547 - Dracula Party feat. David Dayen (8/5/21)

Kathy, I can only speak for my area, but there ARE good union jobs still out there. You might need to enter a field you hadn't considered in the past, Lord knows I never thought I would be the guy making school lunch cheese and Cheeto dust, but they do exist. The labor movement in the USA has been hit hard, but it's far from dead. Too many of our fellow workers in the past had their heads beaten in by Pinkertons for us to throw away their sacrifice now. Otherwise, we might as well roll over and surrender to the bourgeoisie. I refuse to. A union is one of the only real measures of power workers have.

Michael Barbarich

Joining a union wont deliver to me the wages and benefits enjoyed by Doug and Michael. It may take years to get a contract offering some or little gains, if I ever get one. Good union jobs are on a shrinking island

I'm uniquely positioned to comment on this, as my spouse and I were hired into the same company, management-only vs union-only at nearly the same time. After 14 years, the union salary went from 25/hr to 70/hr. We use the union health benefits because they're cheaper than the ones offered to management. The union position has 1.5x for all hours over 40 each week. The union position has a defined benefit pension in addition to the 401k that both positions have. The management position could theoretically have a higher pay ceiling, but is subject to political issues that the union position is relatively insulated from. For the longest time, the main advantage to management was that they supported remote work-from-home, but now both do thanks to the pandemic. Just my experiences, dues were appx $1200 last year which are tax deductible in our state.

doug

Please unlock this one. Lots of helpful Labor information here as well as the stuff about rental relief.

Friend of Pangolin

Im bottlenecked for applying benefits cause I cant find my drivers license to verify my id for California's system. Realizing now this is not a security feature, but an intentional deterrent

Evan Silverman

Great interview

gram

Gunter grass the rat

Jonathan lees

Please make Union segment public !! Very important.

Ellen Harold

How would the union have stopped the place getting shut down? I guess they just could've negotiated for some benefits. But yeah, union can't stop them from just outsourcing. Thus the attraction of "Uber for x" business model.

Sam

Anyone know when Amber is gonna be back? =[

Nicholas Webb

Well, Kathy, since I'm going to assume we're all adults here, I am going to start by saying unions are imperfect and can be mismanaged. However, as a Teamsters production worker, I'm earning nearly $30/hr while non union plants in my area, doing very similar work, don't break the $20/hr barrier until years into employment with those companies. My benefits package is the best I've ever seen, while comparable plants barely offer anything as far as coverage. It's well worth the $58 a month I pay in dues, plus I get to tell the McKinsey ghouls the company hired to go fuck themselves and I don't have to worry about any disciplinary action, since I'm a contract employee and have done nothing to violate my contract when I did so. Anyhow, kick rocks, corporate bootlicker.

Michael Barbarich

For Biden, Dems, and republicans, their policy on the homeless is pretty much one step away from the clearing of the commons and Jacobite revolt. Soon you will be reading about homeless hanged in florida or New York for vagrancy. Joking, not joking.

Jared

I think the thing really not being covered in the moratorium is the fact there has already been kicked out apartments long before this.

Jared

Regarding the union-busting propaganda: where is the lie?

DiBlasio in the Hawaiian shirt with the glasses had some serious Marlon Brando vibes. Marlon-Brando-in-the-Island-of-Dr.-Moreau vibes, but how many amongst us rise to even that level of Brandosity

Ijon Tichy

“A horny menace” lmao

Terrance McDonald