You. When i think about this book i see it as having three major parts, after you introduce a situation now, you do a really good job of talking about through stories how workers struggled, they themselves built the middle class in this country to a great extent by organizing, by striking, bargaining through a lot of adversity and demanding more from policy changes and then you go through a lot of the hard times of what i call the reagan era which we are still in Work Companies and starting with the president of the United States really attacked workers a lot and their unions and then you tell a lot of hopeful stories about different creative and innovative ways that workers have been organizing and unions and other forms and make policy recommendations and one thing i have to say, a lot of books like this are criticized because they come up short on the policy recommendation but i hope we really get into that because you made quite a few interesting suggestions on what might be done to restore the voice and power of workers in this country. Why dont you start by laying out where you see things right now, what is the status of working people in this country and their ability to shape their own lives at work. I cover and labor work place for 19 years, one of my concerns people all over the nation, so many people had no idea what unions are, what unions do and how unions break bring us the 40 hour workweek and pensions in the Bumper Sticker the folks at broadus the weekend. I wanted to explain to people, unions have achieved a whole lot in American History but now theyre in decline and they have been taken on the chin. As a result, things are considerably worse for workers i believe is the case 30 or 40 years ago. I think far too few americans realize that American Workers have it bad in many ways compared with workers and other industrial nations. On very basic things, were the only industrial nation that does not have a law guaranteed paper until, paid maternal leave were the only one that does not guarantee all workers paid vacation in the 28 nations of the european union, all workers are guaranteed for weeks paid vacation in inference six week period and for decades, American Workers have been suffering terrible wage stagnation while corporate profits have reached record levels. I think a lot of workers get in their guts that something is broken and then there very frustrated and in my book i try to explain why things have headed south for workers in many ways. I say worker power in the United States is arguably the weakest and has been in decades. The percentage of workers are in unions, that is down from one and three when unions were at their peak. And certainly unions have some faults but despite the faults, unions have played a key role in building the middle class and helping give workers a voice whether on job safety or pension or on stopping bullying by buses and unions have played a key role in washington on enacting medicare and Social Security more generous but in recent years, unions have been on the defensive and Corporate Power has really trumped union power in many ways so i think we as a nation have to figure out a way to give workers more power to help create a fair nation, to help in stagnation. For example we have not raised the settlement wage and over a decade, that the longest time in American History the minimum wage has not been increased. I submit and argue that is because workers have so it is so weak in congress there unable to persuade lots of members of congress two ways them minimum wage and its hard for millions of americans to live on 725 an hour, the federal minimum wage. One of the keys in the book is to educate leaders about the problems workers have and look at strategies to try to increase power for workers to help create a more prosperous nation for millions of americans and millions of workers. What i think to a certain extent, a lot of people do not realize how few rights that they have, one of your suggestions is that we might go away from our Current System in almost all states except montana in which workers can be fired as the judge said many years ago, a good reason, bad reason or no reason at all, basically you have no right to your job in this country and you suggest going towards a just because system because workers can be fired if they did something wrong or not just because the boss does not like who youre going out with. Literally they can fire you for that. In most workers do not think that can happen to them until it does. Sometimes as a reporter i get a phone call from someone out of the blue saying my boyfriend got fired yesterday at work because he came in two minutes late or because his boss was angry about his attitude or he was not smiling and they say isnt that illegal and i say dont you understand the United States has unemployment which means they can fire you for any reason or no reason except specifically illegal people dont realize that their jobs can be very precarious, very uncertain into my mind one of the big problems in america is that workers do not have enough power, theyre scared to exercise their voice at work, i write about the Upper Big Branch mining dues and go to disaster where the workers were killed and they knew about the dangers in the mind but they were so scared of speaking up that they did not dig about the dangerous gas that was filling the mind and the mind exploded in all these workers died. Worker workers are way too scared to speak up so some people argue that we should move from an at will employment to a just cause so workers can be only fired for a legitimate reason and adjust because system would make workers more willing to speak up and say when they cced to problems or when their counting Sexual Harassment on the job. The other issue you mentioned raising the minimum wage, it is unbelievable that weve gone this long in this country without a raise in the minimum wage and as you know, the house we passed the rees the wage act which would raise the minimum wage in the United States to 15 an hour by 2025. Gradually over the next five years or so and we would in the practice of having subminimum wages for tip workers who are disproportionately women and people of color and taken advantage of and that would put millions and millions of dollars into poor peoples pockets, working peoples pockets and workers, i think your point, have not had the power in our politics, in washington and the state capitals to just get a decent shake in the United States in recent years. One thing that kills me, i read editorial pages and business lobbyists complain about big labor and unions are so extraordinarily powerful. And i looked up, who is really powerful, who is really big and i saw in 201522016 Campaign Cycle business gave more than 3. 4 billion in donations which was more than 16 times as much as unions which gave 213 million according to a respected nonpartisan group. Each year in Washington Corporation spend just under 3 billion on lobbying which is more than 60 times much as unions which spend 48. That explains a lot of the problems we see in washington. So to me it was weird that congress rushed to enact a 1 trillion Corporate Tax cut for business when corporations were already making profits and wall street was at record levels. How far can they go this income and wealth inequality how extreme will he get for we go in a different direction. Absolutely. And that explains why too many folks in congress, the senate is doing nothing to raise the minimum wage because they listen to their corporate donors. I want to talk a lot about the policy ideas, i just want to emphasize to our viewers that i got so much out of this book from your stories and i think its a great part of the book, the bulk of the book is telling stories and workers today but also throughout american myste mystery, i want to ask you, dont you think a lot of the stories that you tell from 100 years ago say, i have a lot of relevance to today so why dont you talk a little bit about the uprising of the 20000. Tell us about the story because i thought that had a lot of relevance to a lot of the struggles that workers go through today and even a lot of issues that people would think that is actually not about work the issues about immigrant rights and the rights of people in color in society, the minority group. Shirt happy to. I let around out labor history, its been a character who has fascinated me over the years, she was born in the ukraine, she was jewish, her father was very religious, she worked a lot of people and relatives have moved to new york, she would write letters to them because she was very literate, she her family moved to new york from ukraine and shes a very bright young lady, shes hoping to be a doctor someday but when she arrived in new york, she only spoke edition, she did not have a high school education. So what did she do she worked in a sweatshop. She was appalled she were from 7 00 a. M. To 7 00 p. M. And she would go into work before the sun came up and leave work after. In six or seven days a week. Yes and some of the bosses would sexually harass the women, sometimes they have to pay, they would be rushed not to be in the bathroom for more than a minute or two they often had to pay for the needle and thread at work and sometimes they would have to pay 5 cents to use Drinking Water when their only making 5 a week. She thought this was appalling and she became an activist and said im not going to take this. This young woman in her late teens, early 20s became the most prominent garment worker activist and people got fed up and started going on strike and there was long strikes at one or two garment factories in the decision that theres a huge meeting saying should we have permit workers to try to put not so much pressure on the factories and there is a big debate, the founder of the federation of labor was deciding over the meeting and he was temporizing, i dont know if we should have a strike, i dont know if women workers are dedicated enough to their jobs and he stood up and said at 23 years old, i think it is time to call the general strike, im tired of being a poor working woman struggling day after day and the place went bonkers and bananas and everybody stood up and that was the largest strike to date by women in American History. Even to this day . To this day, not calling for a 40 hour workweek at 52 hour workweek. We have a lot of young people this seems to think the 40 hour workweek was handed down by god. I explained no, it was one by struggle, thousands of millions of workers that were in the union. In the uprising of 20000, the strike that left two months in the dead of winter, in new york, a lot of these women jewish and italian immigrants, their families went hungry for many weeks but after two months they won the 50 hour workweek dented 56 hours, and no longer had to pay for needle and thread and out of most of the factories they won the right to join the union and of union recognition. One of the very few was a shirtwaist factory, two years later there was a horrendous tragedy where 146 workers died in a triangle fire. Here you have a story of a teenager and a woman in her 20s, many of the workers were teenagers or very young, overwhelmingly women, overwhelmingly immigrants, they did not speak english, they spoke italian, you engine and they were despised by the high society even the high Society Women came to their aid. In general, you dont have time to tell the details but they were beaten up. Summer beaten up physically by men, sent in by their employers so my question to you is, today when we have these inspiring movements that we should stop mass incarceration, black lives matter, immigrant lives matter, that the docket kids are saying we demand our rights and by the way the rights of other undocumented people. In the young people are out here in the movement about climate change. When i read your account, i thought how inspiring for young people in activist today who are fighting for rights in this country, i dont think in their mind they think a better look to the early 19th Century Labor Movement for inspiration. What i have seen from the book, people working collectively to lift themselves up to improve their wages and improve the climate and help with her treatment of africanamericans, i also stressed the agency is very important. Individuals need to stick their net out and stand up and try to demand justice like clara in the uprising of 20000. I thought it was crazy, at one time they beat her up and took 11 of her ribs,. How many ribs do you even have. Thats a lot. She did not want to tell her parents because she thought they would not let her go out and speak on soapboxes and lead strikes. So also there is incidents literally in papers like the new york tribune, i explained that the thugs, goons were coming to suck the jesus out of these women. And the police would come and arrest these women and let the thugs go, the police were so onesided and it shows how the establishment, the police, courts were so aligned against the workers. But even despite that, the workers were able to win the strike and in the book i read about who use their agency to fight for better advice, i write about a fast food worker in kansas city named terrence wise, he helped to fulltime cost to food jobs, and he left for work at six in the morning, he come back at midnight, he had three daughters and he would leave home before and returned home after second job and he complained and she complained to work so hard to make ends meet, he does not see his daughters most of the week. For a while they became homeless with some of the hours in his job were cut off and it was crazy that someone who is busting, working two fulltime jobs can hardly make ends meet. And he became an activist in the fight for 15 and the leaders and as i explained in the book, i was the very first journalist in the United States to write about the fight of 15. When he began seven years ago and the workers were demanding more from 15 an hour, i said that is super ambitious cool without pieinthesky, here we are seven years later, new york, california, illinois, maryland, connecticut, massachusetts, district of columbia have enacted the 15 minimum wage. It shows when workers are willing to stand up, when individuals are willing to stick their neck out, they can achieve big change in a lot of the lessons of todays activist, whether crime activist or black lives matter activist were made to womens activists, they learn a lot from the Labor Movement. The layer movement of appraising the 20000 in your home state and in michigan, when workers stand up and come together, they can achieve historical change. We saw that recently in my chapter on the teacher strikes in West Virginia and oklahoma and arizona and more recently in los angeles and chicago in the teachers were tired of being beaten down and were tired of the sturdy and we have to do something to increase or pay but to ensure that the schools are getting the funny that they need and it does not chastise and they do not balloon and we have money to buy modern textbooks. The teacher strikes have sent a message to the nation about how worker power can help build a fair nation. Lets talk about strikes as a mechanism. Because they were very important in building the middle class in this country in a fallen into disuse. Talk to us, you share both information and stories in the book, how many strikes there were in the 50s, 60s, 70s, how because both because of law and weakness in labor perhaps have fallen into near complete disuse until is what your thoughts are when youre starting to see teachers, hotel workers, auto workers at gm recently, right now my kid is on strike as a graduate employee not harvard. He is a ta and they are on strike. Telesis sweep, the role and history and how do you see Going Forward . In 1940, 50s, 60s, 70s there are far more strikes than they are today. In the 1970s there are 300 large strikes a year. And it was really only about 13 far far far left. Workers have become intimidated and i think a lot happened in the night 80s, the 50s and 60s there is fairly good cooperation between employers and unions. After world war ii at the nations economy growing and they gave fairly generous contracts income the 1980s the United States felt pressure from globalization and imports of Japanese Cars and imports of steel from elsewhere and imports of clothing, tvs and radios and a recession in 1980s. Those two things put unions on the pressure and made employers boulder about confronting unions and demanding more from concessions. So shortly after he became president in 1981, Traffic Controllers went on strike demanding more from large wage increase in a fourday week at her workweek. And for reagan as i explained it was a make my day moment, he said i will not put up with the legal strike and even though he had been president to lend the fruit first strike, he was tough towards unions and try to show he will not let labor push him around. I explained to the book, the air Traffic Controllers union mishandled the strikes, they did not Work Together to get enough public support or support from their fellow unions. They were cooperative and that was a major setback for unions across the nation that discouraged inviting them from going on strike. At the same time the air Traffic Controller is in bold and Corporate America to get much tougher towards the union. We saw major decline in strikes and also we saw corporations getting much tougher whenever the Unionization Efforts that made it much harder to unionize thats a big reason percentage of workers in unions is because its half of what it was in the 1980s, corporations engaged in so many sophisticated tactics to prevent workers from get