This is the story of what happens (and what's happening) when the American workforce tries to get a seat at the table. Our guides to strikes, unions and the labor movement are Kim Kelly, journalist and author of Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor, Eric Loomis professor of History at the University of Rhode Island and author of A History of America in Ten Strikes and our friend Andrew Swan, an 8th Grade Social Studies teacher in Newton, MA among many other things.
Transcript
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:02] Nick, there's a certain film that I did not encounter till much too late in life. Largely, I believe, because Disney films of all kinds, live action and animated alike, simply struggled to thrive in the McCarthy house, with two significant exceptions.
Nick Capodice: [00:00:19] All right, I have a handful of questions here, but what are those exceptions?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:24] 101 Dalmatians. The primary reason I thought that Scotland Yard was a farm until I [00:00:30] was a grown adult, and Robinhood, the primary reason my first ever crush was on an animated fox.
Nick Capodice: [00:00:36] Oo de lally. Golly, what an admission. Hanna, we're just going to. Let's just leave that right there.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:42] But the movie I'm talking about. Which, given my outsized love for musical theater and newspapers, surely would have been in regular rotation, is Newsies.
Newsies: [00:00:56] If we don't show papes, then nobody sells papes.
Nick Capodice: [00:00:59] Oh, [00:01:00] we are in the same boat on that one, McCarthy. But once I found it, it sure found me.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:05] Now you really can make a musical about anything and everything.
Nick Capodice: [00:01:10] Chess, for example.
Chess: The Musical: [00:01:12] One town's very like another when your head's down over your pieces, brother.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:17] I was once in a musical called Urinetown. Not you are in town, but urine like pee.
[00:01:24] I run the only toilet in this part of town, you see. So if you gotta.
Urinetown: [00:01:29] Go, [00:01:30] you got to go through me.
Nick Capodice: [00:01:32] Billy the Kid and the green baize vampire. What's that? Uh, it's mostly about snooker. Kind of like Margaret Thatcher, too, but. Yeah, snooker.
Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire: [00:01:44] Billy the Kid and the green baize vampire.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:50] All right, but, Newsies, it is about a strike.
Newsies: [00:01:54] Just because we only make pennies. Don't give nobody the right to rub our noses [00:02:00] in it.
Eric Loomis: [00:02:00] It doesn't matter. You can't just strike.
[00:02:04]
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:05] Specifically, it is about a bunch of kids newsboys in New York City in 1899, who were essentially protesting the cost of a bundle of papers.
Nick Capodice: [00:02:14] And this really happened, right?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:16] It really did. The Newsboys strike was a real thing. William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer never heard of him. They were news magnates who started charging newsboys an extra $0.10 to buy a bundle of 100 papers. [00:02:30]
Newsies: [00:02:30] Do we roll over and let Pulitzer pick our pockets?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:33] But the cost to the reader, like the cost to buy a single paper from these kids, was only $0.01. It had been before and after the price hike. So these boys, who were mostly from immigrant families with very little income, were bringing home less cash. So they went on strike. Strike. It is a whole thing. Watch the movie, go see the show, read a book. But circulation plummeted.
Nick Capodice: [00:02:58] Headlines don't sell papers. Mccarthy. [00:03:00] Newsies sell papers.
Newsies: [00:03:01] They can't just change the rules when they feel like it. No, we do the work.
Newsies: [00:03:05] So we get a say.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:10] Uh. But, Nick. As you might remember, this strike did not end in a perfect victory.
Nick Capodice: [00:03:21] Oh, yeah. The kids wanted the price of the bundles lowered, and Hearst and Pulitzer were like, uh, no, no, we're basically American royalty, [00:03:30] and we do what we want.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:31] Yeah. The strike ended. Instead, in a compromise, a bundle of 100 papers would remain at $0.60. But if the boys had any papers left at the end of the day, the news outlets would buy them back. And here's why I bring this up. This strike, though flashy, sometimes violent, publicly effective, painful for the news magnates [00:04:00] and interesting enough to warrant a Disney musical starring Christian Bale did not succeed the way it was intended. And that, my friend, is something I want you to keep in mind in today's episode when it gets to the point of employee versus employer, success is a relative term. This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: [00:04:25] I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:25] And today we're talking strikes.
Nick Capodice: [00:04:34] All [00:04:30] right, Hannah, we got to fess up here. We did not come up with this episode. Our beloved friend did.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:42] Sing us in Swan.
Andrew Swan: [00:04:46] My name is Andrew Swan. I'm an eighth grade social studies teacher in Newton, Massachusetts. And, uh, this winter we had a kind of an epic sort of event. And I thought, you know what? This is a civics thing. Found out and [00:05:00] and nixed numbers and let them know, hey, we're in the middle of a big, uh, teacher strike here in, in Newton. And, uh, I don't know, you want to do an episode about it.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:08] Leave it to a teacher to turn his own strike into a teachable civics moment. Which, by the way, Andrew is already doing for his students.
Andrew Swan: [00:05:15] I can feast on this for years. Sometimes it's a struggle just to make government seem relevant for students. And I've got years of eighth graders who are going to be coming up where I can say, hey, remember that strike, remember what that was like? Yeah, that's [00:05:30] about civics. That's about budget. That's about laws. That's about people getting elected. Uh, that's about people who aren't even elected.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:38] Okay. So when Andrew says a big teacher strike, he means a big teacher strike.
News Archival: [00:05:45] Students in Newton were home from school for the fifth day as their teachers strike for higher pay and better working conditions. This strike is one of the longest of its kind in recent Massachusetts history. Picketing outside the statehouse this morning, teachers argued.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:59] So [00:06:00] I already told you that a successful strike is not necessarily, or often a big victory. We'll get into that more later. For now, there's another big, important thing to remember about strikes. It's a.
Andrew Swan: [00:06:13] Mess. Someone told me a strike is supposed to hurt, and that makes some sense to me now. A strike does hurt.
Nick Capodice: [00:06:21] Yeah. You know, this is something major that came out of our conversation with Andrew when he says a strike hurts. I really think he means [00:06:30] everybody. A strike is not something that most people actively want. It is an act of last resort.
Andrew Swan: [00:06:38] This community will not be the same. For a long time it was basically pushing the big red button. It was the nuclear option. And so it took so long for unions to even, like, discuss it. I've been working here for 20 something years. It's been the strike word's been thrown around before, but we never got really even close.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:56] We're going to hear from Andrew throughout this episode, but let's [00:07:00] stick with this idea, this act of last resort idea for a moment, because I'm just realizing that we actually haven't said what a strike is. So I'm going to introduce another guest.
Kim Kelly: [00:07:11] So the strike is is kind of the, uh, the nuclear option in a way. Nobody, nobody wants to go on strike.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:19] This is Kim Kelly.
Kim Kelly: [00:07:20] I'm a journalist and author based in Philadelphia. I am a labor reporter first and foremost. And my most recent [00:07:30] book, well, my first book, Fight Like Hell The Untold History of American Labor, uh, just came out in paperback this past summer.
Nick Capodice: [00:07:38] Okay. And judging from the name of the book, Kim is pro labor movement, right?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:43] She sure is. And we'll talk more about that point of view in just a moment. But we have to define strikes first.
Kim Kelly: [00:07:51] A strike is when a group of workers decide to collectively withhold their labor. And the less nerdy way of saying that is essentially, [00:08:00] folks don't go into work that day or the next day or until their demands, usually in the context of a union contract, are met.
News Archival: [00:08:13] For the first time ever, letter carriers went on strike.
News Archival: [00:08:16] We cannot take it any longer. Either they give us what we should have, or we will stay out on strike until hell freezes over all the way. For the next few days.
News Archival: [00:08:26] We'll be carrying picket signs. If they want to put me in jail, [00:08:30] put me in jail. But they haven't got a jail big enough to put all of us in.
Kim Kelly: [00:08:39] You know, you hit the bricks. Take this job and shove it. Not working here no more.
Nick Capodice: [00:08:43] I want to ask. Kim says that a strike usually happens in the context of a union. Does that mean you don't have to have a union in order to strike?
Kim Kelly: [00:08:53] So you don't have to be part of a union to go on strike? That's the most typical format we see, [00:09:00] because there are specific legal protections that unionized workers do have. It's called protected concerted activity. If you go on strike as a part of, uh, your union's negotiation process for your union contract, you can't be fired. You can't, you know, face retaliation for that legally. That's not to say it doesn't happen, but if you're in a group of your coworkers who aren't unionized, still have a reason to strike, you have some demands that aren't being met. Your workplace is unsafe. [00:09:30] Uh, there is an incident that wasn't addressed properly. You can still walk out. It just might be a little riskier because you don't have the same legal protections that unionized workers do.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:40] So let's start with the big picture labor law. People in the United States have been fighting for better conditions, better pay, etc. for a long, long time. But real serious labor laws did not come into play in the US until really the 1930s. Fdr was president, Americans were getting [00:10:00] a new deal, and bam, here comes Social Security, minimum wage, overtime, child labor laws, the weekend. A lot of that came from the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. But for the purposes of this episode, we want to focus on the National Labor Relations Act. That's 1935. That was the one that gave us protected concerted activity.
Nick Capodice: [00:10:27] And that is what Kim mentioned earlier. The law that means [00:10:30] you can't be fired or retaliated against. Right.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:33] And the no retaliation thing that didn't exactly take immediately. I'm going to get into that. I do just want to mention, though, Kim said, that a strike is when you withhold your labor and the Nlra, the National Labor Relations Act protects that. It calls it the right to strike, but it also restricts that, right?
Nick Capodice: [00:10:54] As in like you can strike but you can't, I don't know, destroy [00:11:00] all the hats in the hat factory.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:02] That is actually a perfect example. Violence and or destruction are not lawful forms of strike. They make a strike unprotected, meaning you can be fired. You can be retaliated against. Other things that make a strike unlawful, preventing people from entering or leaving a workplace or staging a sit down, a sit down. You show up to work and you just sit there not [00:11:30] working. Anything that deprives your employer of their property in some way and their business is their property. The Supreme Court decided that is not a protected strike. There's also something called a sick out. Tons of people call in sick and a slow down. You do your job, you just do it really slowly. Slow downs are not protected by the Nlra. Sick outs are a little more complicated, but lots of states do prohibit [00:12:00] them. Uh, other things you go on strike to try to force your employer to stop doing business with some other employer. That would be unlawful. And then, um, one big thing, you or your employer can put a no strike provision in your union contract that would make certain strikes, but not all strikes unlawful.
Nick Capodice: [00:12:22] Wait, but why would anybody agree to that?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:25] Oh. All right, well, for one thing, it is a standard [00:12:30] clause. In fact, the Nlra requires that unions discuss this no strike provision during contract negotiations. So sometimes what ends up happening is that there is a no strike clause, but it's got caveats like, okay, we won't strike unless x, Y or Z. Um, but to really answer your question, why would anyone agree with that? Ending a negotiation, getting to a contract? It [00:13:00] is difficult. It is time consuming and it is the goal. So concessions do happen a lot.
Nick Capodice: [00:13:09] Okay, so you have a right to strike, but if you want to do it with guaranteed legal protection, it's actually a very narrow thing.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:19] That said, and this is a big one, the Nlra does leave one door wide open. If your workplace has really dangerous conditions [00:13:30] or is engaging in labor practices that are super unfair or in violation of your contract, you can have a protected strike. Even if you have, you know, a no strike clause.
Nick Capodice: [00:13:40] That one does feel pretty significant.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:42] But Nick, here's the big kicker illegal strikes still happen and I'm not going to bury the lead. The Newton teacher's strike Andrew Swan's union strike was one such strike. But I'm getting ahead of myself [00:14:00] because for a long time, pretty much all strikes were illegal.
Kim Kelly: [00:14:05] For very, very long time. Striking was just outright seen as an illegal activity. I mean, you would have, you know, strike breakers and cops showing up with a picket lines, and you'd have people, workers who were on strike, being arrested and thrown into jail or assaulted.
News Archival: [00:14:20] The industrial dispute has now reached an extremely serious position. The strikers, numbering over 4000 under cover of darkness, attacked the mills.
Kim Kelly: [00:14:27] Like it was. They could get pretty ugly.
News Archival: [00:14:30] The [00:14:30] authorities were eventually compelled to use firearms. The ambulance company of the Rhode Island National Guard set up a field hospital, which was quickly working to capacity. The Moshassuck Cemetery in the Central Falls saw some of the fiercest fighting.
Kim Kelly: [00:14:42] It really took so much organizing to get to a point where unions were even legal and strikes like having that protected concerted activity, uh, kind of that right enshrined. That was a really, really, really big deal. And it took a lot [00:15:00] of work to get there. It has nothing to do with the Constitution. It was centuries, lifetimes of struggle that got us to that point.
Nick Capodice: [00:15:07] Okay. Yes. Give me the history. How did we get to this idea of protection for workers who strike?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:14] I'm going to bring in our third guest here.
Eric Loomis: [00:15:16] Well, you begin to see strikes in the 1830s there smaller ones before that. But the first strikes, they're really matter in some ways in American history are in the 1830s.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:25] This is Eric Loomis.
Eric Loomis: [00:15:27] History professor at the University of Rhode Island and the [00:15:30] author of A History of America in Ten Strikes.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:32] I want to take a moment right now to flag that over the course of the interviews that I did for this episode, I talked to people who have a perspective about the labor movement. Both Kim and Eric have their own versions of that, so I asked Eric outright what he thought about that, given the fact that being pro-labor or pro-union is seen as a Partizan stance, and listeners to this show would hear partizanship in that perspective. [00:16:00]
Eric Loomis: [00:16:00] Well, uh, that's a great question. I mean, I think that, uh, certainly labor historians are quite likely to be on the side of the labor movement. Right? They want to see the labor movement succeed. And, um, I mean, look like we all get interested in what we study based on our personal life experiences. And I don't really see any way to completely avoid some kind of political perspective, because even if you take the position on whatever it is that you talk about or work on that you know, I stay out of the politics and I just, you know, talk [00:16:30] about things as they are or whatever that is implicitly an acceptance of the politics as they are.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:35] Eric did add that he is an historian, and he finds evidence of what happened and writes about it.
Eric Loomis: [00:16:42] You know, that's different than being a hack. Um, you know, I'm not creating histories that are just like, fulfill my personal political positions or, or anything like that. That would be bad. Um, but at the same time, I think that when we're talking about something like the labor movement, which is inherently seen as Partizan to talk about the labor movement [00:17:00] or to be a pro-union does not necessarily mean that you want to destroy capitalism or something like that. I mean, you know, in our society, whatever 1st May think of, of the system of capitalism, um, in our society, it is in the interest of workers to keep their jobs and keep their factory open because they need to get paid whatever.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:16] Way you cut it, though, the Pew Research Center says that 75% of Democrats view unions positively, and 61% of Republicans view unions negatively. Unions and strikes and the labor movement [00:17:30] are not exactly a cold button political issue. And I will take this opportunity to also disclose that Nick and I are both part of a union Sag-Aftra. Uh, and I disclose this because people do feel a certain way about workers unionizing and striking. It is a subject with strong partizan divides. So if you're listening to this and you're like, this sounds pro-union and that makes it political, I understand [00:18:00] why you see it that way. And Nick and I are just going to do our best to understand how it all works. And then I will talk a bit more about the politics later on. Okay. Moving on. This whole walking off the job thing, if you, like me, were once an eight year old girl in New England with a large collection of children's historical fiction novels, well, you already know where we're headed.
Eric Loomis: [00:18:24] Probably the first major labor movement that [00:18:30] really begins to, uh, gain attention is that of the Lowell Mill girls who were, uh, a bunch of mostly young women, uh, who are laboring in an experimental town called Lowell, Massachusetts, which was set up to kind of provide these young women with education. And they were recruiting young women who came off of farms and things like that, not some immigrants or some people at really struggling to survive and would take any wages. And because of this, you had this weird juxtaposition where you had, uh, women who had a [00:19:00] certain sense of cultural power, but at the same time that the working conditions were world. And so they begin to protest and they begin to form unions around this.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:07] So you can go and read Lyddie for the 17th time, or you can see if your mom finally threw away your Dear America collection, featuring the particularly dog eared, so far from home colon diary of Mary Driscoll, an Irish Mill Girl, Lowell, Massachusetts, 1847. Or you can take my word for it. The conditions were bad, and the girls made a big stink and got a bunch of press and. [00:19:30]
Eric Loomis: [00:19:33] And it it doesn't really succeed. And the Lowell experiment kind of fails in the face of massive competition from, uh, other factories who were happy to employ the most desperate workers at the lowest possible wages.
Nick Capodice: [00:19:46] You know, I don't really factor in their failure when I think of the Lowell mill strikes. There's such a, like, buzzword catchall for unions and striking. Yeah.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:58] And, you know, that's actually a [00:20:00] really good point because you're talking about the impact of the moment itself. You know, historically or in terms of, you know, the image of strikes or the power of the worker. And and when you look at the long arc of striking and labor movements in America, these Lowell Mill girls were an example of workers, young single women, very vulnerable workers taking a stand against someone in power. I should say they did kind of get [00:20:30] something out of it. You know, in addition to my devotional attention as a child.
Eric Loomis: [00:20:34] It does, for instance, force the state of Massachusetts to investigate the working conditions in the mills. And in about 1845, which for the time was, um, you know, remarkable. Okay.
Nick Capodice: [00:20:45] So I know we've got a long way to go till we get to the 1930s, but are there any real successes along the way?
Eric Loomis: [00:20:52] So probably 1865, um, in the steel industry, you have these guys [00:21:00] who were called Steel Puddlers, which are basically like dudes working with molten iron. You know, this is pretty dangerous work. And they're able to they're able to strike and win a union contract, uh, which is the first, like, real union contract in American history. It's not a big strike or a huge, huge thing at the time. Uh, but that's an early example of that.
Nick Capodice: [00:21:21] And I take it this was more of the exception than the rule.
Eric Loomis: [00:21:25] It's very difficult in the 19th century for workers to win strikes. There are many, [00:21:30] many, many strikes. Um, and workers do win at the local level sometimes. Um, a lot of these are around things like control over the work process, like, can I do my job my way, or are you going to tell me how to do my job? And that's a lot of these battles. It's hard to teach today because it's like today's population is not used to having any autonomy at work. Right. And so the fact that this used to be a thing is something that's hard for people to imagine, but most of [00:22:00] the big strikes end up being losses really, during the 19th century, like the like the largest strikes.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:04] This is not to say there were not other successes, but truth be told, striking could be way more dangerous than the working conditions themselves.
Eric Loomis: [00:22:15] For much of the 19th century. In the early 20th century, the the arm of the government, the police force, where they're talking about the US military, the National Guard or state militias or local police forces or privatized police groups like Pinkertons and many others would [00:22:30] engage in open violence against workers. Uh, and the courts would back them up on this. And so, uh, it absolutely was dangerous to go on strike. I mean, you know, strikers killed, um, people would take, you know, random shots into groups of strikers and, you know, kill 1 or 2 of them. Um, you would see in 1877 and 1894, the US government, the US military call is called out by the president of the United States to break up railroad strikes. Um, there are so many examples of [00:23:00] police killing workers during this era. I mean, it's incredibly common. Um, and so, yeah, it really is not until the 20th century. And, uh, really, there is still significant violence against strikers, murderous violence by employers up until about 1937. So it really takes a long time for that to be sort of cleared out.
Nick Capodice: [00:23:23] It hold up 1937. That's two years after strikes became federally protected action. 1935 [00:23:30] was the Nlra.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:23:31] Here we have stumbled into an oft repeated truism of American law your rights and protections don't mean much unless someone enforces them.
Eric Loomis: [00:23:42] The last major piece of American labor violence from employers is in 1937, something called Memorial Day massacre. Um, where a bunch of steel, uh, owners decide that, um, they are going to fight against what becomes later the United Steelworkers of America from organizing their factories, [00:24:00] uh, and, uh, outside of Chicago on the South Side. They just opened fire and about ten, ten workers were killed. It's actually filmed. It was.
Nick Capodice: [00:24:07] Filmed.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:24:08] Uh, it gets better. Which is to say, it gets worse.
News Archival: [00:24:12] 70,000 steelworkers strike for union recognition. Seven are killed on war. On the labor front, these amazing, exclusive Paramount Pictures show the battle raging between the forces of law and 1500 hot tempered workers.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:24:24] Paramount news had a cameraman there that day, and he did indeed capture the police, [00:24:30] opening fire on union organizers, and Paramount suppressed the film. A coroner ruled the deaths justifiable homicide. No police were ever prosecuted, and then later on, but not too much later on, a reporter uncovered the film, reported on it. There was a Senate investigation. They screened the footage and there was national outrage.
Nick Capodice: [00:24:55] National outrage, sure. But it sounds like even having [00:25:00] a federal law for protected concerted activity didn't actually provide protected, concerted activity. So it.
Eric Loomis: [00:25:08] Really took. And then with the courts changing as well, after FDR's attempt to pack the courts, it really changes the entire tenor of what employers can do. They're certainly not happy about it. But then what happens is that World War Two takes place. And because the government needs. Smooth production during World War Two without strikes. [00:25:30] They basically do this complicated thing where they get workers and employers to all agree that the employers will effectively allow the unions to exist, even in companies where they didn't have unions before. And this is how this is how the super duper anti-union companies like Ford or the steel industry gets organized in exchange for workers saying we won't strike during the war. So it's that that moment of but yes, the FDR, the court packing, but then World War Two, and then that creates the conditions [00:26:00] by which you have really the peak of the labor movement in the mid 20th century.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:03] Okay. So an example of where they did not have unions before the Ford Motor Company, the whole steel industry, extremely anti-union places that were essentially strong armed into allowing unions to exist. But also part of the deal was, well, you can exist, sure, but you need to agree not to strike while there's a war on.
Nick Capodice: [00:26:26] All right. So both national and global shifts because, you know, [00:26:30] hello, World War two. But also Eric mentioned FDR trying to pack the courts, which is shorthand for the president didn't like what the judiciary was doing. So he said, all right, I'm going to dilute you with people who agree with me. So the judiciary said, no, wait, don't do that. We like being small and powerful, but okay, we'll pivot our politics for a bit. Correct.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:53] Pressure on the court system meant that real legal protections could actually happen. So during this period of [00:27:00] the labor movement, you had certain huge unions working hard to not just have power in the workplace, but to have power in the government as well, to get laws passed.
Eric Loomis: [00:27:13] They wanted to play a role in the federal government, in the state government, to pass laws that were pro-worker. Um, and the success of that is mixed. Um, in the end, the labor movement is never truly strong enough in the United States to do that in the way that say, it'll happen [00:27:30] in Britain under the Labor Party or it happens in Germany. Um, but, uh, nonetheless, um, at the very minimum, they become significant players within the Democratic Party. Um, and, you know, and this this has a transformative effect on people's workplaces, right? It both in terms of the amount of money that they're making when they start to get these good union contracts and all the benefits that arise from it, but also in terms of control over and the attempt to exert power at the workplace, which [00:28:00] in some ways is the more controversial side of this.
Nick Capodice: [00:28:02] As in having power in the workplace is the controversial side. Um, I.
Eric Loomis: [00:28:07] Would argue that the real objection of employers to unions is not about the money. Yes, in American society, um, power and respect, uh, is filtered through money. Um, but, um, the real challenge was over. Who has power on that shop floor to determine how you do your job?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:28:24] There's a lot of tension between unionized workers and the guys in charge. Does the foreman [00:28:30] get to tell you how to do your job, or do you get to decide what your job looks like? And even when unions get a new contract, the companies don't want to enforce that contract because it strips them of their absolute power.
Nick Capodice: [00:28:43] Okay, this is really interesting because I'm going to hazard that plenty of people hear unionizing and strikes even today and think, well, that's greed. They just want more money. They always want more money. But it sounds like Eric is saying that while that's certainly a part of it, [00:29:00] things like when or if you get to take a lunch break or how long that break is, or how many sick days you get, or whether you're allowed to work from home, things like that were at the core of these power struggles.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:29:11] Yeah. You know, money is one thing. Control is quite another. $3 more an hour might be palatable, but parental leave on top of that, not so fast. So look, I know we're talking about unions here and this is an episode about strikes. But in order to get to where we are [00:29:30] today with strikes, this is a huge part of it because power in the workplace for the workers. That is perhaps obviously unpopular with the employers. And then for someone post-World War Two America, it becomes downright un-American. That's after the break.
Nick Capodice: [00:29:56] But before that break, a reminder that Civics 101 is listener [00:30:00] supported and that's you. So if you like our show and you support our mission to continue unpacking all the aspects of democracy, give whatever you can at our website, civics101podcast.org. And thank you. We are back. We're talking about strikes here on Civics 101 and Hannah. Before the break, you told me you were going to get to strikes today in America like [00:30:30] the one our friend Andrew Swan participated in.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:30:33] Sure did. So here is something about Andrew's strike.
Andrew Swan: [00:30:36] It was illegal. There have been some other districts in the past few years in Massachusetts. We were not the first even this school year, but we'd certainly been the longest. And the trend is the judge imposes fines and increases those fines each day, doubling them or otherwise incrementally, like every 10,000 more every day or something like that. And it's the union that has to pay, not the individual teachers.
Nick Capodice: [00:30:59] I really should have [00:31:00] asked Andrew more about this when we talked to him. I think in the end, it cost the teachers union $625,000. But what made that teacher strike illegal?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:31:11] Well, specifically, what made it illegal is in 1973, Massachusetts law that prohibits public employees, including teachers, from going on strike. But this law is not unique to Massachusetts. Here's Eric Loomis again.
Eric Loomis: [00:31:26] About 80% of public sector workers in this country do not have the right to strike. [00:31:30]
Nick Capodice: [00:31:30] Okay. Wow. 80% of public sector workers. So basically we are talking about government employees.
Eric Loomis: [00:31:37] Federal workers do not have the right to strike. Most state workers do not have the right to strike. And there are attempts in some of these states to gain the right to strike for public sector employees, but most don't have the right to strike. Now, that doesn't per se mean they never do.
Nick Capodice: [00:31:55] And I think the point is here and correct me if I'm wrong, it's not a good thing [00:32:00] if firefighters or city clerks or mayors or what have you, just don't show up.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:32:06] The point is, I think probably a little more complicated than that, but that is part of the point.
Andrew Swan: [00:32:12] We are not supposed to be able to go on strike in Massachusetts. I think this goes back to 1919. The police union went on strike, and then that got wrapped up in the Red scare movement of, uh oh, socialism, but also a practical matter of, well, if there's no police, that's bad. Uh, if there if the fire [00:32:30] department goes on strike, that's bad too. And to a different degree when teachers go on strike. Well, now we have children spilling out of houses, um, and needing somewhere to be.
Nick Capodice: [00:32:41] Wow. All right, hang on. Now we're talking about the Red scare. As in, we're afraid of communism, and striking could lead to that. I mean.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:32:51] People banding together against power. Hello, comrade. That is a joke. That's a that's a communist joke. [00:33:00] All right, so Andrew is talking about the first red scare in the US.
Nick Capodice: [00:33:04] The first red scare. Can you do that real quick?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:33:07] Not really. No, I can't do that real quick. So instead, I'll put that on the list of episodes to make. But here is what I want you to know the 1919 1920 Red scare.
Archival: [00:33:19] There are other communists who don't show their real faces, who work more silently.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:33:26] Lumped socialism and communism and violence [00:33:30] and anarchy and antiwar sentiment and the labor movement and unions and strikes into the same category.
Archival: [00:33:39] Their goal is the overthrow of our government. There is no doubt as to where a real communist loyalty dress.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:33:47] And the government, specifically the attorney general, with the help of J. Edgar Hoover, did some appalling things that eventually put an end to that red scare. But [00:34:00] come the second Red scare in America, J. Edgar knows who to target. And he's got friends in high places. Remember how I told you that strikes went from being a problem for employers to being a problem for American values? Here's Kim Kelley.
Kim Kelly: [00:34:21] I mean, the 60s with the second Red scare and all the the blacklisting in Hollywood and the Cold War era [00:34:30] panic around communism, where a lot of union organizers and union folks were kind of tarred with like a red brush.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:34:38] So that's one factor. You know, I recently heard some other McCarthy make a joke about Joseph McCarthy, and they said, no relation. And I think I probably need to stop making that joke. But yeah, widespread demonization of those who asserted their protected concerted activity, which frankly, wasn't hard to do given the first Red scare and the association made between unions strikes and un-American [00:35:00] activities. And even when that Red scare came to an end, two things remained a vague notion of unions being anti-American government and the strong notion and reality of a business industry, American government alliance.
Eric Loomis: [00:35:22] And so you still see this just vociferous anti-labor mentality among American employers. Americans, I mean, all, all nations have [00:35:30] their own set of myths, right? We all, as nations tell ourselves stories. And those stories may or may not be true. But, you know, the idea of the self-made man and the right of the individual to control their business is a deeply seated myth in the United States. So I think that, you know, one thing, when I was writing my book that I really wanted to consider is what are the conditions under which workers are able to successfully strike and win? And basically what it comes down to, [00:36:00] and I think this holds almost true throughout all of American history. Is that one thing that makes America, again, a little different than some of these Western European nations is that the government corporate alliance is so traditionally strong in this country. The only real exception to that today was only partial, was that period from the 30s to the 70s. As soon as Reagan takes over, that is reestablished very quickly and you have massive union busting in this nation, and that has continued through the present Ronald Reagan.
Nick Capodice: [00:36:30] I [00:36:30] mean, we have to talk about Ronald Reagan.
Kim Kelly: [00:36:32] There's really a moment during the, the 80s when Ronald Reagan was in office, that we saw the biggest modern shift around the way that strikes and striking workers are treated.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:36:45] We do indeed have to talk about Ronald Reagan. So Eric Loomis mentioned that period from the 30s through the 70s. That's what Kim was talking about before the labor movement, FDR, the National Labor Relations Act, the [00:37:00] dawn of protected strikes, and a brief degree of deference to unions.
Kim Kelly: [00:37:06] Because there is a very long tradition of corporations or company employers, bosses kind of respecting that, right. They wouldn't necessarily bring in replacement workers scabs, as they're called. They would try and work with the union a little bit. But after Ronald Reagan broke this strike, the PATCO, the air traffic controllers strike, he essentially just fired [00:37:30] everybody and brought in replacement workers and blacklisted the workers that were involved.
Archival: [00:37:35] I must tell those who fail to report for duty that this morning they are in violation of the law, and if they do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated. End of statement.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:37:53] This was a huge moment in strike history in America. Reagan, who, [00:38:00] by the way, was the president of his own union.
Nick Capodice: [00:38:03] In fact, Reagan was the president of our own union, kind of sag before the after. Yeah.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:38:11] Reagan himself organized a union strike, and it succeeded.
Archival: [00:38:16] Indeed, as president of my own union, I led the first strike ever called by that union. I guess I'm maybe the first one to ever hold this office who is a lifetime member of an AFL-CIO union.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:38:28] But the president of America [00:38:30] is a little different than the president of SAG. In 1981, Reagan fired over 11,000 air traffic controllers and banned them from federal jobs. And the majority of Americans supported this. By the way, they did not think that air traffic controllers should be allowed to strike.
Nick Capodice: [00:38:47] Why were they striking in the first place?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:38:49] Well, as you might imagine, the job is stressful. Uh, also, airlines had recently been deregulated by President Jimmy Carter.
Archival: [00:38:57] I deregulated, we deregulated [00:39:00] the airlines and the railroads and trucking. We deregulated the banks and banking. We deregulated deregulated communications, television and radio. We deregulated oil and gas.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:39:13] And air travel was way, way up.
Nick Capodice: [00:39:16] Way, way up in the air.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:39:18] Very good. So these employees were developing high blood pressure. They were developing ulcers. Uh, reportedly only about 10% of them ever stayed on the job long enough to retire from it. [00:39:30] And so they were asking for shorter work weeks and more pay. They were really tired, and it was ruining their health. So when they didn't get what they needed, they went on strike. And Reagan said, get back to work or you're fired.
News Archival: [00:39:44] But like the rest of the families here at union headquarters, he still believes the walkout was necessary in view of the stressful working conditions and high burnout rate.
News Archival: [00:39:54] As far as the prospect of unemployment. We all realize when we made this move that that possibility was there, but we feel so strongly [00:40:00] about what we're doing that we're willing to face that that.
Kim Kelly: [00:40:03] Moment really saw a shift in the way that bosses and striking workers interacted with each other and became a lot more, uh, a lot more animosity, a lot, a lot less willingness, I think, for bosses to, to work with strikers. And now we see even though there are these legal protections, it can still get ugly. When workers decide to go on strike, it's still a big sacrifice. It's still a risk.
Nick Capodice: [00:40:28] Hang on. So this moment with Reagan, [00:40:30] this changed the way that employers respond to unions and strikes.
Kim Kelly: [00:40:35] A lot of anti-labor and anti-union corporations and bosses at that time saw that and realized, oh, so we don't necessarily have to play ball either. And now it's it's it can get a little ugly when when striking workers try and take their destinies into their own hands and exercise their legal rights, there are ways they can try and skirt that law. Like they can bring in replacement [00:41:00] workers. And then after the strike, they can retaliate against you or try and find ways to to make your job less attractive. They can try and prevent you from coming back at all.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:41:13] So we talked about the National Labor Relations Act. There is something that goes along with it. The National Labor Relations Board. They are the ones who make sure labor law is being followed, [00:41:30] and they file charges against employers who don't follow those laws. But it's not like the NLRB can say, hey, you broke the law. You need to pay a massive fine. It can order an employer to, for example, bargain over a contract in good faith, or to offer back pay to employees who have been fired for union activities. In some cases, it can even order the employer to pay union expenses. But honestly, that is not much of a threat [00:42:00] when your company's net revenue is hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
Kim Kelly: [00:42:05] The monetary penalties they face for somewhere like Amazon or Tesla or Starbucks aren't really what they need to be to really get those companies to behave themselves. So employers some employers do find ways to punish people that go out on strike.
Nick Capodice: [00:42:21] That is just fascinating, right? In the 1930s, FDR forced a sea change that gave the National Labor Relations Act [00:42:30] sharper teeth. And then in the 1980s, Reagan forced one that basically did the opposite.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:42:36] Which again, brings us to this question about politicization and strikes. Those air traffic controllers were engaging in an illegal strike according to their own contract. Now, whether the courts would have decided their working conditions warranted a strike anyway, we. Cannot know. The point is, Reagan was absolutely within his rights to do what he did, but [00:43:00] he didn't have to do it. His action was both legal and political, and with it came a new era of pro and anti-union sentiment meets politics, and unions and strikes remain a highly politicized subject among both politicians and voters to this day.
Kim Kelly: [00:43:20] That moment specifically kind of prompted what we've seen in terms of the the Republican Party in this embrace of so-called [00:43:30] right to work laws.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:43:31] Okay, right to work laws. This one I will try to do fairly quickly. So there's a human rights concept called right to work. This is not that a right to work law says you cannot require employees of a unionized workplace to pay fees to or join the union. Now, federal law says you cannot force someone to join a union, period. But unions have something called a security agreement that might say you need to pay dues [00:44:00] or fees as a condition of employment.
Nick Capodice: [00:44:02] And right to work laws make that illegal.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:44:05] Right? So basically, you can be represented by the union in contract negotiations and benefit from them without actually paying for it. Now unions call these employees free riders and argue that it's bad for the strength of the union. You know, less support literally and politically, less power to secure better wages and working conditions. And by the way, in 2018, the Supreme Court said that charging fees for representation [00:44:30] to nonmembers is unconstitutional in the public sector. So we're talking about the private sector here. So these laws are called right to work. But unions argue that they are opposed to negotiating power and therefore opposed to workers and worker protections.
News Archival: [00:44:46] Billy Dijck's is the president of Tennessee's AFL-CIO. He says this constitutional amendment is another attempt to use government and big business to control people.
News Archival: [00:44:55] If you go back and look at the South in general, you know you can go way [00:45:00] on back.
News Archival: [00:45:01] It's always been about cheap labor, and that has that has been always been a way to control working people.
Kim Kelly: [00:45:08] So there's a lot of tension there. And as we've seen more conservative, uh, governments and administrations rise to power up and down over the past course of US history, there's a ton of corporate Democrats who are not representing workers. The current system is really skewed against labor and against workers, no [00:45:30] matter how many, you know, campaign commercials you see with whatever politician in a hard hat or with a union logo on it.
Nick Capodice: [00:45:37] Which I feel we should point out, pretty much every politician, regardless of party affiliation, does.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:45:43] And then there are the people in the union themselves. That is a whole other kind of multi-party system. There's the story that gets told about unions, and then there are the actual unions.
Kim Kelly: [00:45:56] For a very long time, unions and union workers and union organizers [00:46:00] have been demonized in this country because a lot of them have come from the lefty tradition with different tendencies there, and a lot haven't to. This is the one thing about unions that I think is really important for folks outside of the labor world bubble to understand is that they're not a monolith. There's no one typical union worker in this country. Every person who's involved in a union has their own perspective, political views and background. I mean, [00:46:30] I've covered a ton of stories in Alabama and in the Deep South, in Appalachia, of coal miners who are way more conservative than I am, for example, or some other union folks I know. But they love their union. They stick to their guns like they're dyed in the wool union folks. And then you see very progressive or lefty folks involved in unions, too. It's you can't really paint the labor movement with one brush in that way, though of course there have been it has tended to be a little bit more progressive because [00:47:00] it's a space where we're trying to advance workers rights, and that tends to be diametrically opposed to the interests of capital, who would rather make money instead of investing in safety and health care and decent wages and all those things that labor really wants to win for the workers.
Nick Capodice: [00:47:19] I mean, that opens up a whole other can of worms about the politicization of progressivism.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:47:25] Another topic for another day. All right. So strikes Post-reagan. [00:47:30] It isn't like it was during that period between the mid 1930s and the 1970s. But the law, the Nlra is still in place. Employers and politicians might be a lot less friendly and tolerant about it, but strikes, with some exceptions, are still legal.
Kim Kelly: [00:47:50] There are a lot of different ways that. Workers can try and negotiate with their employers or try to get their demands met. The strike is kind of comes [00:48:00] at the end of a series of escalations, and usually strikes are happening within the context of union negotiations, during which the unionized workers and the boss will sit down and try and agree on a new contract, the new employment contract. And during the course of that process, some bosses will try and drag it out or will straight up refuse to meet some of the workers, asks, or will find other ways to try and just not play ball. And [00:48:30] when that happens and they reach a stalemate and there's no progress being made, that's when the union can start, you know, taking some steps. You can start by calling a strike authorization vote. And that's not going on strike. But that is the union's leadership asking the members, hey, if we call a strike, like, do you want to do that? Because unions are democratic institutions.
Nick Capodice: [00:48:55] This is an interesting point. You do have to vote to do something in a union. [00:49:00] And I mean, before you can even do that, you need a majority of qualified employees, aka not managers, to vote to unionize. That is Democratic.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:49:11] And striking, which again, nobody actually wants has its democratic process.
Kim Kelly: [00:49:17] No one's just standing up and saying, I declare a strike, right? Like there's this process. And if majority of the workers decide that, yeah, they're down to authorize a strike, if it comes to that, then that's something they can show the employer and say, [00:49:30] hey, you know, we're we're not bluffing. If you want to take that and think about it, when you come to the bargaining table next, and if it doesn't work, if there's no progress made, then they can start preparing for a strike. They can make it known to the media and to the bosses, hey, we're talking about this. And then by the time the strike comes, well, the boss had all these opportunities to try and find a decent compromise to to address these concerns, [00:50:00] to meet these demands. And by then when the strikes happen and it's on, it's seldom something that just appears right. Unless there's workers decide to have like a limited strike, like one day strike to protest something or to try and kind of spook the owners into behaving like it's there are a lot of different ways you can approach a strike. And obviously it comes down to what the workers want to do because it's their union. They are the union.
Nick Capodice: [00:50:41] So [00:50:30] you have painted a way more complicated picture of strikes and politics and unions and history than I thought we were going to get into here. Hannah.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:50:50] Yeah. Short winded and to the point. Mccarthy. That's what they call me.
Nick Capodice: [00:50:54] I do want to come back to something that you said at the very beginning, though. Back when I thought [00:51:00] this was going to be just like a fun romp about Newsies. That was.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:51:03] The carrot. The rest of the episode was the stick on Apollo.
Nick Capodice: [00:51:07] This thing about strikes only being kind of successful even when they are successful. I mean, obviously that has something to do with politics and labor protections and who really has power in this employer employee dynamic. But I feel like it's also wrapped up in this idea that nobody wants them. And then that thing Andrew said to us strikes [00:51:30] hurt.
Speaker14: [00:51:31] Okay.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:51:33] Yeah, the hurt part. I'm going to let Andrew explain to us what happened in his unions illegal strike.
Andrew Swan: [00:51:41] So like most strikes, it had to do with teacher salary. We have three year contracts. So it involves the increases to keep up with inflation. But there were a number of things that the union and the district were disagreeing about, about things particularly in terms of medical leave for parents, things like class sizes that are also put [00:52:00] into the contract. So it also had to do with things for the staff and the learning experience for students as well. That would be in the contract language. So contracts last for three years and ours had expired June 2023 during the summer. So everyone's salaries and steps and things were were all getting paid the same as we were the previous year, did not keep up with inflation, and inflation is a thing.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:52:25] So before this teachers union makes the choice to strike, it goes [00:52:30] through 16 months of negotiation.
Andrew Swan: [00:52:32] We were concerned that it was just going to drag on and on and on like that. There was not much incentive, the way the law is for the districts to change their their minds. In fact, they can just drag it out.
Nick Capodice: [00:52:44] Oh yeah, the dragging it out thing. This is a really common tactic for contract negotiations.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:52:50] Yeah, in no small part because the employers tend to have way more money and leverage than the employees. Now, to be clear, dragging out a union negotiation. [00:53:00] It is super expensive on both sides. Nobody likes it. We've been saying that a lot in this episode. So with this teachers union, it was going to be a strike. And what happens when teachers strike.
Andrew Swan: [00:53:19] So before we did the strike, I opened up for students to ask questions, and I couldn't answer all of them. Uh, but I collected their questions. And one thing they were wondering was, is [00:53:30] this going to be like the pandemic? Is this going are we going to be on zoom? Are we are they going to get substitutes to replace you all? And of course, we struggle to get enough substitutes now, let alone filling an entire building. What it looked like for them, frankly, was day to day to day being home. Some of the older kids probably dealing with babysitting for younger siblings, a lot of families struggling for childcare. The point was to pressure not just the decision makers, but influencers like the parents [00:54:00] to say, hey, settle this up so my kids can go back to school. Unfortunately, the students themselves are caught in the middle because they don't have the political power.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:54:08] Oh, and one major element of a strike that I haven't really covered here the press, the type of coverage you get can make a huge difference.
Andrew Swan: [00:54:17] Pretty much every story that I ever saw on the TV news, and a lot of the ones in newspapers like the Boston Globe were focused on the family impact, not what the teachers or the unions were trying to [00:54:30] get, but did seem very much family focused. Uh, families who have students with severe special needs, what it's like for them. Uh, families who now it's day eight of trying to find, like, child care coverage. What's that like for you? That's that was the journalistic angle that I noticed and very little that was sort of. Well, what are the teachers actually asking for? Or how do politics actually work?
News Archival: [00:54:53] Parents in Newton are fighting back tonight. There's even a court motion to force schools to reopen during the teacher strike. [00:55:00] Thank you for joining us. I'm David Wade and I'm Lisa Hughes.
News Archival: [00:55:02] Classes in Newton are canceled again tomorrow. That will be eight days of lost learning. You know, it's the longest.
Nick Capodice: [00:55:08] Andrew is already saying that strikes hurt and that they're supposed to. And certainly any parent who had a kid in school during the Covid 19 pandemic, shutdowns and remote learning knows the hurt of not being able to send your kid to school, I sure do. And it's one thing when you've got a deadly virus and state or district government to blame. It [00:55:30] is a very different thing when you can blame the teachers.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:55:33] Or at least blame the union, which to clarify is the teachers. And in the case of Newton, Massachusetts, after this strike ended, a group of parents sued the union for damages. This is from their statement. They cited, quote, learning loss for the students, emotional distress for the students and parents, and out of pocket costs for parents like tutors, camps, daycare, babysitters, burned vacation and sick days and [00:56:00] missed work shifts, unquote. These parents estimate those damages to exceed $25 million, and that would be in addition to the money the union has already paid.
Andrew Swan: [00:56:11] Some families and even some students may see us differently as like, oh, you're just in it for the money. So they, you know, they respect us less or they're going to treat us differently. And a lot of that's invisible. Was it worth it in [00:56:30] terms of the numbers on the page, the increased amount that I'd be getting and the teaching assistants will be getting each year is more than what the city was offering at first. It's about 20 or 30% more than what they were offering. At first. It's not a big amount. Basically went from a 2% per year increase to a 2.5 or 1 year, 3% increase. It's it's not a lot. And maybe it's not fair to sort of compare. It definitely costs the union [00:57:00] there were fines. That's the other civics connection is a judge was making decisions every day increasing the fines. Our union cannot afford a strike for a very long time because it had some savings to be able to pay some of those fines. So we may have a weaker union going forward with a district that knows that we won't go on strike again.
Nick Capodice: [00:57:20] Which if I can read between the lines here, a weak union that cannot go on strike means a union with less serious leverage in negotiations. [00:57:30] Yeah.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:57:31] So, you know, that's that's that that's the lot of hurt for the success. Yes. But a success that maybe wasn't a slam dunk. And I just wanted to know at the end of the day, what did it feel like for a social studies teacher, someone who teaches stuff like labor movements to be a part of it?
Andrew Swan: [00:57:52] So there's the saying right about like, teachers are in it, not for the income, but for the outcome. Or, you know, it's a calling. [00:58:00] It's not a job that's true to some degree and disrespectful to another degree. We're professionals. We have to jump through a lot of hoops in terms of degrees and licensure, and then maintaining all that to be able to keep these jobs. Society has deemed it fairly important, or at least in American history, that we have a public, some kind of public education system, whether it's the one room schoolhouse [00:58:30] or all the way up to the the mega urban districts. So the feeling of having to justify one's self, to be able to have a continued income that keeps up with inflation, which is really what we were one of the main things we were looking for here. It did seem very strange.
Nick Capodice: [00:58:50] Uh, you know, if there is one thing that I definitely am, it's pro teacher. So. So this one is tough.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:58:59] Yeah, but Andrew [00:59:00] did say that in the midst of it, he did actually feel valued.
Andrew Swan: [00:59:05] When you're in the middle of it and when you're surrounded by so many other educators out on the street all chanting the same kind of thing, uh, getting those honks from people driving by, it does end up in that moment, especially ends up feeling quite validating, uh, because usually what I do is happening in this echo chamber of a classroom with the the door physically open or closed. It's [00:59:30] really usually between me and the kids. But being out in the public in that sort of teacher role, and I think for a lot of us did end up, especially in the moment of it as we were on stage in a way out there, um, and on the news and on on camera and in the newspapers and so on. It did feel like, yeah, this is an important role that we provide. This is something that society should and or pretty sure does continue to wanting us to do. And we [01:00:00] can't just raise our prices like a small business owner can do to keep up with inflation. We can't march down to the corner office and say, hey, we need a raise or expect a yearly bonus or something. Like in many other kinds of roles, when negotiations fall apart, you come to a very drastic kind of option to be able to say, this is who we are, because the alternative would be just rolling over and saying, hey, pay us whatever you want, and then you're likely to get more people leaving this profession, and we need [01:00:30] more good people coming in and staying in. And yes, sure, teaching is a calling. You know, we're in it for the outcome as well as the income, but we need the income as well, or else it's not sustainable because that's capitalism. That's just real life.
Hannah McCarthy: [01:01:01] All [01:01:00] right, so, uh, we've come to the end, Nick. That's it. That strikes.
Nick Capodice: [01:01:08] Well. But. But what do you think about all this, Hannah?
Hannah McCarthy: [01:01:14] What do I.
Hannah McCarthy: [01:01:15] Think? Okay, okay, so I've thought a lot about the democracy aspect that we talked a little bit about earlier. And, uh, so I do think that so many of the gains [01:01:30] that we, the people have made here in these United States are often because we have, at the very least, asked for them repeatedly, if not demanded them, if not, you know, taken to the streets or the polls and said, hey, give me this, or you don't have my support anymore. And that's built into the structure of American democracy, because we do not roll over and say, pay us whatever [01:02:00] you want or, you know, give me whatever rights you want to give me or make me as safe as you think I should be.
Nick Capodice: [01:02:07] You being the government or whomever happens to be in charge. Yeah.
Hannah McCarthy: [01:02:11] Uh, because a lot of the time, the only incentive the people in charge have to give us what we want is the fact that if they don't, we will do something about it. Like we won't vote for them or we won't work for them, which would mean that they have nothing to be in charge of. And many would say that a rising [01:02:30] tide lifts all boats. You know, if we're talking about work and industry, that doesn't have to deal with paying its workers more or giving them more or better benefits will be richer, and so it will be stronger. And so the worker will be richer and stronger. But when the worker doesn't feel that, when they don't feel lifted or richer or stronger, they have this option sometimes to do what people in America do when they feel [01:03:00] not taken care of by the people in charge, they can organize and they can demand it. And, you know, striking may not be in the Constitution, but the right to petition for a redress of grievances is.
Nick Capodice: [01:03:17] Petition the government.
Hannah McCarthy: [01:03:19] Petition the government. Yeah. But I guess what I'm trying to say, um, is that, you know, it's about like going to the person in power and saying, [01:03:30] I think this should be better. And, you know, you got to give it to me. And basically that makes me think that striking is both literally and spiritually a very democratic and very American thing.
Nick Capodice: [01:03:47] I like that. I think that's a good way to wrap this all up. Love it or hate it, it's democracy.
Hannah McCarthy: [01:04:04] This [01:04:00] episode was produced by me. Hannah McCarthy with Nick Capodice. Christina Phillips is our senior producer. Rebecca Lavoi is our executive producer. Music. In this episode by Claude Cygnet, superintendent Mick. Cupcakes. Damar. Beats, Amber. Jean, Henri. Arduino, Timothy. Infinite. Fabian. Tell. Luella. Gren. Wilson, Andreas. Dahlback, Ryan, James. Carr. Site of wonders, Elliot. Holmes, Maddie. Maguire, [01:04:30] Celino LM. Styles Dajana, Gustav, Krista Briski, basics and a lot. You also heard excerpts from Newsies, the musical chess, the Musical, Urinetown the Musical, and Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire The Musical. You can get more of everything we have ever made, and you can contact us to tell us how you feel about our episodes, America, or really anything else at our website civics101podcast.org. [01:05:00] Civics 101 is a production of NPR, New Hampshire Public Radio. All right for last little something. Unions, like many organizations, know the value of a song to bring people together and remind them why they're there. This one from 1914 or 15, is called Solidarity Forever. The words are by Ralph Joseph Chaplin, and it is set to the tune of John Brown's Body. Or, if you [01:05:30] prefer, Battle Hymn of the Republic. It is sung by my very own brother, Jack McCarthy. Local 349 carpenters and joiners, accompanied by his friend Cooper Formant .
Jack McCarthy: [01:05:43] Now we stand out, cast and starving at the wonders we have made. But the union makes us strong. Solidarity forever, solidarity [01:06:00] forever. Solidarity forever. For the Union makes us strong. Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite. Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might? Is there anything left for us to do but organize and fight while the Union makes us strong? [01:06:30] Solidarity forever. Solidarity forever. Solidarity forever. For the Union makes us strong in our hands. There is a power greater than their hoarded gold. Greater than the might of atoms magnified a thousand fold. We can bring to birth [01:07:00] a new world from the ashes of the old. While the union makes us strong. Solidarity forever. Ever. Solidarity forever. Solidarity forever for the union makes us strong. Whew! That [01:07:30] was fun. Make sure you mentioned that I'm in the union too.
Hannah McCarthy: [01:07:33] I will.
Cooper Formant: [01:07:34] Are you?
Jack McCarthy: [01:07:34] I'm in the union now.
Cooper Formant: [01:07:36] What? The Maine?
Jack McCarthy: [01:07:37] Yeah. The main. The main union.