Node join him. Im just going to give you the general argument about my new book, the long and disturbing story of corporations and catastrophe. I want to start just with a story. So in march of 1911 in a famous incident that many of you know, 146 young female, mostly immigrant workers died at the triangle shirtwaist factory fire in new york. And this event was, this event was precipitated by an industry that was highly exploy tative, the apparel industry. An industry where powerful garment firms, Department Stores in this case, contracted out to subcontractors to make clothing very cheaply. And the conditions in these sweatshops were terrible. There was everything there Sexual Exploitation of workers to very poor paid, safety issues. And the women went on strike in 1909 in whats called the uprising of the 20,000 in order to improve their lives. They lost on Workplace Safety, and two years later the cost of that was clear when 146 of them died. Because it was in downtown new york, famous people saw this happen, right . Wealthy people saw this happen. They literally saw the workers who made their clothes die. And because of that, they finally began to identify with these workers, and they began to fight for accountability in the apparel industry, and so that leads to a series of reforms on workers, on building safety, on fire safety, etc. , okay . And that is kind of a beginning point of the 20th century when americans said that we want to stand up to the excesses of american capitalism, that these bad old days of corporations being able to do whatever they wanted to do needed to end. And over much of the 20th century, americans made an enormous impact obtaining the excesses of capitalism. So that leads to all sorts of laws that range from the Social Security act to the minimum wage to the 40hour week to high rates of unionization in the mid 20th century. And then after world war ii, americans continue this and begin to say, you know, corporations being able to dump their pollution wherever they want to with no accountability is also a bad thing. And so they begin to demand accountability on this end. So you have a variety of clean air acts, clean water acts, all sorts of environmental legislation that truly clean up the american environment so that we today dont really experience the kinds of environmental impacts our ancestors did whether here in brooklyn or in pittsburgh or anywhere, you know, which is famous for smog or anywhere around the nation, okay . And so this is a really successful story. But corporations begin to look for a way out of this. They want to escape these unions, they want to escape these Workplace Safety regulations, they want to escape these environmental regulations. And from a very early point, even as early as theyre kind of starting to begin to do this with some companies beginning to move to the south where you dont have the same level of workplace regulations, particularly in the apparel industry, right . But beginning in the 1960s, you really begin to see Companies Start moving their factories overseas in order to escape these regulates. Because what corporations want is to repeat the highly exploy tative nature of production. You never accepted the existence of unions, they never accepted the existence of these laws, and so they began to move overseas first to mexico in the 60s and then beginning to move to places like korea and taiwan, then to china and eventually in the modern, you know, in the 21st century to Central America and to poor countries in south and southeast asia. Well, that brings us to the end of our story. In 2013 over 1100 workers die in bangladesh, and the story is almost exactly the same as the triangle fire. Young women working in the apparel industry with powerful Department Stores like walmart putting high cost pressures on the local contractors to make sure that the goods stay cheap and that profit for walmart stays high, unsafe working conditions. The factory collapses on them. Its probably the greatest single workplace disaster in industrial history, and its almost the exact be same thing as 1911 except we dont see it. Americans dont see it. We cant even find bangladesh on a map. Forget about seeing the workers die and working to improve those conditions. Whats happened is that corporations have escaped the legal codes that tame them. We are still bound by them here in the United States or in bangladesh or in honduras or in mexico. But if the Corporation Says thats too stringently applied, in the raises too much, that pollution is too strong, theyre going to move to another country. And in doing that, weve created a globalized system of exploitation that allows these companies to create tremendous amounts of profit while undermining workers around the world. So if bangladeshis stand up for this, what happens . The union organize tokers yet fired organizers get fired, the Union Organizers sometimes get murdered, the government ignores them because the government is basically owned by the Apparel Companies. Its like 10 of the Bangladeshi Parliament is apparel contractors in bangladesh. They dont want any reforms. But look at the United States. Are things Getting Better for workers in the United States . No, theyre not. The erase youerasure of these bg union jobs like the united autoworkers and the united steelworkers, with those jobs largely moved overseas or sometimes to the south where you have strong antiunion regimes, what has then happened is that workers have lost their voice in the political arena. With every lost union job, thats less money that workers have to influence the political realm. And so what happens . Corporations genre take over again retake over the agenda. Fighting against unions, fighting against Workplace Safety so that the regulatory regimes we do create like osha, for instance, right . Or like the Environmental Protection agency. They become underfunded. You have states now with the Republican Party fully committed to the destruction of unions and this nation. You have states such as wisconsin and michigan turning right to work where, you know, effectively destroying Public Sector unions in those states. You have the Citizens United decision where now, just like 125 years ago, corporations are able to control the agenda and workers cant and, thus, you have extreme income inequality, and you have the beginning of social movements to fight that. So the story i tell in this book is not a happy one [laughter] but its a story with solutions. We can recreate stable, good work for people, but what we have to do is hold corporations legally accountable no matter where they go. And they have to be accountable no matter who they subcontract to, no matter where they put their factories, right . Companies like walmart subcontract to these people, to these contractors in bangladesh, and they can say this isnt o problem. No, it needs to be their problem. If their company, if their contractor kills workers, walmart needs to be held legally and financially responsible for that. And that has to happen in american courts. So you can recreate regulatory regimes, and there are lots of cases and we can talk about in the discussion if people want of the government getting involved to make a difference in other countries. Theres a long history of this. We can do that. And in doing so we can undermine the capital mobility that destroys jobs in the United States, and we can help workers in bang bangladesh, in hondurasn cambodia create a middle class of their own. And so this is the point of the book. Diagnosing the problem of what happens when all of our production or our consumption is moved out of sight and also trying to think ahead to how we can fix this problem so its not just a book about a decline, but hopefully a book about a way forward. So, sarah, ill go ahead and send it to you. You are quite good at time management, my friend. [laughter] that is impressive. So i want to start out with the way that the labor and the Environmental Movements are talked about in sort of the American Media and often between one another is, presents this idea that these two things are at odds. Why is it so important in this book and in your work to talk about the way that the challenges both of these movements face are the same thing . Sure. I mean, basically both the Labor Movement and the Environmental Movement have effectively a common enemy, and thats corporations, right . The corporations are seeking to hoer to lower costs in any way that they can, to maximize profit. So theyre going to do so in any number of ways, but that includes pressing down on workers, and it includes pollution are, it includes dumping things in the environment, not cleaning it up. So they have a common enemy, and in many ways they both know that. And theres a history, in my Academic Work my book that sarah talked about coming out from cambridge gets into this because there was a long history, for instance, in the Pacific Northwest of loggers in the 1930s and 40s and 50s and even into the 70s trying to stand with conservationists in order to stop exploy tative logging rackses. Because the workers practices. Because the workers knew this would destroy the trees and destroy their jobs. And the conservationists knew it would destroy the forest and also destroy those workers jobs. And so theres a lot of commonality. But what happens is that beginning in the 1970s, again, these jobs in the u. S. Were disappearing. At the same time, the environmentalists are succeeding, and theyre passing all this new legislation like the creation of the Environmental Protection agency, like the clean air act, the clean water act. So what employers begin to do even though theyre planning on moving these jobs overseas anyway, and we know of many place where is the corporation is openly lying about why theyre doing this they tell workers if you support this control on asbestos, if you support this new law that would limit how much we can belch into the air, were going to move our factory to mexico. And because its the 1970s, the companies were already doing that. And so the workers are are scared, because the workers need to eat. They need to feed their family. They dont want nature to spoil because they go out, they hike, they hunt, they fish. They enjoy nature. And their good Union Contracts gave them the time and the money to enjoy that nature. But with that crumbling around them, workers really had a harder and harder time supporting environmentalism. And thats why today with the keystone xl pipeline, right . The controversial pipeline that would bring oil sands from canada to texas, you have environmentalists outraged by this because of how it contributes to Climate Change, and you have some unions who are opposed to it. But you also have the mayor major union who would gain from it, the laborers, who would get these construction jobs saying our members dont have work in this antiunion economy. We need those jobs. So they then attack the environmentalists and the other unions for not supporting it because their members need jobs. And so, you know, both movements have a tremendous amount in common, and both movements need to unite in order to fight a constant enemy. But its very, very difficult when youre telling workers, hey, youre going to have to sacrifice this job, because they cant sacrifice that job because they need to feed their families. So you begin the book and you begin your talk tonight with the triangle fire and the famous people who saw that happen including Frances Perkins who became the first woman labor secretary. And pushing and those people pushed for labor laws, and this is a great story, but its also a story of reform from the top. And so for Labor Movement people like me, like some of you i know in the audience here, that becomes a hard story to hear because we also believe that the reform has to come from the workers within. And so why is it important that people outside of the would wore see what happens and get involved in these struggles . Sure. I mean, the thing to know about workers is workers are always struggling for better lives. You have in 1909 the uprising of the 20,000 which i mentioned, and workers were on the street, and what has to happen is workers dont have enough power in this country to succeed on their own. They largely need some kind of middle class ally specifically, politicians who are going to pass the legislation that is going to be needed to fix these problems. And so, you know, its a tricky situation. Worker participation, worker activism, workers involved in the struggle, central to the struggle is absolutely necessary for any of this to happen because politicians arent going to do this by themselves. Theyre not going to do this unless workers are pressuring them. And after triangle, you have workers around the country outraged by this. And so, you know, but what has to happen is that workers and other sectors of society have to be able to unite around these issues. And thats one of problems i think you see today with worked labor with organized labor, is that a lot of the rest of society doesnt see organized labor as an important enough ally anymore including a lot of people in the Democratic Party where their, you know, base of support long was. And so, you know, you really begin to see people begin to take labor for granted, for instance. And so, you know, basically whats going to have to happen and what is happening with the fight for 15, for instance, is thats what you see. You see workers standing up and saying we have these demands, and this is what we want, and were going to put pressure on society to make in this happen, and politicians begin to cave. Its what happened at the triangle, fdr didnt pass this legislation out of the goodness of his heart, he passed it because hundreds of thousands of workers were going on strike in 1934 and scaring society that something really radical was going to happen. And youre seeing it again today. So the fight for 15 is going to bring us full communism . [laughter] itll bring us something anyway. Is on the other so on the other side, what happens when sort of visible disaster is a thing that we need in order to care, right . So how when you have sort of everyday problems of wage theft, of just low wages, of Sexual Harassment in the workplace, things that are not spectacular, how do we then get attention to those things . Its awfully hard. The power of video, the power of visualization is tremendous. And it happens in all sorts of ways. I mean, think about the ray rice incident, right . We had we know Domestic Violence is an enormous problem. Ray rice, the, this fl running back, was caught on video. Look at whats happening with black lives matter. Now with these video cameras and because everybody has cell cell phones and can record the cops doing stuff. How much of that matters . Its tremendous. The police have been victimizing africanamericans since africanamericans arrived in this nation in 1619. Right . That legal discrimination or de facto discrimination against africanamericans is a constant. Video matters so much. And so theres a certain amount that we can do without that, but it sure helps to have video. And i think that theres one thing that technology can bring us, right . I mean, you know, you could theoretically give im not saying we should necessarily do this, but, you know, we can theoretically record conditions inside factories, inside a bangladeshi factory that could theoretically be sent out by the internet. The food issue, you see the Agricultural Industry really fearful of this. Because the Animal Rights activists are getting jobs in these factory farms, and theyre taking secret video of the horrors of how these animals are treated, and that becomes a powerful piece of propaganda. So the Agricultural Industry is trying to pass in various states socalled aggag bills that would make private ownership of Surveillance Video inside these factories a crime. And if the Agricultural Industry gets away with this, why cant any other industry do it . They will. And so keeping the access to visualization open is absolutely vital because i sure is a lot easier to make that change if people see whats going on. We might read something and be like, wow, thats really sad, but to see horrors most of us are good people, most of us are moral people, most of us try to make life better, but its easy to ignore things when your own lifes going on. If its in your face, its much harder to ignore. The idea that when people actually hear the sort of ridiculous things and intimidation tactics that happened when workers try to unionize and if people record it, it creates a lot of disgust towards the companies. Yes, thats certainly a piece of it. So in the middle of all this, in the middle of your book coming out, were facing this big fight over the Transpacific Partnership and this fight, of course, takes up a lot of the issues that you write about in this book. So how does your book help us to prepare for stage two of that . Is. Yeah. And, yeah, what should we be thinking about Going Forward . Sure. The Transpacific Partnership, for those not in the know, is 12 nations, transpacific agreement, that wou