In the mid-1950s, nearly 3 in 10 employed workers belonged to a union. Now that figure is down to around 10 percent—just 6 percent in the private sector. But labor organizing and pro-worker policymaking are on the rise. At more than 200 Starbucks outlets, an Amazon warehouse, and even an Apple store, workers are banding together to ask for higher wages, better benefits, and more control over their schedules and workplace conditions.
Labor scholar and organizer Dorian Warren has been a leader in those efforts. Warren is the co-president of Community Change, a national organization that builds the power of low-income people, especially low-income people of color. “This is actually an exciting time for the labor movement,” Warren tells co-hosts Michael Tomasky and Felicia Wong on episode 3 of How to Save a Country. Warren describes the diversity of those pushing for unionization in modern America, the importance of federal leadership when it comes to labor rights, and what’s really at stake: “No labor movement means no strong democracy. No labor movement means no middle class.”
Warren also discusses how the fight for a $15 minimum wage went mainstream, how unions can create social and political communities and multiracial solidarity, and why the American Rescue Plan is a success story worth telling.
How to Save a Country is presented by the Roosevelt Institute, The New Republic, and PRX. Generous funding for this podcast was provided by the William and Flora Hewlett...
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