(AEB-ko) Langile mugimendua eta MTM (Labor movement and MMT)

Labor Pains with Tschaff Reisberg

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[Music] i was finding that all the stuff that was

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taught in the textbooks it wasn’t really applicable to the real world this was especially true because

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the economy crashed to us there and caught all the economists off guard [Music]

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if a whole bunch of people lose their jobs they stop spending and if they stop spending then a whole

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bunch more people lose their jobs and it just snowballs but spreads across the whole country so in the same way a pandemic does so

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it’s like a second pandemic the first one’s your virus and the other one is economic

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[Music] what i have said is that this campaign

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is not just about electing a president it is about making a political

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revolution

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taking money from our children and borrowing from china people are

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dying is the program so critical it’s worth

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borrowing money from china to pay for it and if not i’ll get rid of it

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i want the truth

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now let’s see if we can avoid the apocalypse all together here’s another episode of macro and

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cheese with your host steve grumbine all right and this is steve with macron cheese today

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you know i’m talking to a gentleman who has been a friend of mine for a number of years who i met at the very first modern

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monetary theory conference at umkc and he came up to me and just had the

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biggest smile on his face he had heard real progressives he had seen the work we had done

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and i was just like wow i know you i know you from facebook i

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know you through rohan and gang i know you through this mmt community that was very small at the

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time but growing and he has been just one of those people who always sees the bright side the

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optimist side the approach of gathering more not gathering less

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and so one of the things that i thought was really impressive was in all my anger and all my rage at the

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establishment and seeing them minimize and cast out progressives

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it was my first instinct to cast them out but my guest jeff friesberg

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he pointed to me and said hey steve we’re just not that big a movement we can’t afford to let anyone go and so

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with that i thought to myself i’d like to have jeff on i want to talk to jeff jeff is one of the original mm tiers this guy

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knew about mmt before the financial crash he knew about mmt during the occupy

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movement he knew about mmt and has been deeply woven into the fabric of mmt

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for a number of years and so with that jeffreesburg is a delegate for the association of flight attendants cwa

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he lives in charlotte north carolina he’s a flight attendant and let me just tell you he’s an all-around good guy and he knows mmt

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probably better than just about anyone i know so with that welcome to the show jeff hey steve thank you for having me

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on it’s a pleasure to be here absolutely man so i was really excited to bring you on because right

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now during our situation with the coveted 19 pandemic and the shutting down of

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america impacted just about every single labor union

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every single worker and we’re not just talking about the low end here although they are decimated by this we’re also talking

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about upper middle class we’re talking about white collar workers and we’re talking about quite frankly

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essential workers in the airline industry such as yourself are being directly

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impacted by this can you kind of set the stage for what it is like to be in the labor movement

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and in the airline industry during this era if you will sure the airlines were

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hit one of the very first and the hardest hit in the whole economy when the crisis hit i remember it

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started in china and we were debating at the union you know what should our response be should we just

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cancel all the flights to china and how are we going to protect the flight attendants what’s the proper response to this and we were in such

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uncharted territory here we had to do a lot of learning on the spot actually but

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it was bad quickly wasn’t just china then it was you know our nation was getting infected it was

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europe and europe was shutting down and so in almost no time

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we lost 95 percent of our passengers it was just like went from full flights we’re making lots of profit

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we had all these expectations of growth we’re hiring new flight attendants and then in the blink of an eye our

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planes are empty and we’re talking about bankruptcy and furloughs and all these other terrible

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things and when unions lose workers that’s losing dues money so you lose the

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capacity your union loses the capacity to do the stuff that it needs to do with the most important time for it to do

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anything so in other words you’re sitting there fighting for your job

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your people are getting let go the actual revenue streams for the

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airlines are completely cut off and simultaneously the very agency if you will

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that would support airline workers has been literally cut off from funds as

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well that would enable them to fight back for your behalf yeah all the same time right it couldn’t

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be a worse time to lose capacity at your union so you know thankfully

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we had been building the capacity to act politically for a long time so it was time to use

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all those connections all the talent that we’ve built up calling all the favors we’ve earned with the politicians to protect

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our jobs so the cruise industry and the airlines were really really hard hit

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tourism general was super hard hit and it was just impossible like we’re

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talking about eminent bankruptcy in a matter of weeks like there’s just no way for a corporation to pay all the bills without any revenue

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just cut off like overnight so in the cares act we did something that’s

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just been completely unprecedented in american history and we said we want to

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protect everybody’s paycheck we’re going to just get government grants to the airlines and make sure

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everybody’s getting a paycheck but it’s also going to come with conditions you can’t furlough you can’t downsize you can’t reduce your

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flying to all the places around the countries public’s keeping the service alive so people can get where they need to go

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essential workers and it also had other just totally unprecedented things like you can’t do

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stock buybacks you can’t do dividends there’s got to be hard limits on executive compensation i

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don’t know if you guys remember but when aig got bailed out it was a huge scandal because

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the executives just took a pound of flesh for themselves absolutely so even progressives at the

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time we even got some pushback from them because they thought this is just another corporate bailout that’s going to help executives and shareholders

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not workers and so we had progressives against this just because this is so unheard of but

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this was a worker first bailout and thankfully we got it in the cares act so i protected all of our jobs until

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the end of september that’s amazing so i want to take a step back and normally i’d like to try and touch on

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the who you are and how you came to this moment but i thought that it was important to

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bring out the airline aspect of this in the union but i want to peel back a little bit i briefly

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touched on the fact that you were an mm tear before mmt i mean you were one of the og’s that they say

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talk to me about your history with mmt how it began how you began to

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learn modern monetary theory and how it became a part of your life and why you feel it’s so important

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i was initially a college dropout i made it to my junior year with a pre-med background and

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i just wasn’t loving it i didn’t want to be just a mediocre doctor i wanted to be a great doctor or

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no doctor and i was trying to answer the hardest question there is that i think anybody can

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try to answer is what do you want to do with your life so junior year i dropped out and

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moved to russia and when i was in russia i thought it was just absolutely

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fascinating to see how a communist country is becoming capitalist and all this stuff that we take for

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granted in the us they actually have to build that to make capitalism

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not be just a disaster not just make very very rich people very very poor people

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make it so small businesses can thrive and invasion thrives so to do this requires a whole bunch of

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government services and also requires a certain culture and i didn’t know how any of that worked

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i just thought this is just absolutely fascinating so after a year in russia i went back to

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the us and started studying economics so after studying economics i was

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finding that all the stuff that was taught in the textbooks it wasn’t really applicable to the real

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world this was especially true because the economy crashed while i was there and caught all the economists off guard and

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there was a group that i was paying attention to in russia and i started to get an interest in economics called the post keynesian thought group pkt

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and it was just a mailing list this was like early internet and i think randy ray was on there

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mosler was there a whole bunch of people and i happened upon it because i was reading a book called

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the nature of money by jeffrey ingham and it was actually way over my head when i started reading it like it was

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dense it was hard to read a bunch of jargon i didn’t understand but i started following up on some of these references

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and that’s how i figured out about randy ray and stuff and at the same time

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mmt was finally becoming known because they were predicting the housing bubble and they predicted it for

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the right reasons so it was a pretty exciting time for mmt it was like kind of their breakthrough

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moment so let me ask you in terms of that i mean obviously

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that’s even pre-matt four stater i mean that’s pre stephanie kelton yeah

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she was still stephanie bell back then uh she wrote this great paper called income

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taxes and bonds finance government spending and that was like one of those seminal papers that i

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read and it was not too hard to read and just explains it all in detail because

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there’s so much writing in economics and you don’t have a compass initially you don’t know what you can find that’s trustworthy and

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what’s just garbage and so much of what’s been written in the last 40 years is just garbage

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so thankfully she talked about operational realities that you can just confirm yourself and another big one was the sectoral

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balance model of aggregate demand by scott fullweiler and that one it probably took about 10

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reads before i got it i was having a hard time with it it was not clicking and i was reading another book by a

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physicist richard feynman and he was talking about how he gets all these great ideas if he goes into the sensory deprivation

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tank and so he just has his best thinking in there it’s like altered states man that old

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woman yes absolutely and i was getting kind of

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frustrated like it’s not making sense to me i didn’t understand how savings equals investment and i go into the

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sensory deprivation tank and it all started to click like i finally started getting i was confused between saving and

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savings where savings is a stock and saving is a flow and

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then mmt finally clicked to a really large degree you know i think it’s worth mentioning

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for a minute you know a lot of people don’t even talk about stocks and flows and

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i think this is a really important foundational concept it plays obviously into the

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stock flow consistent modeling but it also plays into understanding the role of the

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currency user in the currency issuer which is another foundational principle here can you talk

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a little bit about stocks and flows sure so it’s really easy to

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get the two flipped around especially because i’m kind of dyslexic but a flow is like a measurement it’s if

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you’re an electrical engineer you think of it as watts so you’re thinking of how much stuff happens between two

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points of time that’s a flow and if you’re talking about a stock then

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it’s a quantity it’s a fixed quantity so savings is a fixed quantity

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and saving is you know how much you’ve say saved over between any arbitrary

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points of time so stocks get fed by flows and stocks are accumulated flows that is

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fantastic so with that in mind the idea of the currency issuer

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and the currency user model which is so foundational to understanding mmt in general makes me wonder

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as a guy who got to travel and live in russia you know we oftentimes hear about

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how mmt is pertinent only to the united states and that the united states has got the

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benefit of the world reserve currency and then they start breaking out the well they’ve got a standing army and

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then they break out the idea of well you know without the petro dollar and so there’s all these like extraneous

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i don’t want to say conspiracy but conspiracy minded thinking that kind of plays into the

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hails at the bar stool that are so pervasive in our

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anti-knowledge which is fueled by 40 years plus maybe even longer of macroeconomic

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malfeasance that has been perpetrated by the industry of macroeconomic education as a person that

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lived it in russia and lived it in the united states clearly mmt is not

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a u.s phenomenon are you able to talk a little bit about the role of

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russia in mmt and perhaps understanding that global view of currency issuers and currency users

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yeah it’s actually not necessarily a mmt specific problem because a lot of the pushback we get from

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post-keynesians just comes from not having a theory of exchange rates

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that is adequately developed it’s just an area that economics hasn’t really developed

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probably sufficiently it’s just a an area that a lot more knowledge can be built on but every country that is effectively

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imposing a tax you know they successfully set up their own currency you can’t run a country with its own currency

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without taxes and without issuing currency so then just becomes a question okay yeah

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so-called printing money is essential we always have it like in a negative standpoint we always put as a negative printing is just

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nothing positive about that but you know you flip the question around and say how do you run a country without printing

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currency like how’s that going to work so then the question is you know how do we spend it in a way that doesn’t

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tank our exchange rate and for that you know we just basically look at you know how do we make it so people want to keep the

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currency how do you want to stabilize your economy and for that you have to use counter cyclical policy to keep the

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economy humming and stable and predictable and people trusting your currency it’s interesting you say

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people trusting your currency i mean within the domestic us clearly

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the ability to leverage or levy attacks isn’t a matter of trust

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or faith at the end of the day if you don’t pay your taxes bad things happen right and so you know it’s a matter of

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law to some degree here and that’s the legal framework that i enjoy so much about mmt is understanding that while there is

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faith when it goes beyond the borders of the us in terms of hey we can buy whatever

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in some other country okay great at the end of the day if china comes to the us and wants to do

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business with the us they do business with the us and u.s dollars right and those us dollars are then stashed at

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the fed somewhere and they can choose to save them as you were saying earlier the desire to save

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or they can go ahead and take them back and exchange them do some sort of uh barn exchange and

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either take their own currency back or get another currency that they wish to save in right what is the value

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if you will of the concept of the us dollar being the quote unquote global primary because

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it’s a basket but a primary reserve currency that one i think you better save for one

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of the academics they’re in entering dangerous territory even by saying trust i’m like that’s a

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red flag i shouldn’t even say trust but we’re trusting that china is not dumping all the reserves on the exchange

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market like there’s a certain stability here that’s benefiting everybody and it’s totally predicated on people

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expecting the currency to maintain value so it’s a red flag to say trust like an

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mmt stuff like ah [ __ ] it’s okay so this is funny because

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in reality these are the stumbling blocks that i think the average activist has because that’s where a lot of the this

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sound finance people come from with their idea of well if we you know devalue it we will

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lose faith in the dollar blah blah blah and all that good stuff but it’s pervasive right i mean this is

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pervasive but i think though you know within stocks and flows and you look at the way that

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this perpetuates itself in a global environment i mean you’re in a global industry yeah

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your airlines go all around the world so you’re jumping off in amsterdam you’re jumping off in china

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you’re jumping off in australia you’re staying the night in a hotel and you’re getting back on the plane and

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going a lot of this is about international travel i mean you’ve got a lot of

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international aspects to what it is that you do and to what your industry does and to why

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what you do is so vital but there’s an economic component to that and i’m interested in understanding with

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so much riding on getting people back and forth in mission critical ways how the

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pandemic itself has impacted global travel and by extension the global economy it’s

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like you know minsky and keynes they all explained it what’s going to happen what

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we’re fearing is that if a whole bunch of people lose their jobs they stop spending

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and if they stop spending then a whole bunch more people lose their jobs and it just snowballs

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into you know it spreads across the whole country so in the same way a pandemic does so it’s

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like a second pandemic the first one’s your virus and the other one is economic so

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what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to stabilize the economy so that we can put all of our effort

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into defeating the pandemic and restart the economy as quickly as possible

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because from an airline standpoint once you start furloughing and you don’t keep people qualified on their equipment

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you can’t just restart it it’s gonna take years to get everybody through training again we’re talking about the airline industry

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not coming back for many years even like using the simulators you know full speed and getting everybody as fast as

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we can it was just never designed to be stopped and restarted so we have to keep people qualified we

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have to keep everything as safe as possible so we don’t want people spreading the virus when they don’t need to be

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so we just want essential workers we just want people essentially traveling so we can focus all of our energy on to

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keeping the most vulnerable out of work keeping ourselves from spreading it to people and restarting as soon as this thing is

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over as soon as the pandemic’s over one of the things that was interesting pavlina cheneva has recently written

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several papers and has been vocal about the concept of nationalizing payroll

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yeah and the ability of taking on the full payroll protection and so forth and

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obviously the payroll protection act had some flaws in it that i could outright say you know they put a limit

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of 100 000 and i think that’s to appeal to some sort of weird mindset that anybody that

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makes over 100 should be okay but in reality you can make 200 000 and

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be living a very rough life even with that amount of money in today’s society it’s not like

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i think there’s a little bit of a hyperbolic nature to playing on tropes about money and in

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reality we can afford to keep it all going and we should not be in my opinion politicizing

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a pandemic and politicizing who gets help and who doesn’t what are your thoughts on that yeah a

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pandemic is political your public health is always political but it shouldn’t be partisan and it’s absolutely becoming

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partisan and that’s just a great travesty and part of that is because people are so

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damn desperate to make ends meet this is me by the way we got the government to protect our

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jobs i am getting a paycheck right now i’m paying the mortgage i’m paying my bills keeping my daughter fed and putting food

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on the table this is all thanks to the government like a lot of what government does that works

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it doesn’t get credit everything seems like normal like from if you don’t know that this is happening nobody told you

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you just think just the airline just run down their savings or something but in fact i’m living proof of you can avoid

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suffering if you get the right policy that unemployment is a public choice

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it’s a government’s choice when you’re a currency issuer and pavlina she pointed out this is

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actually like a form of a job guarantee instead of just issuing unemployment insurance

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we are guaranteeing these people’s jobs because like i said earlier that if the business takes this money it

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can’t furlough people so you’re guaranteeing some jobs here and unfortunately we have to go

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back to government with our hat in hand and we say you know please help us but not just the airlines we want all workers to experience

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you know the same thing that flight tents are experiencing right now so it just makes a hell of a lot of

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sense once you get past the affordability problem then you start asking you know but is it politically a

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good idea and it just has all kinds of benefits like it ends anti-immigrant sentiment and a

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lot of what i do as union rep is i interface with politicians and the democrats are having

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a hard time in rural north carolina i’m in charlotte and you go to the countryside and

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yeah they’re angry at corporations they know they’re getting screwed they know they’re getting a bad deal but you got the immigrants coming and taking

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all the jobs and pushing down wages so if you want to end anti-immigrant sentiment just guarantee everybody a job

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and just nips that in the butt and that’s been a long-standing problem and it ends the employment inflation trade-off for

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anybody who’s familiar they say if too many people are employed then

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businesses are gonna drive up wages competing for that really scarce worker so you get price wage spirals so by

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paying a fixed wage and benefits you don’t have to control inflation by forcing people to be unemployed

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you are listening to macro and cheese a podcast brought to you by real progressives a non-profit

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[Music]

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what i found interesting is that as a union rep this stuff that you guys were able to

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get yeah wasn’t just handed to you by government’s goodwill this was an act of organizing absolutely

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let’s talk about the power of labor for a minute i mean unions have been decimated everything our government has done

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everything our political process has done has eliminated the power of unions and we’re talking about a job guarantee

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is the ultimate baked in stabilizer if you will for the balance of power between

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labor and capital yeah and it provides an out that takes away the capitalist

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stranglehold on labor that said you guys had to organize to get your bill to get

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your support to get added into this cares act talk to me about labor the power of

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labor and how this knowledge of modern monetary theory and stuff like that might be a great tool for labor to bring

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into the fold so that it can be powerful and make demands uh okay

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that’s a big subject but yeah it is i’ll give you the reader’s digest version as labor you

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rightly said his its ass handed to him for a number of decades it’s been a multi-decade

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decline in terms of union density and finally we’ve stopped declining

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we’re starting to flex our muscle and the more we flex our muscle the more popular labor gets like

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organized labor and i can tell you a little story just personally my own experience when i got involved

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with the union so after graduating i got a job as a baggage handler at united because it was

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a great recession i probably put out 100 applications and nobody would even see me for an

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interview so it’s just applying plan i got a temporary part-time job

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at united airlines as a baggage handler and they were unionized as my very first

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time ever being in a union and i had virtually nothing to do with them they just took their dues

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and i never needed them for anything except for this one time when a plane was coming into the gate

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and you have to be qualified for all kinds of things you do around the airplane the faa mandates it

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and so there’s this thing called wing walking and if you stand on the side of the airplane as it’s coming into the gate you hold up your wand

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and you are there to watch the airplane to make sure it doesn’t hit anything or if the engine’s on fire you have to

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use a signal to tell the person at the front who’s marshaling the airplane that an engine’s on fire

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and they can relay it to the pilot so there’s a whole like it’s not really hard but you do need a bit of training to be

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qualified for wing walking and i didn’t have that i was brand new they just taught us how to be in the back room in the winter

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time and for some reason i found myself out of the gate and the manager says hey take this wine and bring in this

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airplane and i’m like i don’t really know how to do that they’ve never

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qualified me on that and when you’re new at an airline you’re on this thing called probation so for

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six to nine months you don’t have any real union protection they can fire you for whatever reason they want basically

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and i was in this really scary position where this manager is saying go wing walk this airplane in

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and i’m like i don’t know how to do this i don’t think this is right and he’s getting angry he’s starting to shout at

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me and so i just tried something i’ve never tried before as i i’d like to talk to my

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union rep then and the manager stormed off he found a person at neighboring gate to wing walk

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the airplane in and i got my shop steward and there’s these little kiosks in front of every

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gate where this is chicago so it’s pretty cold or hot and we have all extremes and the manager and the

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shop steward go in this kiosk and all i hear is like [ __ ] [ __ ] just a whole bunch of

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shouting at each other and then the manager walks out and he says all right you’ve got an easy

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hour and a late lunch this never happened and easy hour means you if you stay one

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minute past your shift ends you get paid for the whole hour and late lunch is an extra half hour of

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pay so made an hour and a half pay over that incident that was my very first union experience

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not bad yeah i’m like there’s power like you can stand up to your boss like what a novel concept you can do

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stuff with safeties involved you don’t have to be a coward and just do what they say so you can put food on

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the table so it just got my brain like this is fascinating what just happened

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here i think every worker they want power they want to have a say in the decisions that affect their lives

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but i didn’t know much about unions back then i didn’t know the history of labor they didn’t really

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teach it in economics all i knew is there was a whole bunch of blood involved and i knew there was a

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long decline like you did and it just got me really curious about what is all this labor stuff about

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all right so fast forward to about three years later now i’m a flight attendant and we got a

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new system for bidding for our schedules called preferential bidding system and it’s

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really complicated it’s hard for most individuals to ever wrap their minds around how to make the system allocate trips in

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a way that makes the most people happy but it’s you know an economic problem so of course my mind is like this is

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awesome this is like so much like this is right up my alley and the first version of this was just

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really garbage it was making so many people upset and so i went to the company and i said

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hey here’s what’s wrong with it here’s how you fix it and they said thank you nobody’s ever

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brought that to our attention we know that you guys are upset we’re sorry we didn’t mean to upset you let’s do this and the company started to

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fund this project and my own union said no no he can’t belong to this he’s not

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one of us there’s doesn’t belong here so the union was successful at kicking me out of this

31:09

project that i started and i remember they were also trying to get me fired they were just so upset

31:15

like it was their nasty group and i don’t usually get angry but i felt angry i’m paying dues money these people

31:22

and they’re trying to get me fired like management called me up and they said hey your union wants you fired

31:27

but don’t worry if they’re successful we’ll give you a job in management

31:33

i mean is this like a reverse the way it should be oh my goodness yes and i just felt angry like at one point

31:40

it’s kind of interesting because you’re you know your life isn’t boring anymore like you’ve got some stress involved

31:45

because i was living a pretty stress-free life at that moment and you need a little bit of stress in your life in order to feel something

31:52

and not chronic stress but i think there’s like a little bit of stress involved when you’re trying to push the boundaries and you

31:58

take it in little squirts and it just makes life interesting but i was pissed at the union i’m like what

32:04

the hell is wrong with our unit i’m trying to make flight attendants happy and before i even embarked on this project i should say that before i

32:10

started all the reconfiguring i asked as many flight tents as i could what do you guys want what do you guys

32:16

don’t like about this thing tell me and i put all the popular suggestions in

32:21

this plant i researched other airlines i found out how they do stuff i came up with this killer system and we

32:28

were having a union election and one of the candidates said hey why don’t you go talk to our board of

32:34

directors at the union and tell them what you’re experiencing so

32:39

i thought all right i’m gonna go down there tell them my struggles and they’re gonna go fix this and

32:45

i had no political experience before this and this candidate for president he won he became the president

32:51

and i go in front of the board of directors there’s i don’t know about 12 of them and you had a room full

32:58

of other union officials so there’s probably about 200 people in there and i told them the story i’m like i’m

33:05

trying to get these changes this is what the flight attendants want i don’t know what to do because

33:11

i think the person that is most involved in blocking me is corrupt

33:18

and it turns out she was corrupt she ended up working for management she just went straight from union to

33:24

management she switched teams like that and was selling flight attendants out

33:29

and she was totally incompetent like at first i thought you know i i can work with you finally i got some help and

33:35

no she was bad news and i didn’t have anybody to help me like all the board of directors

33:40

and the various committees they universally attacked me that day

33:46

and i don’t know steve you ever had this experience but if you’ve ever been a room full of people attacking you

33:52

it’s like surreal it’s like this is not your real life let me tell you just in a quick deviation here as

33:58

a guy who took mmt obviously the work of others standing on

34:04

the shoulders a giant so to speak but taking that work into areas where people

34:10

had never been exposed to it within the progressive activist community and within these political parties i

34:18

have screenshots i keep for my own motivation of people who like wave after wave like

34:26

that world war z where the zombies attacked the wall in jerusalem i mean they just came at me like drone

34:33

army telling me i was an idiot open a freaking economics book you [ __ ] you’re just

34:39

going to devalue the currency you idiot have you ever heard of zimbabwe you [ __ ] yeah and i mean

34:45

on and on and a lot of the alternative media outlets out there won’t even have me on they have other

34:52

people on because i fought back i didn’t sit back on my hands and let them just beat me down

34:59

and i took to the podium and i swung back you know and i keep swinging back

35:05

because i feel like the wrong people are the gatekeepers

35:10

yeah the wrong people are in position to silence the right people and i attack and i attack back because

35:18

it’s not just the quote unquote other guy sometimes the enemy is us sometimes we in our own movement

35:26

are the ones purveying the wrong information blocking the wrong voice is blocking the wrong information

35:32

right and sometimes we have to fight within we have to have an internal struggle which is that friction you were kind of

35:38

describing sometimes you’ve got to have iron sharpening iron even in amongst

35:43

friendlies even if it gets testy and i’ve been that guy man i have been more than willing

35:49

to create diamonds you know with the pressure i put on them and so i completely appreciate what

35:55

you’re saying because i still suffer the fallout from fighting back against many people that i would

36:01

consider allies right this is kind of like the normal progression of things when you’re

36:07

in the minority and you’re trying to change the status quo who people are benefiting from you’re gonna face resistance and so

36:15

ultimately you have to find ways to create a brand new culture

36:20

that’s different than the existing one but emotionally it’s hard on a person like you are in for a roller coaster

36:29

especially if you’re a caring person like i felt that day when i came home from that meeting like i just let down

36:36

28 000 flight attendants like this was going to make a difference in their life they were excited about what work

36:42

was being done i didn’t have any opposition for flight attendants it was the union and my political maneuvering failed like

36:48

i did everything that i could think that i need to do to be successful i tried everything and just didn’t

36:55

happen so i was depressed and feeling sorry about myself and

37:03

at the same time i got engaged to a woman a japanese woman and my mom said

37:10

here’s some money for your wedding and this amazing woman knew just how upset i was and she said

37:18

i don’t feel right having a wedding let’s use this money to build that software wow so yeah i use that money to build

37:27

the software it’s pretty expensive it was suffered for the largest airline in the whole nation

37:32

that was to serve all of them that is amazing i just want to it’s just absolutely amazing what an

37:39

inspiration keep going i just wanted to make sure i made that point yeah that was crazy i’ve also never

37:46

written software on my own i did it for companies in the past but i’d never been the project manager everything like

37:53

the janitor the you name it and i got to work building the software

37:59

and just through competence i got the respect from a massive number of flight attendants

38:05

like they all downloaded it i wouldn’t say all i say at least half of them downloaded it and they were using it and they’re

38:12

depending on it and another thing is i didn’t charge for it because i thought as soon as i charge for it then the

38:19

union’s gonna say oh this guy was just capitalist and that’s the reason we didn’t go with him

38:24

and i wanted to use this to get revenge this was a nerd’s way of getting revenge on the union

38:29

but not just like petty revenge like hit him back but i want to see change i want to see the flight attendants to be able to have

38:35

a say in their own union so i’ve been using this as a platform like to tack on

38:41

labor education to tack on petitions to tack on my own thoughts on how we can improve

38:47

our union and because i got such a large audience people are exposed these ideas that they otherwise wouldn’t have been so as my

38:53

way of reaching a really large audience and that was successful at actually changing the way

39:01

our unions run that’s just amazing amazing

39:06

like we went from conflict there’s a whole lot of internal politics i didn’t go into there’s a merger with u.s airways in

39:13

american and it was a really nasty merger it was kind of like progressives and

39:18

liberals like belonging to democrats like it was just nasty and we’re at each

39:23

other’s throats we’re at all-out war and that wasn’t getting us anywhere so

39:29

we had to change the way we operated the union in very specific ways at one of the

39:36

mt conferences the one that you and i met each other at there’s a guy named alex from new york

39:42

and he was in the union at yale university and he was just going on about the benefits of participatory budgeting

39:49

where the experts inform the non-experts of what they know and then the

39:57

non-experts just the rank and file worker says okay with that information let’s

40:03

vote on how we’re going to allocate funds at our union and so a big trick to making things better is

40:12

to allow the people who are affected by the decision to actually make the decision

40:17

so when you say you know this is really a long way to answer your initial question is unions went wrong when they started

40:24

creating a hierarchy and then just have management of decision makers and you run the same problem that

40:30

corporations and workers have is you’re creating a structure where workers don’t get to

40:36

make decisions and you just have another management you have problems with management so the solution that is make workers

40:44

more involved stop making the order takers and tell them what’s going on and let

40:50

them decide what direction we should take the union and that’s a way better way of running the union

40:56

than just providing a service and nobody’s really involved nobody’s really educated nobody’s participating

41:02

it’s just a disaster if you have a service-based union but actual democracy is how you rectify

41:09

a lot of this you know it’s funny you say that because you look at our own political

41:14

system right now and everything you were saying i was putting towards the bernie sanders

41:20

movement i was putting towards progressive change i was putting towards the structural changes that folks like

41:27

dsa are trying to advance and then i look at the actual outcome

41:33

and i see super delegates say yeah you know we see all these millions of people supporting

41:38

bernie but you know what we know better than you and we’re going to hand select this guy named joe biden and

41:45

forget participatory democracy forget representative democracy we have a small group of elites and

41:52

we’re going to tell you how it is because we’re smarter than you and this is what has to take place and it feels gross and it feels horrible

41:59

and we hate it and we resent it and i imagine that that is similar to what you were talking about within the union

42:05

in terms of making a participatory democracy you know you and i i want to touch on

42:10

this because you and i have had great talks behind the scenes i’m obviously a angry progressive white man

42:18

unfortunately in some respects who fits the title of the bernie bro that they’ve painted to

42:24

such great precision to marginalize people like myself but to some large degree guys like me

42:31

we are seen as hey you’re a privileged dude why in the world do you feel like you have a right to be angry and why do

42:37

you think you should be heard and the flip side to that though is is that you look around

42:42

at what happened during this election and you see the very sad gender politics that played out with

42:49

people falling in line for elizabeth warren as opposed to bernie sanders based

42:54

purely on identity as opposed to bold vision on policy

42:59

or anything else yeah substance right yes and so it was these lack of substance debates that created a

43:06

lot of the hate and anger because you’re saying hey we have these policies that will help your life

43:12

too and they’re like yeah but bernie’s got the wrong plumbing or i don’t like the way bernie looks at

43:17

me or i don’t like his voice or oh you’re just another privileged white bernie bro

43:22

whatever and so was the shutdown politics of privilege and identity that really stifled that

43:30

broad-based approach that you’re talking about with the elites between the merger and so forth

43:36

and here we are in our own democracy and one of the things you raised to me was hey steve we just don’t have the

43:41

numbers to win without including folks that maybe we don’t like and how do we make that coalition and

43:48

how do we do this and i think now’s a really good time to kind of talk about that especially in

43:53

light of what has happened what is your take give me your ideas in terms of

43:58

you were pretty despondent when we saw how the elizabeth warren faction totally didn’t hear the voices of the

44:05

poor they were kind of privileged and told us to eat our peas and there was a whole back and forth we had

44:11

about that yeah they spent all this time about snake emojis and we’re trying to talk about health care

44:16

like come on exactly so talk to me a little bit about your political perspective in terms of

44:23

building broad-based coalitions and what that means and i know you don’t have all the answers but i know you have some ideas

44:30

based on sure your history as a union leader and also just as a mmt informed progressive who wants to

44:36

see us win so here’s the kind of cool thing if you participate

44:42

you think you’re going to go into this because you’re going to change the system everybody wants revolution right and

44:47

what ends up happening is the more engaged you get the more it changes you

44:52

because you’re going to be interacting with a whole bunch of people that you probably wouldn’t have before these warn people they might be in their

45:00

own little bubble and burning people might be in their own little bubble but if you merge these people and get them in the

45:07

same room and you start talking about stuff that matters to them they’re gonna realize oh my god like

45:14

this is not right what’s happening like in the union initially i thought okay we’re just going to fight the company

45:19

like that’s our role in things but our goal as a union is to do things together that we can’t do

45:25

as individuals then maybe instead of focusing on where we get our money we

45:30

should focus on where our money’s going and we realize that to be effective we have to

45:36

engage in society we have to be part of civil society and affect local government national

45:41

government state government you name it and there’s just all kinds of bs frankly

45:47

you get organized money like say you know land developers they are talking to the

45:53

politicians every day they’re organized they’re behind a single entity where they figure out what their

45:58

agenda is and then they put massive amounts of money behind that and just the average joe has no way to

46:03

fight that so when you start hearing their stories i mean just basic human values are like

46:10

i like this guy this guy he deserves better he’s getting kicked out of his home without any warning

46:15

he can’t find another place to live quick enough what are we gonna do to help him it makes you angry it makes you feel

46:22

like you need to do something and you guys put your heads together anything all right we gotta change this

46:27

policy we gotta you know work with this organization who’s already doing this sort of work and it makes you a more empathetic person so

46:34

it actually that’s i think what we need more in society is just more empathy more understanding of each other’s plights

46:41

how things got to be the way that they are and you’ll find in labor movement

46:46

workers are generally way more conservative than the people that are

46:54

doing the work at the union and not all unions are like this but the ones that are like really involved

47:00

a lot with meeting other people and from all sectors of the economy but there’s a lot of progressives there

47:06

there are definitely a lot of progressives there and they love bernie’s platform because the platform came from them themselves

47:13

i had one of bernie’s senior advisors come to charlotte before bernie came down he said hey we want to meet with

47:20

all the union leaders tell us what you guys are struggling for what’s your political agenda

47:25

and bernie’s gonna do whatever he can to help you guys out so of course we got a whole bunch of

47:30

bernie supporters at the unions because he’s just like our dream instead of battling the politicians

47:37

the politicians are coming to us saying what do you guys want let’s see what we can make happen and i don’t think most of america

47:43

understands that because they’re not really plugged in at that level that’s interesting because as part of the

47:50

bernie movement i obviously felt incredibly empowered because what i saw was my needs finally being discussed

47:58

our needs finally being discuss hope change real hope real change and i didn’t see that with the others it

48:05

didn’t feel that way it didn’t feel participatory it felt like hey you’ll take whatever policy i get you just have to like me that’s what i’m

48:12

here for is for you to like me and bernie was saying hey i might not be the greatest guy in the world and that’s okay because

48:18

it’s not about me it’s about us and so the whole mindset of the entire campaign

48:23

blew in the face of everything that democrats typically run in front of everything that the average

48:29

american is used to hearing for me it felt like wow we finally have a chance and then it was killed so

48:35

as a closing point on this interview jeff what would you say is the hope going forward for you what

48:41

would you tell to our average listener hey here’s why you should hope and here’s what i would

48:46

suggest paint the road forward hmm yeah we don’t always win we don’t always win at all and we’re

48:52

starting from a pretty low point compared to where we used to be and sometimes our flames

49:00

get blown out and in those times we lean on each other to relight that

49:06

flame or kill that warmth and when i try to think of what you know logical reason is there to

49:13

hope just look at mmt like when i started maybe 12 years ago or something

49:18

there’s just a handful of mm tears and now they’re having mmt conferences and they’re packed and they’re making public policy they’re shaping the national

49:25

conversation that was just dedication persistence

49:30

and a just vision that will change what people think is possible and

49:36

that’s a really just bold vision that i think a lot of people can buy onto in terms of how to get

49:43

there the only answer i have to that is if organizers

49:48

could keep turning away keep working at it and lighting each other’s flames and

49:53

lighting more flames we are going to move things and get people more plugged in so they’ll see

49:59

things differently than they do today and i think that usually people move

50:05

kind of slowly there’s not like an overnight epiphany it’s frustratingly slow a lot of the

50:10

times and what can happen though is when a sudden shock happens like a pandemic or

50:16

a global financial crisis or expect climate change to be next that can make people jump

50:23

instantly from being just lukewarm to being one of the core advocates for a certain set of ideas so

50:30

as long as people like you and i keep developing this framework keep spreading the gospel we’ll be ready for

50:37

it when that happens so the reason obama got so much broad support is because he’s articulate

50:44

he could absolutely tell people their own values and his own words

50:49

and he was respectful to all and that just got so many people excited

50:55

and for a brief moment it looked like america was

51:01

getting past its horrible legacy of racial oppression that we finally turned

51:06

to page’s progress that made people excited but what we know from history is that

51:13

a lot of progressives found themselves shut out the movement was stopped after he got elected

51:19

and we found ourselves not making improvements to society

51:25

as quickly as we were expecting we elected so the only fix that i can say to that

51:32

is that if people get involved in the union

51:37

people unionize their workplaces and they just start getting involved with grassroots level that’s going to change them it’s going

51:43

to change the intelligence of the voters that’s going to make people more powerful that’s

51:50

going to make people more engaged it’s going to give people a sense of purpose and it’s going to make people

51:55

fight for other people they care about make us a more caring society so sarah nelson a great union leader

52:01

my union president always says if you unionize the workplace then the politics are going to follow so

52:07

that holds a ton of problems in my mind and to that end there’s an app called

52:13

the paycheck recovery act and this is mmt inspired it’s trying to keep everybody

52:18

as a worker in their job so what we need right now is for everybody who’s

52:24

listening to this to contact their house representatives

52:30

ask them to support this call them and email and tweet at them

52:35

all forms of communication at the same time this is how we get policy moved we do it together and

52:42

the whole idea here is we’re going to try to get the economy not to enter into a great

52:48

depression the only way we can do it is we do it together wow that’s beautiful thank you so much

52:54

for that and you know i just want to thank you for taking the time to be with me today i hope

52:59

as you know you’re somebody i consider a friend and that we don’t get to spend a lot of time hanging out and having

53:04

coffee i think about you frequently and it means a lot to me to know that i have a vine to somebody

53:10

not only as kind and as enlightened as you are but someone is smart and in the know because you understand the

53:16

things i’m saying the things i bring to you it’s like you understand and you can relate to immediately and

53:22

that just means a lot to me so i want to thank you for taking the time to to share your labor story and your hope

53:29

and your dreams and the fact that i think that we as a movement shouldn’t give up

53:34

that there is hope and that it’s going to take a not me us movement and i really appreciate that

53:40

jeff thank you so much the respect is entirely mutual thanks for having me on man you better believe

53:45

it we’ll talk soon this is deep grumbine and geoffreysburg from macron cheese have a great day everybody we’re out of

53:54

here macro and cheese is produced by andy

54:00

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54:06

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