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it includes teachers and nurses and, you know, workers who weren't so in the 19th century, who collar but are also people primarily, you know, earn their living by their their their wage, by the sweat ofat they earn in their paychecks. so not necessarilynecessarily. i will say that in the field i teach in the history of the labor movement is an important component of it. so and that's why we call and working class history. so it's unions but but not only that most, american workers have never been in unions. so that would be a too narrow a way to understand the working class experience. and you, the president of the labor and working class history

association, which is what that's an organized nation of scholars who are interestednds of things that i have just been discussing. it was have about 500 members scattered at universities mostly around thee independ scholars. we have people whointerested this subject. we also have people who are connected to the labor movement, who do worker, for example, and things that. we have a journal th's called labor studies and working history wherethis kind of history gets published in a icwould you consider your organization be pro labor? i would say in a simplistic way, but i would say that, you know, it's complicated than that because while we're most of the scholars who are in the field are sympathetic to the union movement, as i am, that also view ourselves as scholars first

and therefore that means looking at this movement, we might be quite sympathetic, but also looking at it with with the eye toward, you know, critical where that that is called for. if somebody were aspiring to be in the c-suite and be a ceo. yeah. would they find value in. oh, absolutely. f my students aspire to that tha and i think it's all the more who rise to positions influence as employers, that they understand things, workers perspective. a lot of that stuff doesn't get taught business, schools or. if somebody is taking a say, a master's in business administration and an mba. but i find that it's very valuable for people will have people working for them to ey're part of a long historical process of employment in this country which have evolved and we can learn a lot from how that evolution has happened. so absolutely. well, let's break this down into

the and working class. yeah. at what point? in our history before, labor unions did the working class ever get organized or have protests or or have a meaningful yeah, so great question. and, youen working on the revision of a textbook i do called labor in america on this and we about even in t in the 1600s, you had workers like fishermen in maine in a work stoppage to improve the kind conditions that they were working under. there's no formal union enslaved. people inengage subtle forms of collective action to try to get better treatment on anbefore there were formal unions. there is something about the working experience because it'sus experience that it inculcates in the be fishermen, whether they were enslaved whether they weshoemakers or cobblers or

seamstresses, there's something about the experience that the peop who do it together begin to recognize a interest and sometimes their interest exactly the same as the people who employ and that there i them express themselves collectively. so that imls older than our country. but the union movement itself almost arose simultaneous with with the country. the first unions you started to see in the 1790s, which once they were unions at first of what were called core donors that was a term that they used forakers in that period and some of the first unions were formedneymen court. the system was in those days that started as an apprentice and a craft, a young boy because these were all male at that timeja usually the age 12 to 1

or 16. you worked a master's workshop at that point. u came a journeyman and what you were then is kind of an master or learning to the trade. but a journeyman was in part that because they would move from one master to another to pick up, you aspects of the craft that onmaster knew, that another didn't know. after a while. and already by the 1790, some crafts, like shoemaking, were starting to see that progression. you start as an apprentice, you become a journeyman, then you set up your own shop that people weren't really able to set up their own shop. and so they went from expectation that they would become masters to realizing, no, we're we're probably going to be working for somebody else for the rest of our that moment that they start to well, if that's the case we need to like make these jobs sustainable for us. and you know they begin to were

learned by the chord winners. in portland when more formal or modern unions came along? yes, because the more formal and modern kind of grew out of that experience. and i should say at thebeginning when chord winners attempt to to come together to make demands. they wanted a certain price for the number of shoes they would turn out, for example, from their masster that that was viewed under our law and common law as a criminal conspiracy, that to make a collective demand on the master like trying to restrain free trade. and sohey were brought to court, found guilty of criminal cons times, but yet they pioneered this of collect of bargaining is really what it wa unions ultimately sort of evolved from, grew from. and after a while, thisice gained legal legitimacy. +áanen really

the 20th century actually with theid we have a clear federal law that said it'sorganize and to bargain legal gray zone, but there were unions before, 1934 where a lawyer. yes, but but those unions really had to develop in spaces where. workers were str enough that employers couldn't try use the law to break them or undermine them. and that's what led to the format federation was called the american federation of labor. and it was come. yeah, exactly. and it was composed craft unions by that time. it was called the shoe union. and then there others like the machinists, the carpenter was the cigar makers actually was was an important union in the founding of the afl cigar rolling was a fine craft and founder of the afl was samuel gompers and that was his living. he was a roller and developed an effective of cigar makers that

of became a cornerstone of this federation and of unions. give us time that fell was being formed and tell us a little bit about mr. gompers. so gompers, a was an immigrant who, arrived in the us during civil of the 1860s. he came from london. hisimmigrants to london. however, they were of dutch jewish origin. they settled in london, worked there for a time. sam came over when he was a teenager, got employed in the cigar trade in new york city in the 1860s and seventies became very active in organizing cigar makers formed a union in the 1870s, the afl itself is founded. in 1886 cio. we always associate cio with a. that's right. how do you connect to. great question. so cio stands for

industrial organizations and where the was it was a federation of kraft workers like cigar makers and carpenters. the cio would be a federation. industrial workers like auto steelwkers w who production factories. the cio was formed in the 1930s and 1935 and in response to the fact that the afl because it was composed of kraft workers really have enough in or belief that you could organize mass production workers. the people who followed gompers really yeah that they had to make a different kind union movement. i'm thinking about some times in labor history. yeah united mine workers strike uaw sue ford. i believe that was in the 1920s rightnp right. what impact did those have on class and on labor.

those were huge. the sit down strike that occurred in the auto industry. and it began before new years in 1936, building into the 1937 transformed movement. workers occupied their michigan. and that was really when the cio movement really took off the united workers who started that. and when did it become impactl? the united mine workers were founded 1890, their first important president was a guy named john mitchell, who rose to thehe turn of the century, it became the largest uon in th united states in the early 20th century, but it also became of the fountainhead for the emergence of an industrial union movement in the u.s. later in the century it produced a figure named john l. lewis, who came to leadership of the union around world war one. and lewis was the founder really

of the congress of industrial organizations in the 1930. so the would say, the most important union of the first part not only because it organizes massive industry, but because it produced leadership and a vision that would then on to organize mass production factories. and we're talking about tens of thousands of workers. oh, indeed yeah. at its height, the mine workers could call out on strike. hundreds of happened 1919, right after the war, for example. and by the time the emerges in the 1930s to organize auto workers, steel and others, we're talking about in the industrial union movement that now numbers in the millions. is it wages is it safety? what are the issues led to the creation unions? yeah. wages, safety. to discrimination by the

employer. you were known to be sympathetic to the union, for example, you could be things. now, earlier in our conversation, you referred to the wagner act of 1835. yeah. how cio affiliated union like the united mine the united auto workers could form with hundreds of 's an excellent point. the cio was started in 35. couldn't have been started without the . the act made it possible to form a massive industrial union because it really forbid fromg some of the things they've been to that point. blacklisting workers, for example, it gave workers a right to form a union. once workers had that right they really seized in a vigorous between 1935 and 1945. so in the middle of the depression, they start to organize, but the process isn't completed until the end of world war two. i would say. who was mr. wagner?

robert wagner was a senator from new york, and he was a longtime progressive. one of the things that got him interested in issues ofor reform was that he was in the new york legislature at the time of the train shirtwaist fire which happened in 11. a terrible tragedy. new york city, where a sweatshop caught, young women perished. :and he was so shocked and moved by that. he became increasingly interested in labor issues when he got tsenator. this was a prime interest for him. of, franklin roosevelt in the great depression, a context where he could push forward some aggressive legislation protecting workers right to organize. and so he seized it. henry ford. yeah. $5 a day. yes workers flocked to the factory. they did. but when the union tried to come in to ford. yeah, he resists the absolute. but henry ford was a kind of a

labor class hero, wasn't he? e beginning of his offering of the $5 wage. yeah. he was quite. that started in 1914. he was paying almost double what other employers were paying, but he had conditions about that. you had to allow his social workers your house. they wanted to know what you were reading. they wanted to make sure you weren't in the union. he did not believe that his system was compatible with workers having a collective bargaining voice, so he resisted that strongly. and it wasn't until, you know the u.s. entered world war when ford was getting more and more pres government. government didn't want labor disputes during the war and it sybasically pushed industry and to co and so ford basically stepped back and allowed his workers to organize 1950s, about a third of the workforce. yeah. labor, right. union membership right.

today its about 10%. that's. there'd been a massive falloff. came. you're right that in952, 35% nonfarm were in unions. so why that went down? part of it had to do with where rong in those production factories. those factories continuously decreased employment in the postwar era. so the auto plants didn't require as many workers in the sixties as earlier because new technologies, etc. steel. so it was change in industries. it the fact that we became more of a service economy. unions always had a more difficult time organizing their for a variety of reasons. but one thing to quickly consider is the size of general motors or steel. if you could organize, boom, you had a large movement to say as today fast food workers at a mcdona' difficult they're so

dispersed often they're not directly for mcdonald's or more to work for franchises who own franchises. so there's a scattering of different employers much more difficult so changes in industry were important. i think thing was that we're still by the labor law as was written in the 1930s and wagner act 1935, it was amended by called the taft-hartley act in 47. and basically it hasn't been changed and and work today different. we have gig employment often those people who are getting jobs like say driving uber are not being categorized as workers even. so h do you negotiate with uber when labor law as it's understood, characterizes you as a independent than somebody who's working for this company? now, what was the taft-hartley act?

the taft-hartley act was an effort by people who thought that the wagner act had gone too far and had given labor too many rights. so robert taft of's right. robert taft, son of the president. william howard taft, who had alsoeen a supreme court justice chief justice, the act. first of all, gave to fight against unions by giving them right to exercise their free speecto try persuade workers not to form unions. now, how that often operates is that employers it's pe your work time for the employer. say, come to this meeting and. then the meeting is allut why you shouldn't be in a union? why union would be a match for us and employer has the power to do that in a way the union can't really effectively counteract. they don't have the ability gather people and have equal time for example. so we'things.

the taft-hartleyythere have been efforts over the years to amend laboraw. but every significant effort amend the law has died with a senate filibuster because you need in days 60 votes to bring a bill to to the floor of the us senate and nobody who's wanted nd labor law has been able to get those votes. so given gig workers, as you say, yeah, what would be a logical reform to labor law, in your view? well, i think for one thing, giving gig workers to collectively bargain would help them a lot. i've talked to a lot of uber driversrs, and often they don't actually what wage they'rere that you're you're being shown that youride, they have to bear their own costs for a lot of th do. they don't have an ability to come together as a group and say ly we need x y and z to make this job sustainable for.

us final question. yeah. you mentioned at the beginning our conversation eugene yeah. what is valuable toeugene debs was iprophet i think because some of the things that he argued for the late 19th and early 20th century were things like the right to organize, which he was calling for 30 years before the wagner that he was calling a system that would be something like what we have undesecurity that he was calling for for a fairer distribution of wealth in the country. and i think as we look around america in years, you know, and especially in these right now our economy, if you look at the overall numbers is the seem good but a lot of people feel like it's not really working for them. and i think you could say that over the past generation the fruits of our growth haven't

been enough to counteract that feeling. the strike by the air traffic controllers in 1981, did that impact future labor unions or definitely. and that's a subject i actually wrote a book about called collision course and. it was a really, really important. ronald reagan was president of the air traffic controllers were federal employees. didn't have a right to strike but they were so frustratedet there. their employer, federal aviation administration to with a lot of the issues that they had on their job that they that they ultimately felt like the only way we're going to get attention to these issues is to strike. of course, they made a fatal mistake. they not only struck. but when reagan said you have 48 hours to return to work, they decide to wait them out. they didn't think that the aiworking. about 70% of them actually ed out.

despite that warning. if you don't return to work i fire you. reagan did fire them and it really, i think, opened an era a more, you retreat mode for the union movement, but which might be to an end. in recent years, wha' recently. well, joseph mccartin of georgetown university and of troy, new york. that's right. thank you for tying history into modern day for us.

thanks so much, everybody. so this is an. so this is a snapshot of the history of reproductive rights and justice starting from the 19th century to the present. it's also something that's in some ways very hard to lecture about now because