Union Busters, Part II: The Present and the Future

While they're not as common as they once were, labor unions are back in the news as employees of companies like Amazon, Starbucks and more choose to organize, pushing for better pay, more rights and so on. In part two of this two-part episode, Ben and Matt explore the present -- and future -- of unions and union busting.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.

(00:25):
My name is Matt. Our colleague Nol is still on
an adventure, but he will be returning shortly. We assure you.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer of all mission control decads. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here, and that makes this the
stuff they don't want you to know. This is the

(00:46):
second part of a two part episode we are doing
on conspiracies involving unions, involving the people who love unions
and the people who historically and in the present a
oppose them. In our previous episode, we took a brief
look at the apparently controversial history of labor unions, and

(01:10):
it turns out that organized collective bargaining, however you feel
about it, has become controversial in the US. Do in
no small part two concerted, very well conducted and orchestrated,
very well funded propaganda campaigns. Berns would be so proud, Matt.

(01:34):
I think he would like he would give those campaigns
if he didn't see, yes, he would give them a
four out of five doctors, don't you always wonder like
who's the tenth dentist. Who's the tent dentist in all
those things? Who was like, no, way, this is garbage. Uh,

(02:01):
it's yeah, it's a good question. We'll see. And that
dentist probably got paid by the campaign to say they
didn't like it, just to make it seem more credible,
because if it was all the dentists, it would be like, mmmm,
are you sure? Yeah, right, that's how your regular election,
you know what I mean. You can't have a hundred

(02:22):
and ten percent of the people voting for the same candidate.
But but yeah, we're we are talking about propaganda, and
you know, this can be a bit of a touchy subject,
but that's nature of this show. This can be a
bit of a third rail sometimes for mass media. But

(02:44):
here are the facts. Earlier, we we asked what a
union is. Uh. Usually when people talk about unions, they're
not talking about necessarily like marriage or some other kind
of civil union. They're talking about out labor unions. They're
talking about a bunch of colleagues in a given industry,

(03:06):
or you know, a given category of industry who get
together and fight for things that a lot of people
take for granted nowadays, like a an eight hour work
day or a weekend. We answered this question the previous episode,
but in answering this we largely focused on the objective

(03:28):
origin of unions, and to be absolutely fair, we need
to address the imperfections that unions will inevitably encounter, like
any other large collection of humans. Folks, fellow conspiracy realists,
we don't care if you're talking about something like Congress,
if you're talking about something like Davos, or you're talking

(03:51):
about something like, you know, a religious organization. You get
enough people together working on some thing and they're going
to conspire. So we want to kind of open this
episode by talking a little bit about those imperfections of unions.

(04:12):
Because they are human made and because of their potential
to influence large scale events, there is always going to
be room for crime and corruption. And you know, Matt,
it's weird like you and I growing up uh in
the US and this iteration, when did you hear about unions?

(04:36):
Was it ever big news? Well, it was my mother,
and I have a feeling you may be learned about
it in the same way through a teachers union, which
was a very common thing, at least I think when
we were growing up, and still is today a very
common thing, teachers unions within the United States. At least
that's how I learned about them. What about you, Ben,

(04:56):
You know, I always well, we come from different places, right, Like,
I'm familiar with the idea of teachers unions. But back
in the day, not back in the old days, like
not pre United States, but back in the day in
the United States, about one third of the entirety of

(05:17):
this country's workforce in the private sector was unionized. They
were the unions represented in one way or another, the
vast majority of employees, and auto manufacturing and the steel industry,
all the mission critical stuff like Trucker's construction, food processing,

(05:41):
and the US at this point seemed pretty well on
the way to a new sort of guild system, just
like the guilds in Europe that led to corruption and inequality,
that led to you know, the journeyman Glass creating the

(06:02):
predecessor of the union. It's very strange to think about
it in big picture, and it might be difficult for
a lot of us to imagine this today, but not
very long ago at all, union leaders were a big,
big deal. They were like international figures. They were asked
about things on the news. They weighed in the same

(06:25):
way that um pundits qualified or unqualified will weigh in
on you know, your Fox News or your CNN or
what have you today. The most you know there are
folks like George Meaney, Walter Ruther. Uh, Jimmy Hoffa is
probably the most well known today because he disappeared. I

(06:47):
think I think we're legally obligated to say he disappeared
about seven years after his disappearance has declared legally dead. Anyway,
we'll get to that in a second. Uh. Remember the
show The Wire. They have the great expression whenever they
want to get something done outside of the official business,

(07:08):
when they need a favor. They talked about having suction, right,
and the the union leaders for a long time, they
had a lot of suction. They had a lot of influence,
had considerable economic and political influence. And this started to

(07:29):
worry the people at the top of the business community,
and you know the people that the business community owns
in large part Congress. Yeah exactly. And if you think
this is why I imagine it. Ben, tell me what
you think about this, but I imagine that an individual corporation,

(07:49):
especially one that is publicly traded, who is uh at
its heart, attempting to make profits for its shareholders, the
people that own stock in the corporation, and the board
members who run that corporation, right and I am. I
imagine that they feel squeezed often or that the profits

(08:12):
for that company and their ability to do their jobs
is squeezed by two things. And maybe there's a lot
more you know, factors here, but in my mind, it's
government regulation on whatever industry it is that they're functioning within,
and potentially labor unions or unions that are there. As

(08:32):
we mentioned in the last episode, there are cogs that
are required. They're human cogs perhaps as they see them,
that are needed to create the product on which they profit.
And I imagine that those two things together, you want
to alleviate one or the other, or perhaps both, or
there's like a desire perhaps to push back against both

(08:52):
of those groups. Yeah, So everybody has regardless of where
you find yourself in life, every hum in person will
typically have multiple folks that are stakeholders, are weighing in
on your opinion, and it's it's a thing that starts

(09:13):
when humans are in the cradle and it continues until
they expire. And the problem is that for most people,
these different stakeholders often have conflicting ideas or conflicting visions
about how they want the world to be. Make no mistake,

(09:34):
for the majority of Congress, this is not a compliment,
it's not a criticism. It is solely an observation. The
majority of Congress has several classes of constituents. There is
the average voter, and there is also the ownership class,

(09:55):
the ones who actually pay for the campaign and do
the lobbying and all that jazz. Uh. Anyway, Congress got
worried about this because the people who pay them through
the back door got worried. And and uh it a
surprise shamalan esque twist. The US Congress tried to do

(10:19):
something about corruption in the world of unions, in the
world of labor leadership. If you go back to nineteen
fifty seven, you'll find a guy named John L. McClellan.
He's a Democratic senator from Arkansas at the time, and
he focused on the idea of bribery, fraud, and racketeering

(10:43):
in some aspects of the labor movement. This was big
news at the time in seven. It was an investigation
that went on for two years, and it was red
meat for the press. People loved it. Uh, Congress did
find some things in their defense. They found corruption in

(11:04):
several major labor organizations, and this lad folks to call
for government intervention in the management of unions. And so
there was there's a crisis going on in at this time,
and Congress is going back and forth. You know, they're

(11:25):
like talking with the people who pay them, and then
they're like talking to voters. I guess when it's a
good pr opportunity, And they go back and forth about
different methods to improve standards and accountability for these labor organizations,
because you have to realize, at this point in their heyday,

(11:48):
labor organizations are tremendously powerful, and they are doing some
things that typically before that point would be restricted to
state level actors, to the government or two large businesses.
So eventually Congress makes this system of reporting that that

(12:11):
unions are required to do. And at first this system
is like not super convenient. It's kind of like, how
remember we were talking years ago about the Vatican Library right,
and there's this there's this part of the Vatican Library
that you can technically brows, but their system is so weird.

(12:39):
You don't have a list of what's in that library.
You have to know what you're asking for, and you
have to ask for it specifically, which is very strange.
What I'm saying is this accountability moved by Congress um
may have been well intentioned. There certainly was a problem,
but it wasn't easy for people pro or anti union

(13:04):
to figure out what was going on with the finances.
What I'm saying is Congress was doing the right thing
in this moment in time, but they perhaps weren't doing
it for the right reasons. Unions were riddled with bad
faith actors who were doing all kinds of objectively amazing

(13:27):
but objectively unethical stuff, you know, like like imagine, Matt, Matt, Matt,
Imagine you were like, um, what, what's the job you
would want to have if you and I weren't hanging out,
Like if you weren't in podcasting, you weren't a kick
ass executive producer, etcetera, ETCETERA foreman on a construction site.

(13:51):
All right, so you're the foreman of the Foreman's Union,
which I love. Uh. So you're the foreman of the
Foreman's Union, and through that leadership you can move a
great many people in step. You can go to a speech,
go do a speech, you can hold a rally, you

(14:13):
can send out a newsletter, and you can say, you know, uh,
the right guy to be the mayor of Chicago is
none other than Paul Mission controlled decades. And then you
can make that a voting block and you can swing
in election. Nothing is illegal about that, is it ethical?

(14:37):
Not really? But but you can also you can also
do other things right, especially if you get organized crime involved. Matt,
you and I know, and Paul you know as well.
We have a lot of friends who work in the
world of production, in film, television, commercials and so on.

(15:01):
And there are a lot of unions in the world
of production. And for the most part, uh, those are
very good things and they need to exist. And most
of the public only here's about these unions when something
goes wrong. And you may be familiar with some of
these things, like the Director's Guild, the Producers Guild, the

(15:22):
Screen Actors Guild, the Teamsters Union. These are all things
that are thrown around and I think the Teamsters is
probably the best known. Shout out to my friend Michael,
who is currently a teamster who's out there in l
A doing his thing. Uh I know, a couple of
a couple of teamsters. They're really good folks, but the

(15:46):
good side, Yes, I do because of the union as
a bit of a past. Yeah, you nailed it, man.
That's that's where we're going with this. So this will
be doubtlessly familiar to all our fellow conspiracy realists to
work in the in the production industry. However, to find

(16:07):
one of the hard and fast rules is not to
mess with the teamsters because of strong precedent. And uh,
I mean, let's not pretend to be new here. Unions
in the United States have in the past been affiliated

(16:28):
with the organized crime. Of course, not all unions, right,
and certainly not all union members, most of whom are
just people trying to get ahead in their life, trying
to be paid a reasonable wage, spend some time with
their kids, make their kids life better than their life was. Like,
that's very understandable. That's the thing, to not have their

(16:52):
life just be one long work day that has a
few hours in between where you can sleep and see
your children. Yeah right, pretty much everybody just wants to,
you know, have a nice life. Yeah, I don't think
not hell right, a life that feels that doesn't feel
like you're digging your own grave until the moment you're

(17:14):
shot and putting that grave. So like, I know that
sounds somewhat hyperbolic, but what what we're doing is showing
you the warts of an idea while we are also
understanding the perspective of the people involved. Look, here's the thing.

(17:35):
Imagine you are mafioso of some sort, right, You're not
just in the You're you're into crime, but you like
your crime organized, you know what I mean. There's there
is nothing quite as special and powerful as inserting yourself

(17:57):
into a union. It is a private agglomeration of many,
many people who have what one thing in common, which
is their industry. Right, So you can move demographics in
a very interesting way. You want to regulate an election, control,
especially a local election, control a union, have a voting step,

(18:20):
do what Matt did as the foreman of the Foreman's Union,
and have everybody vote for a certain guy for mayor
of Chicago. You want to make a percentage on any
number of industries dude, you want your big you want
to seek some rent. As they say in the world
of economics, boom boom boom. You know, now we control

(18:41):
you know, we control the the sanitation union of a city.
Now we can set the prices and we can make
that extra a percent. That's right, and it's and it's
one of the major criticisms against unions that is used
by a lot of union busters, which is one of

(19:02):
the things we're going to really get into this episode,
is that they can control quite a bit of money
because there are dues paid by every member of a union, right,
and the thought there, and it's been spoken about on
John Oliver and a bunch of other places there there
is a thought that continues that that money isn't used

(19:24):
to defend individual union members in cases where there's an issue,
which is really when you sign up for union, that's
what it's stated, right, you pay your dues so that
everybody collectively has this pool of money that can be
used for the for everybody's benefit collectively and individually. Um.
But there's a lot of thought that that money, at
least historically, and it has been proven that in certain

(19:46):
cases it has been used this way, was used for
nefarious purposes, right, Yeah, it inevitably becomes embroiled in things
that maybe the average union member doesn't visibility or input on.
We just full disclosure before we recorded part two of this, Uh,

(20:07):
Matt and Mr Control and I we're talking about some
of the consulting videos that are created by UM. I
can only imagine very tone deaf union busting consultancies. And
again there are in a number of euphemisms for those organizations.

(20:29):
Employee relations management is one. Uh. But but we have
to raise this point. You know, we have to separate
ourselves a little bit from the propaganda. And you are
absolutely right, Matt. Sometimes union corruption got ugly because after

(20:50):
a certain threshold, you were talking about the realm of politics,
and there are very very few clean hands in that world,
very few. And this, uh, this is important for us
to note because also the interesting response to that idea
of paying dues and not having representation, right, that's it's

(21:15):
an echo of the idea of taxation without representation. That's
the objection, right. But you also logically have to ask,
if there's not a union, right, if you're if you're
just an employee negotiating individually, how much of a say
do you have you know what I mean. They're there's

(21:35):
like take um controversial political donations or uh political action
committee donations, all this stuff. Like the average person working
at a Chick fil A drive through, which is still
known today for its opposition to things like marriage equality

(21:56):
right same sex marriage. Chick fil A super not on
board with that, you know who. They don't ask before
they donate any of that money. They don't ask the
kid at the drive through. They don't care what that
kid thinks. So like that that kid has no input
in that regard either. So what we're saying is there

(22:17):
is a bad faith argument sometimes in that respect. That
being said, I know we're going back and forth, but
we have to do this. That's what we said. Yeah,
that being said, there there have been dirty actions by
union leaders. Perhaps the most famous is because our boy
Jimmy haffa known mob associate. This guy was shaking the

(22:40):
foundations of one of the most powerful and dangerous countries
on the planet until he disappeared. This is true story.
There is mundane enough to be true. This guy disappeared
last seen at a parking lot in a suburban restaurant

(23:01):
in Detroit, and he this was July. His body has
never been found. There's a great deal of speculation about it.
As a matter of fact, I'm I I think we
do a full episode on this one. Matt Uh. Seven
years later, a judge declared him legally dead. As we
record now in no one ever got charged with any

(23:27):
sort of crime. He could have just gone off the grid.
But sometimes people just go, Yeah, sometimes they just go
it's more difficult than you might think to get off
the grid. We've got an episode on that, I believe.
But the thing is, no one's at this point, no
one's going to get charged with the likely murder of

(23:50):
Jimmy HOFFA spoiler. Uh, It's it's time for us to
assuming we don't get fired for being that honest about this,
it's time for us to say, Yeah, it might sound
like we're crapping on unions a bit, and that's not
the case. We're just emphasizing that, like most human organizations, again,

(24:14):
these are vulnerable to corruption. It's not a hot take,
it's not a new take. It is simply a boring
and time tested, a very true take. But at their heart,
unlike other organizations, I would argue that unions have always
been a noble pursuit, you know, like you vultron up.

(24:36):
Why why be one foreman when you can be ten thousand,
you know, assemble the avengers of the working class, and
together we will pursue basic rights and guarantees that we
could not achieve on our own. And despite all the
bad press and despite yes, genuine cases of corruption, seems
that unions are a very good thing for a great

(24:59):
many people. But here's the thing. It sounds like communism
to me. Ben right, Here's the thing. Folks in power
know this as well. They're not really chumps in the
squad in this conversation everybody. We can assume that everybody
is a rational actor, and we can assume that they
are performing to the top of their intelligence. They just

(25:22):
have very different goals. That is why union busting remains
an active conspiracy. Today, we're gonna pause for a word
from our sponsors and then we'll dive in. Here's where
it gets crazy. Matt Pinkerton's hangarns every like, I feel

(25:52):
like we would be goods. I feel like we could
do we could do stuff like that. Yeah, I mean,
oh god, that's really gross, but yeah, we would be
pretty Yeah, you can imagine myself being a private I
mean I've always i don't know, being a private detective
or you know, an FBI agent like on the case.

(26:12):
I think it's always something that I've kind of fantasized about.
And I think it's just because I had a lot
of maybe comic book heroes, everybody from Batman too, there's
still so many where yeah, where I just I want
to be investigating, and I feel like we get kind
of an outlet for that here. It's not the same
as being on the ground and getting my nose into things. Yeah,

(26:37):
but the thing is you and I, You and I
right now can't roll up to like, we can't roll
up on some group of people, shoot someone and then
flash a badge that says I'm a podcaster, you know
what I mean that we'd have to use the other well,
you know, if we use the word shooting as in

(26:58):
like getting a shotgun mic out, you know in AH six,
then yeah, we could roll up on a group of
people shoot and then say hey, we're podcasters. Hey for
the record. For the record, folks, we we do our
due diligence. We do have release forms, and that's part
of why we ask that you explicitly give us permission

(27:23):
to use you know, whatever nickname you wish or your
voice on air, that that informed consent is really important
to us, and it is not important to a lot
of anti union corporations. No, no, no, no, no, no, no,
it is not. Let let's just jump right into union busting. Ben,

(27:45):
Let's let's talk about this is a practice, a tale
as old as time. Specifically, there are their union busting
efforts happening right now, in the past. Oh, let's let's
give it a span of two three years, but right now,
actively there's union busting happening at major corporations. Specifically, you've

(28:05):
probably been reading about it occurring at Starbucks right now, Amazon,
right now, there's stuff in Walmart, I think, and even
in some uh some school districts in Minnesota with teachers unions.
So let's let's get into all of this. Yeah, yeah,
let's you know, I love the way of kicking this off.

(28:26):
So if you look at the three organizations that you
just named, Matt, Starbucks, Amazon, Walmart, they are actively involved
in a war for the hearts, minds, and most importantly,
the labor of their employees. And yeah, look there there

(28:47):
are a ton of laws on the books in the
United States that are meant to protect organized labor. But
those laws are written by people in power. So a
lot of things that seem like loopholes or seem like
lacks enforcement, those are those are features, they are not bugs.

(29:10):
If you're the average person living in the United States
and two, you probably don't think about unions often. It
comes to you as a story, and like an abbreviated
news clip, it's often going to be biased. It's sometimes
a snooze fest. You know. We we all sort of
collectively fall asleep when we hear a gobbledegook of initials

(29:32):
or numbers we don't understand, Like, what is I be EU?
What is a fl dash C? I oh, what does
that mean to me? I got stuff to do? You
know what I mean? I got I'm I'm making a
case of DA or whatever. But the labor movement, as
but that's a universal thing. The labor movement, as imperfect

(29:52):
as it is, it has done great things again, you know,
and this is probably the last time I'll mention it.
But it is the reason the concept of the weekend exists.
Those two days off, not the artist. We didn't we
didn't have time to text them about unions before recording,
but check in. We'll ask him. Uh, it's the reason

(30:14):
you have paid vacation, that you have sick days, that
you have some vestige of rights to privacy or used
to with your employer, and on and on and on
and on and on. And this is a big, big,
big big, like, sir, mix a lot level, but uh,
that's changing. It is, dude, there is what some people

(30:38):
call a decision point. Are you laughing at the like big?
But it was your delivery man. It was perfectly good,
sir makes a lot that's not us. But but yeah,
it turns out company town company towns are going to
be a thing again, right we we talked about that

(30:59):
a little bit. Um. The red flag there or the
next red flag for those will be when the employees
slash residents of those company towns are paid in something
that is not a state currency. So like, go live
at the Tesla factory town and get paid in crypto.
You know that's gonna be another red flag. Also, it

(31:22):
turns out Pinkerton's never left. Don't call it a comeback.
They've been here. Uh. They make a lot of money
undermining by hook or by crook, of folks who are
conspiring to form unions, and that alone, to me, no
matter how you feel, that alone should trigger your spidy sense.

(31:47):
You have to ask yourself at some point, why do
people empower spend so much time and so much energy
fighting this the old like if we walk through it, man,
The only thing that I can reasonably say is that
people in power want to stay in power and they

(32:10):
don't want the proletariat messing with the status quo. You
know what I mean. And it's so it's weird, But
I don't know what do you think that? Does that
make sense? I I it does make sense. I'm trying
to this. The whole research portion for me during these
episodes has been trying to understand that question, why why

(32:33):
are companies so against unions and an organized labor within
their organizations? And I'm this is what I've come up with.
You tell me what you think. I think you're dealing
with operations costs for a company. So how much does

(32:53):
it cost me to produce one thing that is one
unit of the thing that I produce, whether that's a
go or a service? Right, how much does it cost
me as the company to produce that one thing which
then uh leads to how much that thing costs for
the consumer, right, because you're you're gonna like if you

(33:14):
imagine it markup on food or on wine or uh
like a hotel room, the markup that you charge a
customer in order to make a profit. It feels to
me that labor unions, because all of your labor increases
in price across the board. If if a labor union

(33:36):
comes in and successfully, you know, is able to negotiate
new contracts for all the people, it pushes all the
prices up in in a wave. Rather than one person
getting a raise here, one person you know, getting promoted here. Um,
I imagine the company worrying about how that's going to

(33:57):
affect them down the line more rather than spending some
of the profits that they've made in the past to
fight back against that potential wave. And that's the reason
I can imagine rationally, right, if everybody's a rational actor,
the way we discuss geopolitics when we're talking about North Korea,
Russia or something. But you know, I don't know, that

(34:20):
makes me feel icky. That takes me back to my
early like business school days, and I do not like it. Yeah, No,
you're you're making it. I mean that that is true, right,
that is inarguably the case. If you if you think
about it that way, if you can understand sort of

(34:42):
the calculus of the people involved or the institutions involved,
then you can also understand a little bit about why
they would be still very tone death. And again, this
is not a statement for we're against unionization. You can

(35:04):
read a lot of fantastic scholarship about the history of
labor movements. You can read a lot of hilarious writing
from various consulting firms. I want to draw your attention
to an excellent genre of videos we found on YouTube,

(35:25):
which are all just screen rips of very poorly done,
very poorly done uh anti unionization videos that are paid
for by these corporations. We just watched a very very
disappointing one from Walmart that has some pretty racist tinges

(35:51):
to it. And uh also, I've gotta i gotta point out, Matt.
When I'm watching these videos, I'm wondering sometimes, like, are
these actors themselves in a union? Are they in the
screen Actors Guild. I'm gonna say a non non sag operation.

(36:13):
I'm gonna I'm just gonna I don't think there's a
lot of most favorite nations going on there, which is
a term that I've had to learn after working with
the Screen Actors Guild for quite a while. Now. Yes, yes, yeah,
the most favorite status. So so we're going to introduce
some examples of present union busting activities, uh, and we're

(36:39):
going to be objective, as objective as possible, and then
we're going to maybe freestyle a little bit on the
possible future and the great conflict between the owners and
the workers. But before we do that, we're gonna pause
for word from our sponsor, check whether or not Russia's

(36:59):
law bunch of the nukes and won't be back. Everything's
looking clear over here, Ben, Yep, yep. Gas prices are
still around four dollars, So we're okay four dollars in
the US. Yeah, we are back. We're back in there.

(37:24):
There exists in the US alone, a multi million dollar
industry dedicated entirely too information warfare targeted against unions. Again,
it doesn't matter how any of us feel for or

(37:47):
against the idea of labor unions, you have to acknowledge
that there are people spending a lot of money trying
to stop them from happening. And here's the thing. Anti
union people, you'll love this. Pro union people, you'll hate this.
That information warfare has been remarkably successful today. If you

(38:11):
look at the like overall, look at the United States,
look at people who work in the US, you'll see
that about a little over ten percent of them belong
to a union. That is half the rate it was
back in nineteen three, which is longer ago than it sounds,

(38:33):
but is recent enough to be disturbing because you see
this dramatic define well, yeah, and you think about that
in contrast to the fact that just under half of
the American workers who are not in a union say
they would like to be in a union. And remember
that's an individual person that would like to be in

(38:54):
a union, And that makes sense, right, about half of
the people who are not want to be in one.
But when you, you know, go, when you begin to
have those conversations with other people at your workplace of
whom likely at least statistically, would want to be in
a union as well, you're going to find pushback, lots

(39:15):
of pushback because, as Ben said, it's organized. The pushback
is organized, right, right, Yeah, there's not a lot of
improvisation in this in this theater. You know we talked
about in the past. We've got a lot of our
fellow conspiracy realists who wrote in because they worked or

(39:38):
are currently working for Amazon. Right. And one of the
big things that the mainstream media grappled onto, and I know,
I know it's now it's like a controversial term to
say mainstream media, but we're using the term correctly. One
of the things that the media did pay attention to

(39:58):
where the human inter stories, not the systemic structural problems
that give birth to this conflict, but stories about you know,
a a worker at Amazon and employee at Amazon having
to like being so pressed to make impossible quotas that

(40:18):
they had to urinate in bottles because they didn't literally
did not have time to walk to a restroom without
getting fired. The thing about those human interest stories, oh
and they are human interest stories, and there are stories
of injustice. The thing about them is they're true. Amazon
was like no way, ted, and then they were like,

(40:40):
oh sorry, we said no way. And then later in
a third step, they were like yes, wait Ted anyway. Uh,
you know, think of it this way, says Amazon. Why
wouldn't you piss in a gatorade bottle to help your
boss get to space kind of for eleven minutes. You know, priorities,
be a team player. And then they said party on garth.

(41:09):
That's really um, that's really messed up. And here's the deal. Ultimately,
if you imagine yourself in your position wherever you work,
if you work, however, whatever your situation is, if you
imagine yourself getting together with a bunch of your coworkers,
maybe your friends outside of work, people who are all

(41:29):
all working together, and you imagine, um, you know, fighting
for something like creating a union, knowing that there is
this concerted effort to prevent you from doing that. Pretty
much across the board should be a red flag in
your mind. And it doesn't matter if you want to
form a union or not. You should if you should,

(41:50):
just stick out that somebody doesn't want you to unionize,
whether you want to or not. Right, you know what
I mean? If if, if this stuff is indeed ineffective,
then why are you worried about it being successful? You
know what I mean? That's that's if the union is
just gonna take money from you in the form of

(42:11):
dues and then use it for its own and various purposes,
then why would the employer be worried? Yeah? Right. Unfortunately,
there are a lot of scare tactics that don't seem
to correct me if I'm wrong here, folks. They don't
seem to hold up to actual scrutiny. Like one of
the big ones that has been pointed out in the

(42:31):
past is uh oh God. I should begin this by saying,
we have watched a great many terrible workplace training videos
that are entirely about the dangers of joining in a union.
And they are they are for the most part bad
faith arguments, at least from what I can tell. And

(42:54):
I you know that I'll be honest with you. That's
my opinion. I UM, I always welcome any any like
correction or if anybody can shed a new perspective on this,
please do right in call us one three three std
w y t K conspiracy Diheart radio dot com. But
here's what I think you and I both found that, um,

(43:19):
there's a bit of double think in these arguments. There's
a bit of um honestly kind of lazy rhetoric. Like
if if you are a consulting firm and you're being
paid to misinform people and to scare them. And that's
your job. Do a better job. I hope it don't

(43:40):
sound like a jerk about it. But like, like, take
the argument, the argument um that if people join some
sort of labor union there are wages might go up,
they might go down, you know what I mean, They
might go up. But the idea of those wages going

(44:01):
down is somewhat fanciful because given like what you said earlier,
if wages, like if it decreased the costs for a
company or organization, they'd be all about it. They'd be
all about unions, you know what I mean. They'd be like,
you have to join a union so that we don't

(44:22):
pay you more than ten dollars an hour or whatever
what happened. So it just yeah, because it doesn't make sense.
What do you get in a union? What's what's the
primary benefit of having a union? I would say, and
I think this is what union organizers would say. It's
collective bargaining. So you've got a group that is bargaining

(44:42):
with a corporation, a company, someone that sets prices for labor,
rather than an individual saying you know, um, and maybe
an individual saying you know, I deserve to be paid
this much money, or I require to be paid this
much money. It's everybody saying, let's negotiate. Let's talk talk
about how much somebody at this level should get paid,

(45:03):
and then what happens when they move up a level?
What does that pay look like? Um, and let's do
it across the board rather than one off for everybody,
depending on you know, whose uncle they know. Which is
a thing, right, which is the thing? Nepotism is a thing. Um.
Meritocracy is something that groups of humans love to pay

(45:25):
lip service to, but they like talking about it a
lot more than they like practicing it. Let's, you know,
speaking of examples, let's take some real world examples that
are happening now earlier this March. We're recording on the
very first day of April, is not in April Fool's

(45:46):
Day episode. Earlier this March, some folks working for Amazon
in New York City, at the largest Amazon warehouse in
that area. Uh, they started voting on whether or not
they wanted to Oregon eyes enjoy the union. And as
we're recording now that vote, that tally is still ongoing. Uh.

(46:11):
There was on the other side, and that one will
probably go through on the other side is the Staten
Island one. No, there's another one in Staten Island, and
we have a we have a broken news update on
that one. That is so the biggest one is JFK eight,
number eight and that's still going on. But the Amazon

(46:34):
warehouse in nearby Staten Island, which is l d J five,
uh is I think we got some breaking news on
that right yeah, we do. Coming out of CNBC right
now article titled Amazon workers on Staten Island vote for
companies first unionized warehouse in the US. And it's looking

(46:58):
at the vote that just came in and tally was
two thousand, six d fifty four votes in favor of
joining the union, two thousand and thirty one opposed, and
there were sixty seven challenged ballots. But that's not enough
to change, you know, the outcome of that election. So
it is, uh, it's decided that it really is Amazon's

(47:21):
first unionized warehouse is going to be on Staten Island
as of today, Friday, April one again, not April fools.
Again not April fools. But if you travel not that
far away to down to Alabama in the US, you
will see another Amazon warehouse that how to vote where
in about fifty three percent of the workforce was against

(47:46):
the idea. And while these link when we're giving you
these statistics, these percentages, these votes for against things, you
have to understand that the people who are working in
these situations sans are often inundated with propaganda. They're often

(48:07):
uh walking through hallways that are plastered with passive aggressive
warnings about the dangers. And you can. Yeah, and while
it is legally against the law for a company to
fire someone or terminate them in reprisal for organizing, there's

(48:30):
nothing to stop them from finding another reason, you know
what I mean, like, um, your tendance or like your
some performance metric which can be made up and then
and then instituted, like this is all about creating a need. Yeah,
it's a good reason to keep metrics on your employees,

(48:53):
like rots or something. Um right, Amazon, So but check
this out. We're talking of those anti union efforts. You
can go to Engadget and you can read a story
that came out also today for first titled Amazon spent
four point three million on anti union consultants in one alone.

(49:13):
Some were paid thirty dollars per day. And you just
you know, again, you look at how much does it
cost a company to fight against a union versus what
it would actually cost them to pay everyone a living wage,
and you know things like healthcare. Let's get into it.
Let's like just Interjack Matt. Let's become union buster leaders.

(49:37):
Let's start a union for union busters. And then let's
let's make it as quickly as possible. Yes, and then
make videos. Oh, the videos will get feel good. Oh
my gosh. All right, we're gonna call Illumination Global unlimited
after this. We gotta pull out our wigia boards. But

(49:59):
but your make you're making a great point, you know. Um,
there's also the idea of a sunk cost fallacy, which
we don't have to get into. Another very likely way
people have heard about unionization recently is Starbucks. There are
probably like two to fifty three Starbucks in your town.

(50:21):
I'm making up that number. There are a lot, is
what we're saying. It was the kind of the first
coffee store of its time, with that with that level
of reach, uh, nine of those stores voted to organize
a labor union, and more than as we record now,
more than a hundred and fifty are seeking to do

(50:44):
the same thing. And Starbucks has fired some of those organizers.
You could say things are reaching a boiling points. This
can be seen as a resurgence of sorts, sort of
a nascent new labor movement if you wanted to use
capital letters. However, not everybody's on board with this idea.

(51:05):
You can find cases of workers who fear unionization will
be an overall negative thing for them. And we're going
to be very fair in this regard. Uh. First you
have to admit that those workers might be spotlighted by
consulting firms. Right, you want to have that human face

(51:29):
that says not for me. But also there are categories
of concerns that that are pretty valid. Number one, fear
of reprisal. I might lose my job or I might
stay on as a kind of lame duck career. I
won't get those new opportunities, I won't get promoted, I

(51:49):
won't get a raise. And then there's you know, like,
like we mentioned earlier, the idea of extra cost I
have to pay these union dues. We've seen so so
many ads where it's like all they do is take
kint of my paycheck and I don't get to decide
where it goes. Or what happens to it and cats
and dogs and raining you know Panama. Well, it is

(52:17):
interesting how it how that one factors in on an
individual level, because it will it will affect employees differently
because is it is a percentage, right, everybody pays the
same percentage, but that percentage is going to get bigger
and bigger depending on what you're standing is in the company, right,
and how much you pay. So it becomes a real

(52:38):
thing that you have to take into consideration when you're
choosing to join a union or not. So it really
is something that everyone has to take into account when
they're considering joining a union or not, or at least
fighting for it. And then there's also, uh, just while
we're on this thread, there's there's also again the problem
of cyclical history. Guilds started out as a very good thing, right,

(53:05):
and guilds were organized labor guilds quickly decayed into corruption
and oligarchy. And that's not you know, that's not even
a ding on guilds. Really, that's a day on the
human species. That's why you see, um, that's why you
see so many revolutionaries, just like the pigs in animal

(53:25):
farm become in practice the same thing they originally fought against.
It is right, someone's got to be more equal than others. Right.
So the other concern that people would have about unions
is a lack of autonomy. That's kind of funny, I think,

(53:48):
but it's it's a real concern. This is most often
portrayed as an inability to negotiate employment at an individual level.
It is the pursuit of happiness sold to people. It
is kind of the American dream that you have to
support the billionaires because one day you might also be

(54:11):
a billionaire. You know what I mean. Don't you want
to be cool? Yeah, you might work your way all
the way up that ladder right to the top. But
if you let these unions get in here and define
what ladders are, I mean, who knows exactly. Uh. It's like,

(54:32):
you know, I may not be the brightest crayon in
that Crayola box, but it is my god given right
to shoot myself in the foot whenever I please, you know,
so like right, like says America. Yeah, well you know,

(54:53):
and honestly, everybody, this is a This is a really
concerning thing because up to this point we've talked about
the history of unions and union busting and the problems uh,
you know, on both sides of the minds aisle there.
But when it gets really concerning, it is when we

(55:14):
think about the version of union bussing that exists now,
and then you apply future technology and things that we
know they are coming to those efforts. Yes, yeah, this
is this is the point where I think we were
gonna We're gonna have to end on this one. And
you should be disturbed by the way, regardless of how

(55:36):
you personally feel about this stuff. Let's let's introduce Professor
kin Phillips fine Uh. Professor Phillips fine Is works as
a professor of history at New York University. And this
professor has a quote that I think stood out to
us here. It is there is a growing sense that

(55:59):
the weakness we have seen in organized labor is the
result of social and economic policies that have disproportionately favored
the wealthy and corporations. And that is a real problem.
And yeah, you have to keep in mind whenever we're
pulling from an academic source, these are people who spend
their lives thinking about this. They don't say this kind

(56:22):
of stuff lightly. It's not cocktailed our chatter for them,
And it doesn't really matter what Matt thinks or what
Paul thinks, or what I think, or what you think
honestly about whether you're for against unions. What Professor Phillips

(56:42):
Fine is pointing out here is that income inequality is skyrocketing.
It is crazy not good for the average person, regardless
again of almost any other attribute you could add or
any way one is slice a demographic there. It's an

(57:03):
unsustainable level. It's reaching Gilded Age. It is very, very bad. Really,
you just look at the average salary in any city,
and then look at the average home cost in any city,
of the average mortgage loan that it would require to
purchase a small home in any average city. In Atlanta

(57:28):
right now, we're just at the top end of three
hundred thousand dollars, like four hundred thousand dollars right in
that like upper echelon range for an average starter home.
The like the one that I'm sitting in right now,
is the starter home that I was able to get
after years of saving. I was able to get a
giant loan that I'm going to be paying off until

(57:50):
God knows when. But like I eked in, I eked
in at a time when I was not getting I'm
not getting paid a lot of money, but I was
able to just get it to to get a bank
to give me the money to get in here. And
the American dream. Yeah, it's just it's just it's a
full sleeve and it is just like, there's no way

(58:15):
I could do that right now. There's no way in
hell I could do that in Atlanta. In Atlanta is
one of the better priced places. And when you're when
it comes to bigger cities across the planet, not just
in the United States, if you look at Canada, it
seems to be even worse. I was reading a thing
about Toronto the other day. I mean, it's just like

(58:37):
those two things together, the average income of an individual
and then what it costs for housing, even rent. If
you're not owning a home, but you're just trying to
pay somebody rent. It's crazy right now. Agreed, Agreed, And
you know the same applies to Australia. Housing costs are

(58:58):
out of control. The basic stuff you need to live,
not even live well, not even thrive, you know what
I mean, just just have someplace to put your stuff,
right like that has become a pipe dream for a
lot of people, and unfortunately, all indications show us that

(59:21):
it will continue to worsen until it reaches an inflection point.
I brought back inflection point. I thought you would like that.
That's for you, Matt. I've been waiting waiting. Oh man,
I wonder if people ever, if people ever hear us
off air grading our own conversations. It's hilarious. Uh. You know,

(59:45):
we've gone through so many phases of like language that
we're like, okay, we're done with that one. But inflection
point will never die. We reach an inflection point about
talking about inflection points, that's what happened. So yeah, it's
gallows humor. You know, while people can still afford gallows,

(01:00:06):
it's gallows humor, but it is. It is true. Human
beings are collectively, regardless of their political perspective. Approaching something
like neo feudalism and feudalism. Just be very clear about
this sucks for the majority of people. It's super awesome

(01:00:28):
for like two percent of people, and it's absolutely terrible
for everybody else. And the people who want neo feudalism
don't care. They don't care. I think it's awesome. Uh,
and from their perspective. It's rational. Oh absolutely, If you're
in that two you could just stand right up at
a word ceremony, walk on stage, slap out of somebody

(01:00:49):
and everything would be fine. I did not see that
way coming back. Okay, well all right, if we if
we don't put it into our show right now, no
way you will ever remember, because it's gonna go away
very soon. We said something. Chris Rock is one of

(01:01:14):
my heroes. Okay, Smith, this sucks, all right? Well, well,
it's evident that inequality is sort of part of the
war on the working class. It's evident in the increasing
difficulty of entering the ownership class. It's evident in the
increasing control of media, the increasing partisanship of media. It's

(01:01:41):
evident in the successful institution of various laws and policies
that victimize the people at the bottom. This crazy pyramid
scheme that is American society, and the future of union
busting is a future of surveillance. It is one of
profiling and curtailing movements before they begin. We started early

(01:02:06):
with the Pinkerton's and let's end with them. You know
what they're into nowadays, spoiler alert. Machine learning writing algorithms
identifying you before you become the person who says, hey,
why do we keep losing our hands in the lumber mill?

(01:02:27):
You know what I mean? Like this is this is
true stuff. This is important and I think for us,
you know, we're going a little long on this, but
for us, the most important part of this, the mission
critical thing, is to understand that the if you're listening,
the onus is on you two figure out these issues,

(01:02:51):
and you have to pay careful attention to the motivations,
the ulterior motives, I should say, of the people who
are talking to you as though they have it all
figured out. You have to question everything. And the first
question you should ask when you hear something like that

(01:03:11):
is why, well, be a four year old like that way?
But why though? Why so? Like that's that's the thing,
like if you if you just look at the way
the chess pieces are arranged, then you can learn quite

(01:03:35):
a bit about the motivations for very anti union people
and the motivations for very pro union people, and the
conspiracies involved, because there really are conspiracies involved. These are
not theories and we cannot wait to hear from you.
Thank you, as always so much for tuning in what's

(01:03:57):
your take unions for him against them? What are some
of your favorite union conspiracies. If you are listening to
this and you happen to be Jimmy Haffa and you
are in fact a live drop us a line. We
try to be easy to find on the internet. Facebook,
here's where it gets crazy. Twitter, Instagram, uh, YouTube. If

(01:04:18):
you're not into social media, we have a book coming
out hopefully if we don't get fired for this episode,
and uh if you if you don't, if you don't
like books, and if you don't like social media, we
get it. That's why we have a phone number just
for you. That's right. Use your phone to dial one
eight three three st d w y t K. It's

(01:04:42):
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Please give yourself a cool nickname. Let us know if
we can use your voice and message on the air,
and then there you go. Anything you want to say, suggestions,
things we've directly asked about, we want to hear for you.
Jokes you got jokes, we'll take them. We love them,

(01:05:04):
we need them. Please. Gets dark around here pretty quickly
and pretty often, so anything to light in the mood
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(01:05:25):
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