to add which means that trans people could they if they're willing to kind of go there could from those laws right. there's a there's a soldie in alabama who is discharged from the army because she marries a trans man. and the army says that that she's gay and she no, i'm not gay. th joke. she goes through this whole fight for her to get her job army and fails. civil service protects gay people. so if i'may, could just go work at this, go back to my same job and i'yeah, right. and she won't. she doesn't do. and she's ob somewhere else, but like there is some overlap. yeah, that's interesting. okay,

us now the end of our time like to have one more thank you to panelists. and now joining us on is professor cindy haimovitz georg. what do you teach do there in? athens? 300 students in them, which is pretty i think i didn't do it before. it's a song and dance and i like itclasses also kind of gens things on labor and

level undergrad classes on labor. immigration and food and power how did you get■ interested? the intersection of labor and my first book was on migrant workers on the east as the us, which i tripped over actually trying to getofesd school to, sign a petition, and we were trying to raise grad students pay. we were paid $4,000 a year. so i was going door to door and george tindall's very famous southern said when did the migrants dream start on the east coast and i. i have no idea. y me? and he's and i've been asking this question for 15 years and nobody knows the answer. and i guess i thought, i'll go that i don't remember making the cision to actually write on that topic, but that's what i wrote about was the migrant from americans to world war two, which was partly african americans and partly immigrants, mostly from italy, but also from

other places. and so that's what i wrote. so there was a little bit of immigration inmigration and ford book, ithat one left off becau's world war two that the us starts admit workers mostly at that point workers on temporary contracts where you get a temporary visa, be sent home a's what my second book is about, this phenomenon of essentially deportable labor people for dur contract back. that in just a second. but let's go to the organizing grad students. well grad students, faculty staff contingent, faculty. we're seeing all i mean, there's long been grad student unions. in fact, my son is a ph.d. student, michigan. and i think they have the second oldest grad student union. and i think wisconsin the first they go way back.

■r[but we're definitely seeing a proliferation and y of grad students. it's a more general awareness labor organizing and you know when when people at starbucks are doing it and google and it's sort of partly as people are learning about it thinking we need to do this because our stipends have not kept up some grad students get health insurance some are subsidized, some get nothing. you know, you're in this period of where you you're working the university you're helping to make keep down the cost of an education for the undergrads. so you're working you're trying to getou done and if you can't make ends mout of it,e school■j■b with high debt and ls and thesp sort ofnecessary and'g

a difference i mean when i was going door to door as a graduate student we organized what called i think was grad united and we i so gosh it's been a l time and we we we succeed in getting much for ourselves but we helped to jumpstart things and in the next group after us there started to be better benefits healthghting for. so it's just has towe yeah, it'. and you are the past president of the labor working class history. yeah. would you consider to be pro-labor? oh, absolutely. but we're also you know, we i think the members of think critically about how you know, it's not it's not all

roses, bread and roses as labor organizers say. so yeah, we're definitely pro-labor, but we're also studying history of labor and work people in the us and beyond, but also thinking about ways in which our own situation university campuses and the ways in difference stris are treated and paid and organized. so we're both thinking about our own industry and the history of labor at the same time. are you a member of a labor union? a labor union? yeah, i'm a member of the united campus workers, which is a sub union of the communique and workers of ari and would, for whatever reason, communite and workers of america decided to put money and effort into helping to organize campuses. ■vtarted in the south. we spread beyond the south, but in states where workers don'tlee

public workers don't have collective bargaining. so public employees are not covered by the wagner act or the national labor relations act. so states can authorize their most don't.oyees to and so we unions through the united campus workers. but it doesn't mean our employers going to sit down and work out a collective bargaining agreement. so we operate through, you know, education and, agitation and and to try to get what we need. so, universe city of georgia administration does not bargain with, you know, no. so what's the benefit for you? well, we've we've been able so the united workers started in tennessee and athens of georgia next campus that organized and they we've

we've gotten a few things by with a lot of hard work so for example the graduate students a month before they had to pay for ,ó their health insurance they do every year the cost of getting health insurance for their dependents had gone up 370% that took some organizing there was big forum. there was a rally. there was the the angriest grad i think i've ever seen them. people were talking about having to go home, you know, go back to canada, go back to wherever you came from. that you could get yourattack t. it was it was really through te were able to get was not uga, but the state to roll back that increase to. so you get stuff done. me of most of us history, people did not have the

that's a 20th century phenomenon. but there were that and all from slave revolts, miners strike, where people didn't have any rights to bargain. but you use the rage you have to try to make people do them to do. so that's what we're doing so profesr haimovitz,vi let's return to your scholarship. yeah. and we left f around world war two with immigration and lor. yeah. is it is there a sense that everything oldimmigration and l? kind of, yeah. i would say. in fact, i'm giving a talk in a couple of hours labor in the 19th century. so what was called the coolie trade workers mostly from asia being hired on contracts to wore

british empire and then beyond. so i'm looking indentured labor, but also imgrant labor in t us in the present people who come on temporarytrsimilar to ts and it's the parallels are absolutely remarkable down to contracts. you know, if a worker is gone te employer has to notify authorities it's it's it's a continuum it's it's really not that different so we're immigrant workers have been historically vulnerable they're still vulnerable in so many ways the people i write about are on visas. they're there's they're not they are they're not people who migrated authorization. they have authorization■#euo be here, but they still get by their employers. not all of them, of course, empe the power to.

take somebody to the airport and put them on a plane. but they have done that many, many times before in the 19th century, if you ran afoul of your employer, you were insolent, you slept in, you brokeon strike, you went to jail. if you were ann a plane, sent home. so what was the impact on migrant workers that cesar had? oh, yeah. well, that that's the whole gut work that i write about was about so farm workers are the most marginalized, the leaste most en but and have been for a long time, but they a lot of power because if you go on strike, you're an auto worker and you're general motors. you see that strike coming, you increase your production, you store some you know, yo ahead ia

farmer and you're growing green strike, you lose your green beans, right? that is just your income for year can be totally gone. they rarely get to use it because the federal government has intervened to flood markets with labor and so world war two, that's exactly what happens a you know, increased demand because people are being war jobs. and so farm workers are organizing not neces■saly-. unit organizing themselves. we're not on that truck. we'llet oncause that guy, you know, treats us decently andut this and federal government intervene things because it's a war. you know, they need the to be produced. they need the soldiers to be fed. they intervene by saying, okay, n workers. and those workers, it turns out,

could be sent home bemployer ine setup, but that's the practice o basically undercut the folks who are still there it's not that they're gone it's that they have power and the guest worker programs help to reduce that power. so the united farm workers under worker programs.ght the big one was called the pastoral program. they fought it bitterly and killed it in 1964,me back are your courses requisite. yes in fact everydent in the state of georgia, every college student in the state of georgia has t first half or the second half of the us survey. and unless they score over a certain amount, so we we teach thousands of students in history. do you think tat's an important?

yes. i mean, think it's important. i think students often into that class thinking, oh, god, you know, i've already had a survey. of course, high school. why do i have to it again? but history inlege is often very different than history. in high school, when in high school a certain list of, you know, standards the states call them. right. you must teach these things. they will be a big t students ho memorize all this stuff. i mean when s a canada we had e end ofs canadian history and i. i got my mother to buy get paper at thew, the brown paper that you wrap meat in six feet long. and i wrote canadian history facts and little tiny print passed test promptly forgot all in the bills in.# canada. so when you get to college it's

all about well what's the evidence for that? how did how did y h start to figure that out? how do we know? how has it changed? we're all we're interested in the in the why it was way it was else might have happened, not just what happened. high teachers try to do that. in to howve much less time than we do history and why it's so why is it important, huh? well, take my example of immigrant labor. ers. it's been really interesting to lookac past, in part said, well, it wae treatment of indenture terrible. but then the british regulated, the whole system and then it was okay. and it was no different than, say, europeans, the atlantic a was like, what? you know, there was a regulatory system and.

it worked. i need to know about that. what can we do now that did before? unfortunately, i ended up pret . it did not solve our p we're coy learning about the present and then it' interesting know about the past maybe studying ancient greece doesn't change anything right but it's fascinating and students need to be fascinated. you know, it about certification. it should be about education. when you go to university, you're supposed to open your mind. that's what we try to do. cindy hamm haimovitz, who is the pastthe labor and working class history association and professor at the university oç9f georgia thanks r spending a little bit of time with us. american history. yo