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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Friday already. The Friday after Labor Day. Goes fast when we have a four-day week. A four-day week is one of the headline-making demands that the United Auto Workers Union is making in its contract talks with the big automakers and a possible strike looming as early as next week. A four-day work week, a return to defined benefit pensions, not just 401ks, a return to health benefits for retirees in addition to a really big raise.

This is just the latest strike or strike threat news this year as the labor movement makes some significant surges in influence, the UPS contract talks, the writers' and actors' strikes, the nurses at various hospitals, Starbucks, Amazon, New York City bus drivers on the verge of walking out, and more. In New York City, the Labor Day parade comes the weekend after Labor Day.

In recognition of that this weekend and with all this labor news, we welcome back Jane McAlevey, organizer, Senior Policy Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley's Institute for Research on labor and Employment, columnist for The Nation, and co-author of the 2023 book Rules to Win by: Power and Participation in Union Negotiations. Jane, always great to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Jane: Thank you, Brian. It is always good to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Let me jump right in on the UAW. I'm struck by the way they want to change the terms of the debate, including a return to some of the what we might consider best practices of the past, not just ask for money, but you're the expert. What do you make of it?

Jane: Yes, I think it's exciting. The ones that you just listed are what we would consider to be structural versus purely financial takeaways that happened over the last two and a half decades with an erosion of standards at places just like UPS and at places like the Big Three automakers and, by the way, across the country. Part of what's interesting is we know that when unions win big on something like a restoration of a real pension, not a feeble 401k, which is just asking workers to set aside money they don't have in a 401k, is a losing proposition, which is why we need so much more affordable housing, connect them to your last story and more.

They're making demands for profound structural changes that were taken away from American workers systematically over the last 25 years, certainly, if not longer, depending on the sector that you're in. I think it's long overdue that unions make an attempt to win these things back. I can tell you, as a negotiator, I have had the ability to actually restore, to create a first pension, which was shocking. That was years ago.

When we went into a big private sector negotiation, our members had said, "We want a real pension, not this multi hospital 401k that we can't afford to put money into." We did win it. I've also negotiated four-day work weeks. What it takes to win is a hell of a lot of worker power with a lot of public support. The good news for the UAW workers is public support is three out of four people in the Gallup poll last week on the UAW question of them striking, three out of four Americans, independents, Republicans, and Democrats said they stand with United Auto Worker members. That's extraordinary.

Check the box. Huge public support. The question now is, what will the workers be able to do with that going into the negotiations? I think it's high time, and Shawn Fain, as the newly elected leader, has not had a lot of time to get the union ready for the demands they're making. He was sworn in literally in March as the union's every four year collective bargaining convention began to set the terms for what this fight was going to look like. He's trying to do a lot in a little amount of time and I certainly hope he succeeds.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, your calls for Jane McAlevey on this Labor Day week 2023, 212-433-WNYC, any auto workers listening right now? Any actors or writers, any bus drivers or anyone else with a comment or a question on these structural issues being brought up in the UAW contract negotiations, defined benefit pensions, four-day work week? Anything else? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692.

We did a segment earlier in the year on the show about the new conversation happening regarding a four-day work week and some places in which that happened, some other countries, some certain companies trying it out, not necessarily fewer hours, but fewer days. The UAW is asking for a 32 hours four-day work week. Do you think this has legs beyond this particular contract negotiation?

Jane: I do. I think the pandemic has exhausted American workers in a way-- It's not that the pandemic did it. The pandemic helped workers realize how abused they were and how exhausted we are as a class, really, in this country. The attack on worker standards, the attack on what we thought of as the American dream, the basic quality of life that if you put in a good day of work, you should have time to spend with your family. That's just been obliterated in this country. Workers are working two jobs. Even workers that you wouldn't suspect, like UPS drivers are working two full jobs. I'm used to home care workers having to work two jobs literally 16-hour days.

I mean, if you're working 16-hour days, then someone's criticizing you for not having time to do homework with your kids in some public school meeting you're having. What is the American worker to do except fight their way back, as we had to do in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s to create the standard that's going to let people enjoy time with their family, their grandkids and all the rest of it. If the 401k is such a joke, I have to tell you, having been a negotiator and still negotiating on so many contracts, particularly with workers who are making, let's say $10, $12, $15 an hour, which is standard fare in this country at the point we're at. Then the boss actually has the nerve to stand up and say to the public in some press release, "Well, we've offered a robust 401k program."

They know they can offer a match because no low wage worker can afford to put a dime into a 401k. They're using every penny of that paycheck to try to pay the rent. The structural changes are massive. I don't think we're going to get all of them in a single contract. The Teamsters didn't get all of them in a single contract. The writers and the actors and everyone else who listed, these are all workers who have what we call strategic workplace power. The writers do, the actors do, certainly the United Auto Workers workers do. The plants will just close down if they walk out. That's called strategic workplace leverage. The beauty is how many people in last week's- again, it was a brand new Gallup Poll done around Labor Day for that purpose.

There was eye popping support for the writer's strike, for the actor's strike, and then the highest single support was for the UAW workers. They've got the public on their side. The question is, can we do it? We have to do it because I think the movement to a four-day work week is a great one. Every worker seems to be happy, as you said, coming off the introduction, "Oh, it feels like a shorter work week. Oh, great." It does feel better to have a four-day work week, frankly, than a longer one. There's been two big developments happening. One is all these exciting strikes where people are maintaining full public support despite the employer's attempts. Iger, whatever his name is from Disney did himself no favor.

It looks like the GM in Ford and Stellantis CEOs learned a lesson maybe from how outrageous the comments were from the head of Disney about the writers and the actors saying, "Oh, the industry is broke." There couldn't be anything further from the truth than that any of the industries we're describing are broke. What's happened is the shareholders and the CEOs and the executives take far more percentage of what the workers are earning for those companies than ever in the history than basically pre the last Gilded Age in the 1920s. We're sort of at that moment in terms of worker standards and we're going to have to fight to get them back.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a pushback call on some of the expensive things the UAW is asking for. David in Englewood, you're on WNYC. Hi, David.

David: Hi. Please give me at least 45 seconds. First of all, who's going to pay for this? The average new car car note is $703. The average loan on a new car is seven years now. I'm old enough. My first car, I had a three-year car note. What else is crazy is that Americans can afford the new cars now. Now, the UAW need to be looking at what this mandated push by the administration to make everybody buy electric cars, that's going to decimate all the workers' numbers right there because it takes far fewer parts to build an electric car. On the issue you're talking about, the Japanese and the other car companies, Toyota and others, BMW, they don't have union workers. The big three are already, they're really not even the big three anymore. That's a misnomer. Who is going to pay for all this stuff? Americans can't afford the cars that we have right now.

Brian Lehrer: David, well-focused question. You asked for 45 seconds. You got a minute and 10. I hope that was good. Jane, what about that in terms of the competition with the foreign automakers who don't have unionized workers and in terms of what a car costs compared to what it might cost?

Jane: I appreciate David's concern certainly, but I want to say the catch-22 in what the caller just said, which is he ended by saying workers can't afford to buy these cars. I want to start right there. The whole problem and the reason why workers can't afford to buy any car, I don't care if it's a Toyota or a BMW or a Mercedes, those are all the plants that went to the South. The fundamental problem that David surfaced is that workers can't afford to buy a car. That's not on Shawn Fain and the workers at the UAW to figure out it's the shareholders that need to fork over a far greater percent of the disgusting level of wealth that they're sucking out of every one of these private sector companies for themselves. That's the problem. Then, your car loan issue has to do with banks.

We know we got a lot of issues with bad banks in this country. None of these people are trying to do the work of helping the working class. One player in this fight is trying to help the working class. It's not the banks, it's not the shareholders, it's not the CEOs. It sure as hell is the auto workers who themselves can barely afford their cars themselves. I'm a member of the UAW. It's hard as hell for anyone to be able to pay the rent or get a mortgage in this country right now. That's a larger issue, which the administration is trying but desperately needs to do more to tackle. It's only going to be when big private sector contracts restore some of the fundamental rights of what workers should earn themselves that we're going to get out a dilemma that was mentioned here.

Who's going to pay for it? The shareholders need to pay for those increases. That's why having the public involved in the campaign is fundamentally important until we lift up and restore the standards that were won by Walter Reuther and the United Auto Workers in the Treaty of Detroit. This is literally the union that set what the middle-class standard was in this country through fights that involved workers being shot at on strike. The battle of Detroit was incredible. The eventual contract settlement in the late '40s was what set the terms for this country. Principally in that big struggle in the late 1940s into the early '50s, was the creation of a pension, a real pension.

The irony of the union that Reuther built and that workers built in, what was the big three, in fact, raised the standard for every worker in this country and that's what we need to have happen in these big strikes where they still happen. Yes, they're a fraction of their size. Why? Because we offshored, like trade policy in the United States literally took the highest unionized sectors of our economy in manufacturing and sent those jobs first to Maquiladoras in Mexico, then to parts of Asia, and now China, which is just our one giant happy low wage workforce is China. That's not a decision of the workers. That's the bosses.

Brian Lehrer: This is a decades-old tension in US policy toward creating an affordable America and affordable middle class that's real and vibrant. Do you do it through with that globalization and cheap imports? Do you do it with low prices and lower wages, or do you do it with higher wages, but that cause higher prices, the caller points that might happen with the cars?

Jane: I don't think there is any way to do it with lower wages. We've been doing that model now, Brian, since the early 1970s when I began to study the role of the Maquiladoras. The first to go were the auto plants. Again, I argue in a collective bargain with a lot of backup, there was nothing innocent about the move of the automakers into initially Mexico, into the experimental free trade zone that set the terms for what Ronald Reagan did in 1988 in global trade agreements for the first time. It was the Reagan administration and their leftovers going into 1988 talks at what used to be called the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that turned into the World Trade Organization and codified a low wage strategy in the globalization picture, the one that you just described, Brian.

I think it's been a colossal failure. Ask any worker in this country, most of whom are working two full-time jobs, if they could go back to a four-day work week and they could have a real pension and have the right to retire and spend time with their kids, that is all that we are demanding. I think even the Wall Street Journal, the pages of Washington Post. Even the political elite is grappling with the fact there were headlines this summer that said globalization is basically a failure. I don't think the New York Times special issue some Sunday hit the factors [unintelligible 00:15:41]. Even capitalism is recognizing they've gone too far in this country. That doesn't make the big three set up an offer anywhere near what those workers need. Their first initial offers really are garbage if you look at them. The big three is a long way to go if they want to avoid a strike.

Brian Lehrer: Darren in Longmont, Colorado is calling to talk back to David from Inglewood, New Jersey. Darren, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Darren: Hey, Brian. I grew up in Detroit and I have tons of friends there still. I can't believe he brought up a German car maker. They have the most unionized workforce and the highest standard of living. Let's do that. Let's do what David said. Let's look at what Germany and other countries are doing. Because I would invite that over our corporate control over making everyone feel less. I agree with your guest, 100%.

Brian Lehrer: Darren, thank you very much. Kathy in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Kathy.

Kathy: Hi, how are you? Thanks for taking my call. I wanted to comment that it seems to me that there had been popular sentiment that unions were bad, and that went on for a couple of years, a couple of decades, actually. Now, I'm really happy to see that unionization is coming back. Places like Starbucks and so forth. I'm a nurse, and I've been unionized for years. A contract is the only thing that really protects nurses in their working environment and allows for fair wages and so forth. I do agree that the traditional pension is a huge thing that should be able to come back. I can't believe that these massive medical organizations cannot afford traditional pensions. It would help with nurse retention, and it would help with any number of things in terms of affordability for living-

Brian Lehrer: Affording retirement.

Kathy: -your life as a retired person.

Brian Lehrer: Kathy, thank you very much. More on defined benefit pensions versus 401Ks, I think. From Rebecca in Manhattan. Rebecca, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Rebecca: Hi. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: I can hear you.

Rebecca: Wonderful. I just wanted to say that yes, I agree. The resurgence in support for unions is thrilling. I'm a unionized actor for over 40 years. I deeply appreciate the public support for our strike. Three out of four is awesome. However, I think that when you talk about the difference between a real pension or a genuine pension, I understand that you're sort of simplifying for most listeners. I think it's important that people understand that a defined benefit pension means after working 40, 50 years, you receive the same amount of money every month until you die. Whereas my spouse, who is not a union worker, will receive whatever amount of money the defined contribution from his employer has allowed, and it will run out.

Brian Lehrer: Whatever he was able to save in his 401k, right?

Rebecca: Correct. With a match from the medical organization. The most thrilling thing for me, other than the three out of four, is that my own child just got their first union job. I think that people are beginning to realize that that's the pathway to stability. Blaming prices on workers is insane.

Brian Lehrer: Rebecca, thank you very much. Is there a double-edged sword here, though, Jane? With respect to defined benefit pensions, the ones that come totally out of the company's pocket after you retire, as opposed to perhaps pushing companies and contracts to give you more on top of your regular salary into your 401K. Because you take the risk that the company itself won't survive until you're 98. Companies do go out of business. If you've got that pot of money, again, with some, hopefully, generous, meaningful contribution every year from the employer while you're working, then is it in a certain way more secure?

Jane: I'm going to argue no. Let me just start with one fact. Just because you have a defined benefit that's-- Let's just simplify it, Rebecca's right, and call it a real pension, which is how I prefer to think of them versus defined contribution, which is you put your own money in, and you get it later. For most workers, that's zero. Workers contribute to the defined benefit, what I'm calling the real pension. I contribute, I forget right now, I think 2%, maybe after the contract. On average it's about 2% of your salary is actually helping your employer build that real pension that you can then live on until you die. That's one. It's not all on the boss. It's not all on the management to do it.

The problem with the defined contribution, which is the 401k in simple terms. Again, wages are so far back in this country from what they were in 1973, where basically we haven't made wage gains in 50-plus years with the cost of inflation that they simply don't have a penny to put into their defined contribution. I know the employer messaging on this because I have battled it for 25 years as a negotiator. They hold a press conference, they say, "We're offering a 6% or 8% match and that's up from the 4% match that we offered last time." When we say we have the financial numbers when we're going into negotiations, they have to give us all sorts of information that the general public who does not, by the way, enjoy the right to collective bargaining, never sees from the company.

I can pull up a statistic and show them that 9 workers out of 1,000 put money into their defined contribution because the wages are so damn low. They can't pay the rent. They can't buy clothing for their kids. They simply can't function in a 401k system. It just doesn't work. I think there is no choice if we don't want-- I've said many times back to the [unintelligible 00:22:18] called in, that is where we won a real defined benefit pension against all odds being totally strike ready with the public on our side in a right to work state many years ago. It was now Dignity Health, it was then Catholic Health Care West, one of the largest hospital chains in the West. We went into a two-state battle. We had people at 28 of their hospitals.

We lined up our contracts between California and Nevada and were ready to strike the company for as long as it took and won a defined benefit pension plan at a time when people said, even from my national union, "Stop it. We have to give up." This is part of the problem with the labor movement, national unimaginative leadership, sometimes. Give up on that demand. Well, hell no, we're not giving up on that demand because my family lived on that demand. Most people of the generation before us only got to move to Florida or whatever they're doing right now because they're living on a real pension. Every worker who works for 40 years of their life deserves that right, and the employers have the money. That is the point. We are operating under hyper-greed where it's executives and shareholders and screw the entire rest of every working class person in this country. It's got to stop. We are at the limit of what workers can do, how they survive.

Brian Lehrer: We have three minutes left in the segment. Let me try to do a little Labor Week, Labor News lightning round with you. Short questions, short answers. The actors and writers strike, how do you see the power dynamics in that right now? In brief.

Jane: I think the power dynamics are good. I think the joint solidarity between the actors and the writers is going to get it done. People keep asking me, "Why it's been going on so long, Jane?" I can say that the writers knew that completely. In the lightning answer. We're just hitting the moment where you're hearing new stories saying there's not going to be any new shows, not just the comedy shows, but they're out. The writers fully knew going into it that they were going to have at least a four-month strike, basically and because the industry, Disney & Companies, they stockpiled scripts. Now, they're out of scripts. This is when the crisis begins for the industry. That's that answer.

Brian Lehrer: All right, next one. You have a Nation column now called The NLRB's Recent Decisions Are Good News For Workers. These didn't make much news. What's the most important National Labor Relations Board decision this year?

Jane: There's actually dozens of them, which is happening because one member of the board can't get the Senate to appoint them. I digress why we're getting a slew of decisions right now before they lose a majority on the board. The most important one I'm going to argue, was what was called the Cemex decision, which essentially restored the right for workers to have an election or have a majority on what's called union membership cards and demand that they have a union just because the majority of workers signed their membership cards. A lot of people think that's a very important decision.

I argue the more important National Labor Relations Board decision in the last two weeks was a restoration of what we call fair election rules all across this country, which means the key thing an employer does right now when workers file for a union election is they have the capacity to delay. They could drag it out for three years before the workers ever get to vote. That the restoration of what were the Obama-era election rules at the National Labor Relations Board that Trump ended when he took office. They were a real setback for workers.

They've been restored, which now means the employers can't hold up your election. If there are charges, they get set aside till after the election, and then the debate happens. That is fundamental to not letting the union-busters get inside. That's what the delay is about, letting the union-busters get in. Every union-busting lawyer can work that clock like no one's business. The restoration of the fair election rules, a decision that was made on the 24th of August, was an extraordinarily important decision.

Brian Lehrer: Last one, I see you like something that Governor Hochul has done now in New York. 30 seconds, what was that?

Jane: She signed a package of laws just two days ago, one of which said that workers can no longer in New York State be forced into what's called a captive audience meeting. Those are rampant at Amazon, by the way, at the JFK facility, and Starbucks, and everywhere in this country. She actually signed a law saying, "A worker cannot be forced on work time to listen to anti-union propaganda in what's called a mandatory meeting for fear of being terminated. They have the right to refuse to attend those meetings." She packaged it cleverly with the right for workers to also refuse having to listen to an employer's religious opinion. It was tactically interesting how she did it, but that's actually very significant and it was a great decision.

Brian Lehrer: Jane McAlevey, organizer, senior policy fellow at the University of California at Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, columnist for The Nation, and co-author of the book that came out this year, Rules to Win By: Power and Participation in Union Negotiations. Jane, thank you so much.

Jane: Thank you, Brian. Have a good weekend.

Brian Lehrer: Belated happy Labor Day. Listeners, for those of you in the New York area and who are interested. The New York City Labor Day Parade starts tomorrow, Saturday, September 9th at 10:00 AM at 5th Avenue and 44th Street.

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