Working Life Podcast

Episode 160: I love the bosses who wring their hands when workers try to unionize, the ones who say, “don’t you love us? Aren’t we good to you”? That isn’t the point. Everyone needs a union so workers together don’t ever have to rely on just good feelings from employers. Which is what I talk about with Cameron Coleman, a bakery worker at Grand Central Bakery who is a key organizer in a unionizing campaign which comes to a head tomorrow with a vote. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast I also chat with two progressive candidates who are running in Democratic primaries with the ultimate goal of winning a general election in Republican-held seats—Jennifer Christie, who is a candidate in Indiana’s 5th Congressional district, and Jason Butler who is campaigning to win the nomination in North Carolina’s 2nd Congressional District. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast -- Jonathan Tasini Follow me on Twitter @jonathantasini Sign up for The Working Life Podcast at:

Episode 159: Twenty years ago, thousands of environmentalists, union leaders and members, and lots of other progressive forces swept through the streets of Seattle to confront the global corporate beast known as the World Trade Organization, the WTO. They were met by the Seattle police force, buttressed by all sorts of other police and security operations, who tear gassed, pepper sprayed, assaulted and arrested people who were simply trying to exercise their free speech rights. Today, I am going to revisit that mass uprising with Lori Wallach, the director of Global Trade Watch. I also talk to a young progressive Democrat who is running against an entrenched Democrat in Illinois -- Jonathan Tasini Follow me on Twitter @jonathantasini Sign up for The Working Life Podcast at: www.workinglife.org Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.tasini.3

Episode 158: Hypocrisy probably makes it into the top three characteristics, alas, of the vast majority of politicians. That isn’t a reason not to participate in the electoral process but it’s just one of those cautionary, red lights to keep an eye out for. To wit: all those politicians who eloquently talk about the importance of unions—mostly that talk comes when a politician wants a union endorsement or a check—but they get very weird when their own staffers try to unionize. So that’s what makes the unionizing effort among staffers at the New York City City Council something to watch—partly because it could set a standard for the whole country. Zara Nasir, a City Council staffer and a main organizer of the unionizing effort, joins me for a chat about the campaign. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast I also revisit the race for the Democratic nomination for New York’s 16th Congressional district, which has drawn another great progressive candidate who is challenging the odious cor

Episode 157: Deval Patrick has become very, very rich since leaving the post of Massachusetts governor. That’s what happens when you become a managing director of Bain Capital, one of the behemoths in the private equity industry. Patrick became rich working for a company—being a managing director of a company—that has screwed thousands of workers, especially 30,000 workers for Toys R Us who don’t have a job today because Bain Capital, with Patrick in the leadership, drove that company into liquidation. I talk about Bain Capital’s role in the demise of Toys R Us with Jim Baker, executive director of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast Over a decade ago, I started reading about something called a “Financial Transactions Tax”. It’s often also called a “Tobin Tax” after its creator, economist James Tobin, and it originally focused on taxing currency speculation. But a broader idea is popular: each time a Wall Street trade is made, a very, very, v

Episode 156: Anyone remember that TV advertisement that Merrill Lynch used to have, with the big bull trotting along a beach? I’m reincarnating that bull today for a pretty simple discussion: what is economic progress and how do we have economic growth without destroying the planet? Evelyn Astor, an economic and social policy advisor at the International Trade Union Confederation, joins me to talk about better ideas to measure what a healthy economy looks like for regular people, not just investors and billionaires. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast Then, Brianna Wu stops by with an update on her primary campaign to unseat a corporate Democrat in the 8th Congressional District in Massachusetts. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast -- Jonathan Tasini Follow me on Twitter @jonathantasini Sign up for The Working Life Podcast at: www.workinglife.org Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.tasini.3

IKEA, Volkswagen, Nestle and Airbus are pretty different companies but all of them have a two-faced corporate Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that explains a lot about the oppression workers face in the U.S. South. Across the pond, all those companies have a pretty reasonable posture towards unions and workers trying to unionize. But just let them come hunting over in the U.S. South to do business and, bingo, they turn into your garden variety, vicious, union busting, corporate pigs. Cathy Feingold, the AFL-CIO’s international director, talks with me about an amazing new report tracing the European corporate marauding down south. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast Then, Kim Williams joins the show to talk about her Democratic primary challenge against a long-time Blue Dog-Corporate Democrat in the 16th Congressional district in California. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast -- Jonathan Tasini Follow me on Twitter @jonathantasini Sign up for The Working Life Po

Episode 154: The Gordon Gekko boast in the fictional movie “Wall Street” that “Greed is Good” is really an organizing principle for the financial vultures who rob the country day after day. Today, you will hear two tales of greed and robbery by hedge fund and private equity vultures. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast First, it’s Paul Singer, the CEO of a hedge fund called Elliott Management, who has a net worth of $3.5 billion, is a political buddy of the Koch brothers and is a funder of climate change deniers. As Beth Allen, the communications director of the Communications Workers of America, explains in our chat Singer now has his sights set on screwing thousands of CWA members who work for AT&T by trying to extort money from AT&T. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast Then, I circle back with Eileen Appelbaum, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, who was on the program just three weeks ago digging into how private equity

Episode 153: EI’m in a politics mood today, having nothing to do with impeachment or the bizarre spectacle of a previous Democratic presidential candidate going seriously off the rails and accusing with no evidence, in McCarthyite fashion, another Democrat of being some sort of asset of Russia…I mean, crazy shit fills up my news dump every day. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast So as an antidote, I figured I’d bring to you two more progressive women candidates running for Congress against two corporate male Democrats: Eva Putzova in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District and Rebecca Parson in Washington State’s 6th Congressional District. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast

Episode 152: The running joke about Whole Foods is its nickname: Whole Paycheck. But there’s a far darker side to the touchy-feely, organic feel of Whole Foods than the higher prices—the exploitation of workers everywhere along its supply chains where workers labor in slave-like conditions, and are abused day after day, especially women workers. Oxfam is out with a devastating report on Whole Foods—and I talk with an Oxfam expert about what the report found. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast Then, among the politicians no one would miss, ever, on the political scene is Eliot Engel who voted for the Iraq War, has worked to deregulate Wall Street and is a staunch mouthpiece for the most right-wing, racist governments Israel has produced. Thankfully, he’s got a serious primary challenger, Jamaal Bowman, a middle school principal and educator who grew up in public housing in New York City. Jamaal joins me to talk about his campaign. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingL

Episode 151: I would never have said it before today but it turns out health insurance companies aren’t the most evil players in the healthcare industry. Don’t freak out—health insurance companies are bad, and they are bankrupting millions of people, and the country. But it turns out even worse than the health insurers are some big mega private equity vultures who are gobbling up big pieces of medical services and socking millions of people with surprise medical bills—and I’m going to go in depth on this story, which is not being covered anywhere else, with Eileen Appelbaum, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and one of the great experts on private equity. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast Then, I’m kicking back into gear with regular segments with great progressives running for office. Today, I chat with Rachel Ventura who is running in the Democratic primary in Illinois’ 11th Congressional district against a corporate Democrat who is awash in Wall Stree

Episode 150: Teachers are on the ramparts again. This time in Chicago where the members of the Chicago Teachers Union are gearing up for a possible strike if they can’t get a decent contract to improve wages, win a hard cap on class size and increase staffing. To talk more about the struggle for a good contract, I’m joined by Andrea Parker, an English teacher and union vice president, and Robin Blake Boose, a first grade teacher. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast I, then, take a look at what’s up in Ohio: You would think that people there would be ready to revolt, to overthrow the oligarchs and the elites and the corporate raiders who have effectively strip-mined the economy, destroying factory jobs and making sure new jobs don’t have decent wages because those same raiders fight unions tooth and nail. Even though Ohio voted for Trump, the people re-elected incumbent Senator Sherrod Brown, a progressive, clear populist, quite comfortably in 2018. Populism works. I talk with Amy

Episode 149: A few weeks ago, I talked about the vast pay discrimination against women who work for supermarket chain Fred Meyer: 2/3 of women are paid $3.70 less than men doing essentially the same job. The union representing the workers—UFCW Local 555—is in hard, brass knuckles bargaining with Fred Meyer to end this. But in the meantime, just this past Sunday, because of the company’s recalcitrance, the union has called for a boycott of all Fred Meyer stores. I talk about the gender pay discrimination and the boycott with Jeff Anderson, the secretary treasurer of Local 555. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast Then, there is no difference between the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers, the Carnegies of the last century and their corporate cousins, Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or those folks who run Uber: companies just do everything possible to exploit workers, rip them off, take more and more profits made by the hard work of millions of workers and use those profits to make a few people r

Episode 148: Take your shirt off. Or your pants. Almost certainly those garments and others were made in a faraway country, by people making pennies who work in horrendous conditions. I think we all know that when we are told to think about it—but we don’t think about it on a daily basis. I talk with Sonia Mistry of the Solidarity Center about the squalid, dangerous conditions in Bangladesh faced by garment workers—and a fire that recently made thousands homeless. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast Then, I enter into the land of “anti-deferral accounting”—that just rolls off the lips, right? Well, it might not be the most user-friendly lingo but it could add up to a trillion and a half more dollars to shore up Social Security—coming from the pockets of the richest of the richest. Steve Wamhoff, the director of federal tax policy at the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, explains it all. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast -- Jonathan Tasini F

Episode 147: Once upon a time, if you got a job that lasted a long time, you’d be a permanent worker, maybe after a short probationary period. Not so much anymore with the plague forcing people to take “temp” jobs—the kind of job that is increasing in the past few years, outpacing full-time permanent work, and also spreading a lot more to so-called “blue collar” jobs. I explore this with Laura Padin, senior staff attorney with the National Employment Law Project and author of a new important report called “Lasting Solutions for America’s Temporary Workers”. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast My regular listeners may recall that whenever the topic of a Green New Deal comes up, I gripe about the way in which environmentalists and politicians so easily promise to take care of workers. Don’t worry, people say, there will be a “Just Transition” for workers in the fossil fuel industries, which would mean income support and job retraining. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/Workin

Episode 146: Back in the first half of the 20th Century, there was a big vibrant union, the United Electrical Workers, the UE. It had 100,000s of members—until the McCarthy era anti-communist hysteria swept the country, triggering eviscerating attacks against the UE by the government, companies and other labor unions. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast Today, the union is still one of the most progressive unions in the nation. I talk with the union’s president, Peter Knowlton about its recent decision to endorse Bernie Sanders for president and declare strong support for a Green New Deal. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast And a new attack against Social Security has been unleashed—this one by the occupant of the Oval Office who wants to cut the contribution rate for Social Security. It’s a really bad idea, and yet another attempt by the right-wing to destroy one of the most successful domestic programs in the nation’s history. I’m joined by Linda Bene

Episode 145: We are taught as kids to keep your word. If you promised not to do something bad or your promised to do something good, we learned you have to keep your promise otherwise people pretty quickly don’t trust you. Which explains why most people just don’t trust politicians—like politicians who are supposed to be your allies and who promised thousands of people they would get a decent pension and, then, vote to take it away. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast And, so, "see you in court" is the cry we begin with. Stacy Chamberlain, the executive director of AFSCME Council 75, gives the lowdown on a critical lawsuit to challenge a bill--passed by a Democratic super majority and signed by the Democratic governor—that would rob workers of a big slice of their hard-earned pensions. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast And, then, shocker—Wal-Mart is up to some sleazy stuff yet again. Wal-Mart and other big corporations, far from the headlines, relentl

Episode 144: Sometimes CEOs and the economic elites do stuff that is so transparently absurd that it sort of makes me laugh. Add to that list the letter, “A statement on the purpose of a corporation”, released this past week by the Business Roundtable, signed by a couple of hundred CEOs, promising to be, well, nice to us—better wages, better treatment, better community efforts, all done with the help of the glorious free market. I could go down that list and point to, one after the other, all the horrendous policies those CEOs make happen—not to mention the huge riches they pay themselves at the expense of shareholders and workers, none of which they offered in the letter to cut back on for the betterment of human kind. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast But, better yet, this week’s episode features two of those hypocritical companies. Wal-Mart arms many people with guns—and teachers are ramping up a campaign to empty Wal-Mart’s shelves of the weapons that could end up being used

Episode 143: Working on in a hog processing plant is one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet—and it’s about to get a whole lot worse, evoking “The Jungle” of the early 20th Century. In a classic profits-over-people move, a new regulation is about to hit which would eliminate any speed restrictions on how fast hog carcasses come hurtling down the assembly line. As it is about to become law—more than a year after I first talked about the topic in a May 2018 episode—I bring back Debbie Berkowitz, director of the worker safety and health program at the National Employment Law Project, to dig into the attack against these workers. Support the podcast here: https://www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast Then, you knew it along—hiking the minimum wage does not usher in an apocalypse for businesses, despite the whining and moaning of the CEO class. The opposite is true. With the latest state minimum wage hike at the end of 2018 to $15 an hour in New York State in the books, I talk with Yannet Lathrop, policy anal

Episode 142: Elizabeth Warren’s proposal for a wealth tax in the country is a potential game-changer. It would apply only to households with a net worth of $50 million or more—roughly the wealthiest 75,000 households, or the top 0.1%. those super rich would pay an annual 2% tax on every dollar of net worth above $50 million and a 3% tax on every dollar of net worth above $1 billion. I dig into the idea of a wealth tax with David Gamage, a professor of law at Indiana University and a tax law expert who has just written the first draft of an article called, “Five Key Research Findings On Wealth Taxation for the Super Rich”. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast Then, I look at a fight for equal pay by women in Nepal who work in the construction industry. For that chat, I welcome to the show Feyzi Ismail who, among her various posts, teaches at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London where she also is a senior fellow in the Department of Developmental Studi

Episode 141: It’s just basically a good thing when good, new, progressive people run in primaries against incumbents. Even if that incumbent isn’t a horrible human being and has a decent voting record—compared of course to the rest of the politicians out there. Today we get to hear from a darn good candidate, Albert Lee, who’s taking on a long-time incumbent. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast And, guess what? Women are still paid a lot less than men—I take a look at how grocery chain Fred Meyer is ripping off women in a chat with Tom Chamberlain, president of the Oregon AFL-CIO. Support the podcast here: www.patreon.com/WorkingLifePodcast And, lastly, since the Federal Reserve Board is wrapping up its July meeting today and won’t be meeting again until September and is likely to be announcing a cut in interest rates—as I record this the official announcement has not come but the markets have already “priced in” an interest rate cut—I thought it would be useful to re-run the re