was my spy on the inside during code um was it was a dsa or who was a friend of mine, but um, but they got marginalized by by other staffers and eventually left.
Speaker 1:So I do think that's something you have to deal with and this is why I think the theory of change does have to be from the membership, because the membership actually in these charters has a lot more power than they realize now in public sector unions and, unfortunately, in nursing unions, even though nursing unions may or may not be public sector, depending on a bunch of stuff. Uh, we have slightly different rules because nurses, I believe, are in an exception of the national labor relations act and public sector unions are just not covered by national labor relations act at all. So it's uh, so we are more hampered by legislators. And I was actually thinking, john, when you were mentioning your friend who was a teacher, who was all about the labor party, and I was like, well, that makes sense. They're a teacher, like all of our boss is literally the legislature. So like, ultimately there, there.
Speaker 3:There were people in Chicago who were very gung ho on the idea that Chicago teachers union was going to build a labor party, a local labor party. The problem, at least as far as I can see it, is that they there wasn't enough. There wasn't a big enough basis for such a thing to happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do teachers have time for that?
Speaker 3:Does anyone have time for that Do?
Speaker 2:nurses have time for that. That's part of the issue. We're so exploited we don't have time to build a labor party.
Speaker 3:First off, you need a coalition of progressive unions that are actually going to work together on like common issues and then you need them to not like be like. You need people who are interested in politics but who are interested in a very different way than like most people come into politics in the United States, like most people come into politics in the United States and people who are willing to kind of like stay outside of the democratic party and run maybe as independents. And we have, like I said, a nominally socialist mayor who came into endorsement calls in my, in, in my, to my union, asking for an endorsement after he had been kind of MIA as a county commissioner all through COVID when nurses were begging for the sort of relief that would have helped fight back all the travel nurses that were coming in, and he was coming in selling us that he was going to be you know, brandonson was going to be the representative of the working class in uh downtown and many nurses who are in, like the you know cook county health yes, you know, the john strozier hospital is one of the oldest public access hospitals in the united states that's still operating could point to him and say like look, where were you when we needed you. And this is someone who very much puts his experience as a organizer for Chicago Teachers Union and his experience as a teacher front and center. And so you can't build a labor party when there's no like.
Speaker 3:There's something about trust and solidarity and mutual aid that I think we're not there yet. Right, we don't have enough people who are like I can see where we could get there over. You know we have the. You know Sean Fain calling for the potential for a general strike in 2028. Sean Fain calling for the potential for a general strike in 2028. Those discussions I heard. I wasn't in those discussions at Labor Notes.
Speaker 2:I heard that they felt a lot more serious than previous discussions around things like general strikes. That was something that I was going to bring up too, because the response to this like we don't have the power is okay. Well, we you know, uaw is putting out this general strike and they're saying line up your contracts to expire so that this can happen. Like giving actual strategies on what to do to make the 2020 general strike idea less of an idea and more of a plan. So that could be the you know, the beginning of building this power, but it's going to take years. I'm glad it's four years away. I think that that makes it more realistic than being like this year, in the fall we're all going to general strike all of a sudden with no structure.
Speaker 3:Well, this is the thing I was like the last 50 general strikes calls in the past 20 years.
Speaker 3:Hold on, hold on. I always say that people will call for things on social media and they don't understand. I call them. This is one of my key concepts is necessary intermediate steps. What do you have to do to get to where you want to be? And these are necessary things. You don't get to skip over them.
Speaker 3:And the fact that we're actually beginning to have some of those real discussions is so important.
Speaker 3:And this is the first time where people are having that discussion, and it's not just people in Jacobin or on podcasts telling people like well, you're talking about general strike, you don't even know how a general strike is organized. But let's like have a conversation about what it takes to actually organize like a for something like a general strike, um, and it means a lot of people have to unfuck their unions first, because, um, like in our case, I haven't heard word one from our leadership about getting engaged with, like any sort of general strike organizing. Um, and that is nuts because of all of the different hospitals that could be lying, having contracts expire, uh, all at the same time. Um, and making sure that you know, if we're doing general strikes, we should be having some of our core demands like front and center, um, and you know it. But it also means you have to be committed to upsetting the status quo AFL-CIO, apple cart when it comes to, you know, relationships with the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or the fact that AFL-CIO is what like one-fifth police union. It's a lot. I mean, that is unfortunately a reality of the United States. So it's like I think in 2022, police unions were the largest union sector in the country, but we're back to teachers being our educational services, back to being larger than police unions, which I guess is good, being our educational services, uh uh, back to being larger than police unions, which I guess is good, um uh. And then nurses unions are pretty large, um uh.
Speaker 1:Industrial unions are are still, uh, the auto industry still more unionized than a lot of the rest of the, the industrial world in the United States, excuse me. And so I think that's really what we have to look at. I mean, one of the things I would say about a labor party in the United States is we also have to unionize more sectors of workers for it to actually be meaningfully all labor, because really, like, when we're talking about this right now, uh, I think what we're doing, what you guys are doing, is vitally important, but also, like we're in highly unionized sectors compared to a lot of the rest of the, the workforce, and, um, I don't think teachers and nurses can actually speak to all of labor, and I don't think you guys would try to either, and so like that's, you know. But if you're going to do something like that, you really have to, like, you really have to show solidarity on these other unionizing efforts.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean speaking of that stuff. Derek, like things that were absent from the discussion this year were, like Amazon was not being talked about the way it was in 2022. Oh yeah, and what's interesting is, 2022 was the first time I heard rumblings about the issues of the Amazon labor union inside of like a talk about union democracy, of like a talk about union democracy, and also we were kind of seeing there was a quiet back and forth over what was going on inside the teamsters right now, after they went through their own you know democracy, like you know democratization, and that is a lot more contested than I was hoping it would be like there's talks about Hoffa 2.0. I'm not sure, um, but you know logistics work is huge in this country. Like my grandpa was a teamster. He had stories of some of the wildest wildcat strikes, um, back in the 70s or in the teamster rebellion, um, and figuring out how to unfuck.
Speaker 3:That is so important and I just want to make sure that like that was a thing that I felt it was. To me it was like palpably absent from like our discussions about like what was going on. So there was a lot of focus on uaw, the teamsters. It was a lot more muted this year and I, I mean, and I had great discussions with teamsters, um, but like it was a lot more muted this year and I, I mean, and I had great discussions with Teamsters, but like it was not, it didn't feel like where, like after their their UPS contract campaign, that that there was. That was a little deflated.
Speaker 2:Well, one thing I I did notice about you know the different panels or the different types of workshops that were available at Labor Notes, is like there were the bigger panels which I think were like more for hype, and so at those panels, like you were hearing more about wins and kind of like generating excitement, and then in those smaller rooms that had less of a you know fewer numbers of people attending them, that allowed for more kind of like people airing a little bit of their grievances with what was going on with the union. So I think it definitely could depend on like what rooms people were in um to at labor notes. You know what discussions they were hearing Um, but yeah, in terms of hearing about what was going on with the teamsters, I can't compare it, since I have not been to to previous labor notes, but I did not hear um as much um about them as I was expecting to, especially since everything there was so much controversy surrounding you know that contract, I think last summer, and I thought maybe we would be talking about it more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do think there's kind of an elephant in the room right now, which was we were super excited about service sector unionization and Amazon. I do think there's kind of an elephant in the room right now, which was, which was we were super excited about service sector unionization and Amazon, which is both service and logistics, and Kim Moody has put a lot of ride or die on using logistics to replace industrial unionization as a, as a power lever and a union coalition, because they actually can shut stuff down. Um, you know, health care and education can kind of shut stuff down, but we can't actually touch the engine on production. We can we affect social reproduction, which is super important, don't not? But you know, um, lower it's yeah, it takes.
Speaker 2:it takes a lot longer to do and it's harder to get the public on our side, cause it's like what my kid can't go to school, so I can't work if it's teachers and, like you're going to kill my grandpa because, like you, want better pay, like you know. So there's we have. We have power and strength in our social connection, but we also are hindered a little bit by you know, if we don't have a good organizational foundation and good connections with our community members, then our strikes are going to be seen as antithetical to or like antisocial, and so we have a political line that we need to balance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say with with anything that touches on social reproduction. You're absolutely right, there's a book line we have to balance. And also it feels crueler when we pull those levers in a way, because when you pull the lever of production you're hurting the bourgeoisie. When we're pulling the lever of social reproduction, we're kind of hurting everybody. Like it's, it's a big lever to pull, um, and you're right, like no one wants to kill someone's granddad and nurses generally don't by the I mean. Like the thing is like when teachers strike, for example, we often still teach, we just don't do paperwork. Like so it's, it's, uh, but those are hard. In a way, though by by making those concessions we actually have to give up a little bit of our power because we're socially necessary. And you're also right, it's very easy to turn the public. Being broadly in favor of teachers unions, for example, is a, you know, relatively modern and by modern I literally mean last 10 years thing. So it's, it's a precarious thing.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, the labor conditions and the legal restrictions on educational labor does not lead me to think that we're going to see a lot of political victories there like we did 10 years ago, mainly because we're actually kind of in a death spiral. We don't have the labor to reproduce ourselves and we don't have and we're hindered by law in a lot of ways on what we do to attract it. So we you know I always laugh bitterly right now, cause every like every year, I get the survey from the NEA is like, how can we more diversify teaching? And I'm like getting anyone to do it at all, like would diversify it a lot. Cause right now, in a lot of States, um, in the center of the country, like where I live, I'm increasingly noticing like we're wealthy, we're like wealthy wives and rich fail sons and stuff like that are the people who are teachers because no one else can really do it.
Speaker 1:Um, and that's a, that is a change in the labor conditions and so it's something we have to deal with. But that's specific to us. I'm. It's interesting, cause I think healthcare is seeing something both similar and very different. We've talked a lot about the agency nurses, but logistics is also having a problem. So it's it seems like everybody's actually kind of weirdly has a labor shortage right now. The, the, the, the biggest driver of it seems to be, from what I can tell, after the initial deaths from COVID and then pushing out a lot of older people from the, from the job market cause the risk was too high and they've just stayed out is we've chased a lot of young mothers out of the, out of the workforce, entirely through the cost of of healthcare, not how childcare, although healthcare doesn't help, but childcare is the variable that's actually changed.
Speaker 2:So Both definitely, cause I was actually like fully whenever I was on maternity leave, I was like I don't think I want to go back, I don't, I'm not going to go back. We decided I'm not going back and then I was like oh yeah, I forgot about insurance. We need to go back, I need to go back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's a, that's a doozy. Um, uh, do you do, do we want to talk about that and like how maybe unions would would deal with that? And I guess we also need to talk about the elephant in the room is why aren't we talking about amazon anymore? Um, so those are the two. Those are my probably my last two questions, so we'll play on that because they'll probably be long answers.
Speaker 3:you two can have at it I mean I can talk, like I can talk a little bit about amazon um I because I've no people who. There's multiple different organizing projects around Amazon and Amazon labor union is only like one of those projects and I don't even, and it's definitely, I think, one of the most overhyped of all those things, and I think that. So there's also Amazonians United, which is a group of people in several cities doing something called solidarity unionism, where they don't seek contract recognition and their main focus is on doing basically direct action at work and they've proved remarkably resilient post-covid like they're still around doing work um, and by not seeking um contract recognition, they've kind of short-circuited um the uh the union busting um techniques that amazon uh has worked on. You know amazon labor union also did some of that. You know kind of short-circuiting some of those campaigns, um, but they weren't able to translate that into like a bigger sort of like movement.
Speaker 3:And I think there's reasons why, um, I think that a lot of the reasons why are that like people are still thinking people there. There seems to be a like a disconnect between you have people who think only in terms of winning the election. You know people who only think about, like, doing that shop floor ground up, bottom up stuff. That's like just taking the fight to the boss and because they're not working together, that you end up not getting, that you don't get the full um, the full set of tools ahead of you. And I think that there's and the fact that people that you know there should be a thing that I would would love to see from, like labor notes or other groups, is to have create spaces just for people from these different groups to sit down and talk to each other, not on a curated panel, right, like actually have like a big meeting room where you got the big table where all the different types of people are given a chance to actually speak and kind of like work out maybe ways where they can take the best of both of those models.
Speaker 3:You know there are other larger unions who have taken a stab at Amazon. Teamservice is always saying they're going to take Amazon on. I think that, unlike UAW, after their UPS contract campaign, I don't think they're going to be able to translate. I don't think they're going to grow in the way that the UAW, that the uh UAW seems to be ready to do, and I'm not sure if that's because they haven't dedicated the organizing resources to it, or because workers are looking at the Teamsters and they're like nah, I don't want to like put my time and energy into that or, you know, put my, my livelihood at risk for that.
Speaker 3:I know, uh, ue has a um project and also ILWU, so that's the International Longshoremen and Warehouse Workers Union on the West Coast, and they're out there with UE in terms of being outside of the AFL-CIO and they're one of the unions that never kicked all the reds out. All their communists and anarchists didn't get kicked, kicked out, um, in the 40s and 50s, um, so I think that, um, something has to like it. I think we, I look at the world and I see, like a, it's like a dry forest, it's just someone hasn't figured out how to like spark the match yet to make it actually happen. Um, that's the optimist in me. Um, the pessimist in me thinks that, like, there needs to be something so completely outside of the outside of what our current conception is, and just we haven't figured it out yet, that you know, until that happens, nothing's going to change. So you know, that's, that's my take on amazon. There's no reason why they can't be like they couldn't be unionized.
Speaker 2:It's just there hasn't been the right mix yet yeah, I don't think I have anything to say on the Amazon thing. I just know I remember being really excited about it and working on my campaign and then we it did not go where we wanted it to go and I didn't hear much more about it. So but I wasn't as plugged in with the rest of labor movement. Whenever all of that was going down, I was kind of like a little bit very focused going down. I was kind of like a little bit very focused. And then what was your question about?
Speaker 1:about talking about what unions can do for, like, childcare organizing trying to deal with the childcare organizing and the fact that we're losing a whole lot of labor to that and it's really affecting my like.
Speaker 1:We already talked about the death spiral conditions. I've had several mothers just tell me that like they're thinking about leaving the profession until their kids hit about seven or eight years old so that they could be mostly in public school at the same time enough. So it's really beginning to hit us and out here. You know, even in a state like utah, which has a disproportionately high number of kids because mormons have a lot of kids, um, we have uh major like child care is just unbelievably expensive. Now I mean, it's it's, it's more expensive than fucking college, which is crazy. So I think some of the costs can range up to like 17,000, 20,000, $30,000 a year per child, which is which is absurd, particularly when you also figure out that labor conditions for for child care is also crap and those people don't make a lot of money. So a lot of that money is just, you know, pure captive profit. So it does seem like something that the larger union movement has to kind of address.
Speaker 2:It's definitely something. So I, on my panel, our facilitator, jacob, had asked me a question kind of like that I had not really thought about where. He was essentially like, if you were talking to the president of the AFL-CIO right now and you had something to say about, like, what one thing could they do to support labor organizing in this country? And I was like, uh, it's definitely literally just giving childcare to labor organizers so they can do labor organizing. Because, you know, for myself, I'm in a privileged position. Um, I'm partnered. My partner, you know, makes enough money where we are comfortable, where I can send my kid to school or, you know, preschool, um, and that means that whenever he's at school, on the days that I'm off, I can do organizing work.
Speaker 2:Um, my coworkers who are single parents can't do that, so they're not going to get involved in the union because they literally don't have time. My, my, my coworkers who have kids with special needs, who are super gung ho about everything, do not have the availability to, you know, do this work. So I had said we need to be providing childcare, we need to have some sort of system for providing childcare for labor organizers. Um, know, so I don't know what that would look like. And you know, really the issue is that we, we need to have free childcare. Like you know, that's provided by the government, but we do not have a political system that is going to be mobilizing that anytime soon. So, you know, making that a priority through labor is going to get especially more mothers and femme presenting parents involved in labor organizing, because we literally it, just so much of it falls on us and that means that we're often too burnt out from our job and, um, that means that we're often too burnt out from our job and then from parenting, the conditions of parenting, right now to be able to, um, just do the labor, um that it takes to organize.
Speaker 2:So, um, like, if the local AFL CIO, like had a couple child watch employees on call who would be like, hey, we have this, you know this meeting, like can can you guys provide two hours of childcare for this meeting or something? Or unions, can you guys provide provide childcare? Like, can can our dues go toward having a couple people get paid to watch all the kids? And you know, I think it would make a huge difference for those of us who don't have the conditions, like I do, and the general generational wealth, like my family does, to be able to do that. It means that we're excluding it, especially people of color, and especially like the most exploited, most disenfranchised coworkers and-workers, um and comrades, because they're taking care of their kids, you know, or their kid, because most of us can't afford multiple kids at this point um, I could build off of that.
Speaker 3:I think we need to be expanding our demands and I think that um child care totally child free talk.
Speaker 2:There needs to go on that general strike list.
Speaker 3:I don't know if it's already there but I mean even at like in our contract campaigns. Like I have fought to try and get childcare put front and center in our contract campaigns.
Speaker 2:On-site childcare.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah. On-site childcare for nurses that lines up with our actual work schedules would be like a game changer.
Speaker 2:Talk about for new parents, on-site childcare and what a difference that would make in breastfeeding. You know, like, just let me pop down and, like, feed my kid, like, but then you would need to get lunch break and breaks for that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and this kind of goes to show like how we're still very weak, right, um, and but being weak doesn't mean that we shouldn't be thinking of like bigger demands. Like I know that there are nurses and there are other workers who, like housing is a, like is a pressing demand for them, um, and you would be surprised where you have highly paid you know, uh, nurses, um, teachers making big city salaries which you know it's like it's for some people feels like a lot of money, um, but they can't live or work, they can't live in the communities they work in, um, because of how expensive it is. Um, the reason why public housing in the United States exists is because union members built cooperative housing like as, like a, as a side project to what they were doing, and, you know, in on the East coast. So I think that's like thinking about like social demands and integrating those social demands into our like economic demands is really important. I think that we need to get out of them. There's this mid century like mindset that, like the state is just going to handle all this stuff and that like why would the union be concerned about, like you know, making a housing demand or making child care demands Because that's all taken care of, but that stuff is very much coming back front and center.
Speaker 3:Everything Kellen said is, in my experience, absolutely true. I work with a ton of moms. I'm a parent. All these women want to get involved in organizing and doing things because they care so much, but being a parent is absolutely a drag on their capacity to do it. Doing things because they care so much, but like they're being a parent is absolutely a drag on their capacity to do it.
Speaker 3:Um, and there's no reason why unions shouldn't make child care. Like we have so much fucking money, like this is what. Like our union has no excuse for. Like integrating child care, uh infrastructure, into our organizing work. Um, and then, and then like building those things as demands and um, once in my experience is like once you get one facility gets that as a demand, everyone starts begging for it, and then they end up and then it becomes like the standard, and so I think that it's just like we have to. Unions have to expand their perspective of what it is that they're fighting for. It's not just wages, it's not just I mean, many nurses in union facilities don't get lunches, like that is like it's the fact that that's happening is like a testament to the limited horizon of the people who are driving how those campaigns unfold, both like as like you know staffers who are directing bargaining, or like even the you know, the workers who are on those bargaining committees haven't thought you know what is possible. So I guess that's where I would leave it at that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was, I think, a lot about that because the unions have a lot of wealth. Right now there's a lot of it's illiquid but they have it in in a property holdings. It's one of these things that I've been pointing out for a while that, like, unions are wealthy but not off of their membership, they're off of their buildings, and we keep on building new buildings in the unions here and I'm like, but I know why you're doing it, I know why you're doing it, but, um, so, uh, you know I don't want to. I don't want the unions to be like the universities, which are basically just large landholding endowments that happen to have a, a school on them. That's actually like one 20th of their revenue or whatever.
Speaker 1:Um, but I think you made another point about John that's really important on housing and childcare is that needs to be handled by the union, not the employer. And I know that. I know that's going to strike people as weird, but, like I've heard, people make demands for housing as part of teachers and and even cities are willing to do it now because they're desperate. Um, but uh, I've lived where under uh conditions of housing under an employer before where, like I could lose my housing and actually even get deported, uh, based off of that, and that gave the employer a shit ton of power over me. Um, those things need to be run by the workers, um, and in some degree owned by the workers collectively, not by the business, and I, um, and that's something, are by the state and that's something, or by the state, and that's going to be very important going forward, and that's also going to be true with childcare, and I know that's a big ask, but, as I that's why I point out union wealth. I mean, the unions do have money. It's not all liquid and I think we do have to admit that, but it's not nothing, I guess.
Speaker 1:I guess the elephant in the room, though that I haven't mentioned that we should, we do have to talk about, is there is a potentially looming Um and I just was reminded about it when we were talking about Amazon, uh, supreme court battle, uh, which has the obvious offenders trader Joe, spacex and Amazon, but also, weirdly now, the a fuckingCLU who I no longer give money to ever to undo the Labor Relations Act, and I know a few people in labor world who are weirdly happy about this. They think somehow undoing the Wagner Act would help the labor movement, which is a very weird stance, but for for all of my talk of it, you know illegalism, that seems to be a disaster. So any responses to that? And do we actually think that they might actually, that the Supreme court might actually undo the Wagner act? What do we think here?
Speaker 2:I don't know about this. This, john, do you know anything about this?
Speaker 3:I mean, I do know that like so this has been like. We've watched the supreme court like has like basically the the right wing of the country is committed fully to using um court like basically taking the, the standard liberal tactic of running to the courts when you feel like you can't win things politically. Um, and has like been using, uh, the supreme court and you know, basically you know packing like the judiciary with like right-wing ideologues for so long that we are at the point where lawsuits are matriculating through like the federal court system. That could very well, like you know, basically gut the nlrb right and like remove most of the federal oversight over, like um over labor relations in the united states. Um, I think that probably with the state of labor in the United States today, that would be probably like a catastrophe at a certain level, because our labor unions are so like they exist in a framework and I would basically just take the framework away and I don't believe that they've got the social basis and like the, the fighting mentality and the way they have their investment structure that they're going to like survive, and that's like a big thing that I'm concerned about inside of our own union is like we have all this money sitting in a bank account. All it takes is one like uh justice department ruling without like the nlrb, and like all that money disappears.
Speaker 3:And so, when we talk about like these sorts of things, what would it take for a union to weather the nlrb like no longer existing?
Speaker 3:You have to have basically a fully informed and organized, like, thoroughly organized, like uh rank and file who can work independent of whatever like the actual formal structures of the union are. You have to have halls and like like spaces and social centers that are kind of like held in a way that are like not immediately tied to you know things like lawsuits that you know ways of keeping things outside of the the hands of of the state, and so like this is like a real, this is a real thing. I also don't know that that, in the long run, will be like will be the kind of winning move that American capital thinks it is, though I do think that it's telling that american capital right now seems to believe that, like that unions are no longer necessary for them to maintain labor, peace, right, so, and I think they're gonna fuck around and find out if they, if they get rid of these, this semblance of protection, which is weak in the first place.
Speaker 2:I think that I think that that could be the straw that breaks the camel's back on pushing people, you know, more into labor organizing, or that's what I would hope, because if they don't have a way to have a voice, like what's taking, what's going to keep them from becoming literally going back to being a violent labor movement, like what is going to stop that?
Speaker 3:I mean, you know, that's my my takeaway is America is one of those heavily armed societies on the planet and, like you know, and it's just you know, in Mexico, you know, uh, teach, you know. Taking it back to teachers unions, derek, uh, and like the, there are teachers unions that have. I have heard and I'm not saying this is a good or a bad thing, I've just heard there are teachers' unions that occasionally will kidnap their school administrators and know the until they get their demands met um, but I can neither confirm and deny that that happens.
Speaker 1:Um, uh, having lived in mexico and uh knowing a lot about the union movement there so I'm just saying that it's like there.
Speaker 3:If I don't want us, I don't like. We live in a world right now where, like our current labor movement probably isn't going to, that will not go well for unions as they currently exist. I don't know that it'll go well for capital either in the long run, because people are going to resort to some way of redressing their issues, and so it'll completely change how labor works, and this is one of the reasons why, and so it's going to it'll completely change, like how labor works, and this is one of the reasons why I think it's so important right now. I think labor bureaucracy is is remarkably weak. As workers, we have a unique opportunity to push on those weak structures and change them in ways that we wouldn't have maybe like 30 or 40 years ago, even 10 or 15 years ago, and so now is the time Like if you are listening to this and you're a worker or you're in a union or whatever, like this is a great time to get things done now, before things get even worse, because I don't think they're going to get better immediately. So I know that I've got to begin to wrap it up and we keep probably keep talking about all this for hours and hours and we're not going to solve all the labor problems questions tonight, but I do think that it's like.
Speaker 3:My key takeaway is like organized right, organize, organize, organize. And that means knowing what your co workers lives are like outside of their, their like superficial political comments at work. Right, it means being a somewhat relatable person who people can depend on to help solve their problems. Those are the key things that I feel like a lot of people on the left who don't, who have thrown their hands up and say I can't do a union Cause union organizing is hard. It's like well, you got to try.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're going to try to do a revolution, you can't organize a union. No, when I point out that the that, actually the the stakes are a little different. So yeah, I, I, I I'll give a Kellen if I don't know, know, but I do want to comment a little bit. I think this I think the moving to worker-led stuff is going to be really vital, because we don't know what legal stuff is coming down the line we've.
Speaker 1:There's been a lot of movement by people that I used to respect and maybe could respect again, um uh, who been really trusting, at least in the beginning of the Biden administration, of the Biden's move in the NCLB, and I have pushed back on them, just being like, well, even if Biden is a good face figure which I don't think he is, but that's neither here nor there it doesn't matter, because, one, they're not going to stay in power forever and, two, the legal framework isn't actually controlled by the executive. So, except for the court packing, that's already happened over the past I don't know four decades. So so having these worker led unions would make them more robust when the, when their bureaucracy becomes legally carteled and and limited. Um, and I don't think there's anything that's going to make unions well, I don't actually shouldn't say that I don't think I don't. I would say I don't think there's anything that make unions illegal overnight in the united states, but uh, it's not impossible. Um, uh.
Speaker 1:I will also echo one thing that's about capital that I think John hit on, and then I'll turn it over to Kellen for closing remarks. Capital's concessions to labor weren't out of the kindness of their hearts. They were literally having a social reproduction crisis and also getting shot at, and you can only kill so much of your own labor force before you don't have one anymore. So, um, uh, you know, I I do see the acceleration there actually could go in very strange ways, um, in ways that I could be good for nobody, um, so it's an interesting thing to see. Let's hope that the unions get pretty creative, because we've already talked, we've hit on a lot of structural issues that need to be addressed. Kellen, what's your final remarks and we'll close out with you.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think that, um, going to labor notes allowed me to get a good context of where I fit into labor movement. I hope everybody can get a chance to go to something like this, where you're connecting with, um you know people from across the world. Um, I think that, um, you know we. It showed me that I have a lot of work to do, um, but it re-energized me. Um, it was awesome to meet a bunch of people that I had only ever met in group chats in person. Um, but, um, yeah, I think that, in terms of like wrapping up everything we've talked about, there's a lot to galvanize people. There's a lot to a lot of mechanisms that we can use to bring those people in, and I think it's worth looking at what we can do to be better as a labor movement.
Speaker 1:basically, and I think that's a good place. I would tell everyone go to the conferences, labor notes. Even even if you have to go to any NFL CAO conference, it's still worth doing. Go somewhere, wear a mask, yeah, show up, learn your stuff. And I think Johns also, don't be caught up in the superficial politics of this. And one thing I will tell you about my union is I was complaining about how conservative it is, but I will say this I'm sure there are plenty of bigots in my union. I know there's plenty of bigots in my union, but when it comes to workers' actions that we agree on, that does not come up. And they do ultimately take the right side because it's in their interest to do so. So don't be distracted by that when organizing. If someone's like you know, like a conservative flamethrower trying to like weaponize a union against himself, you're going to have to do something about that, but most people aren't.
Speaker 2:Well, and there's that can be tough for those of us who came from like democratic electoral organizing which is so much like a team sport, and so whenever you're transitioning and kind of like unlearning that and deconstructing that and you're doing this organizing model, you're like, oh shoot, I've been working side to side, side by side, with the Zionists for three years, but we're still organizing together, even though we are like diametrically opposed on this huge issue, because we have to, we have to advocate for our patients and we agree on something, so we're going to move on it, you know? Um, so, yeah, I think that that's a really important point.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, thank you guys. People should, uh, uh, if you can join your union, join your union because you being in your union can make your union not shitty, and that's the thing that I would say. And for those of you who can't join a union, you can always try to start one. Not going to say it's going to work, but I find I found lately that there's been more growth than I've expected. We just had two more graduate student unions happen, despite the fact that it looked like our state was going to go full Wisconsin on them and ultimately didn't. Because even the moderate Republicans are a little bit afraid of losing. Republicans are a little bit afraid of losing the. They realized they couldn't legally carve out the police union from all the union restrictions and then they got scared. So so, yeah, so we've seen some victories here, even in the reddest of States. So I hope you all don't have faith and continue organizing. Thank you both so much for coming on, and this will be coming out as a special episode very soon, thank you, thanks, eric.
Speaker 3:Good night, Kellen Good night.
Speaker 2:Thanks.
