so now without further ado

tonight i am very excited to welcome debbie goldman celebrating release of disconnected call center workers fight for good jobs in the digital age goldman is.

goldman is the former research director and telecommunications policy director. the communications workers of america this new book explores how calls center employees and their union fight good, humane jobs in the face of degrading working conditions and lowering wages, and how the actions of workers management and policymakers shape the social impact of new digital technologies and give new form to the telecommuting industry. in a time of momentous, goldman will be joined in conversation with joseph mccartin, a professor in the department of history at georgetown university and the executive director of the come benefits in initiative for labor and the working poor. please me in welcoming to politics and prose. debbie goldman and joseph mccartin. thank you so much.

first, let me say a pleasure. it is for me to be doing this event with debbie and before such a packed audience here, a very knowledgeable people, some of whom i think are in the book book. i first encountered debbie years ago when enrolled in a seminar i was teaching at georgetown and the u.s. labor and history and to see the work she already had in mind. when i met her 17 years ago, this book come to fruition in a really remarkable volume. i would say. i think that's going to have a big impact on how historians like i think about recent u.s. labor history. it's really such a pleasure. so, debbie, if you would maybe start, it would be interesting.

me and many people, i think, to hear what your journey was that led you to write book. well, joe, first of all, thank you for that lovely. and i also to acknowledge and thank politics prose not only the best bookstore in washington, dc, but probably in the country country. and a union shop represented by the ufc w and i want to acknowledge the owners when employees wanted to organize this collectively they stood back and, let the employees select a union without waging any kind of anti campaign. so thank to them. okay. applause come out of our talk so we can hold off on any more

applause. joey, you asked me why. decided to write this book. well, when i started working at cwa, the communication workers of america in 92, at that point technology was already decimating the work of the operators. the female jobs within the at point we would say the phone company, the company. but the advent of competition with the breakup of the bell system in 1984 and substitution of regular of competition for regular ation, we saw that customer service operation going to grow in importance. and when say we saw i want to acknowledge my mentor, george cole, who was the head of the research. no applause. we love. and i don't know if larry cohen is here this point. hi, larry. larry, who was then the organizing director and and

eventually the president cwa for quite an important period of time and they acknowledged that customer service was going to become a really vital part of the that we represented and growing that part and this was at that point female dominated jobs and they assigned to me the job of learning what was going on in the workplace. and i did in the introduction the book, the first introduction i had to a bell system, a telephone company, call center. i was a guided by a terrific woman, hazel della via, who was the president of her local. and we went to in new jersey. at that time, it still called new jersey bell call center and the manager took us in front of

his computer and showed us how from his computer now, the same technology that routed the calls into the call center had attached to software that could collect enormous data about. what was going on in the call center, every service representative desk was color coded. whether she was on the phone or, not on the phone, whether she had keyed out and set i'm off schedule or how long she was out in the field, what her sales were. he could punch the same way you can do on your iphone. he could punch down to and see all that detail for that rep. he could also punch out and see what was going on throughout his call center and then other call center managers were all tied in. they could see everything that was going on. every new jersey call center. he was absolutely delighted.

the system and hazel and i looked at each other and we said, oh, no, we know what this is going mean. what it meant was that that of data that they were collecting allowed the management to squeeze out any second of downtime from work that the call center simpler service reps were doing so they could speed up the work one call after another the headphone. they could track whether the service rep was adhering to her schedule. if called in. and you asked and you were talking to the service and she was supposed to go on at 1030, but she was on the call and she wanted to help you. and she stayed on call. she was out of what they called adherence. and if you were out. and then if she took 15 minute

break and therefore came back late, she was again out of it. parents they implemented adherence tracking and could discipline people for not being in adherence. of course, what this did to the service rep who identity was tied with being able help people. it meant she couldn't really her job which causes stress. they could track your sales results. they could track what you said. and so if i called in and, said, i have a problem with my bill. the service rep was supposed to to you, the customer who couldn't pay their bill was now getting a sales pitch. all of this was now enabled by this new digital technology. and so when i saw that and hazel saw that and this then got disseminated throughout, both at&t and the local bell

companies, our members began to rebel and they turned to their union one of the few customer service groups that has a union and they turned to cwa and said, you've got to help relieve this stress. now the challenges unions know how to negotiate wages and pension health care. how do you negotiate to relieve stress? and what i the front row seat was learning from our service rep union leaders what they thought needed to be done in order to make the job, what it had once been, which was a humane job, albeit paternalistic, militaristic,

rules oriented. that was the bell system. yet had some degree autonomy and control over being able to do their work. now this was all driven by the computer and i got to listen to our service rep leaders who were telling us and the men who were negotiating their contracts, who were telling them, here's what we need. we need some relief from this incest. and surveillance of our work. sound familiar? hmm we need some relief from this concept and phone call dropping into us. and we have to know what's it called? we had to do two tasks at one time. take the call for the new customer while we're typing the notes from the other customer because we no time to do our paperwork.

we need some time off. jump off the phone so we can what we promised the customers call them back. so i was learning all these things and watching what were they able to achieve? how did they build power within male dominated union? and what was in then after 1996, when a new law was passed in congress? telecommunications act of 1996, which opened up all markets to competition. so the cable company was becoming your phone company and your internet company and eventually wireless was coming in. so we saw all of this happening and, i was assigned the lovely to pretend i was a lawyer and an economist and represent cwa on

telecom communications policy at the fcc and on some legislation and eventually around mergers in front of the doj. so i was seeing was happening under competition and deregulation at the front line work force while i was seeing the policies that both democrats and republicans had adapted to subsidy to competition as the way to incent lower prices and innovation instead of regulation. and what that meant that our employers which were at&t verizon and other regional will companies our employers which had been for decades, were now competing with comcast last spectrum time warner t-mobile, sprint mci all of these not

nonunion, anti-union, that big regulators were giving favorable so that they would encroach upon the markets of the union companies. so while we at one point were as labor struggling against our employers we were also seeing that in the larger economy the pressure was on our employers to race the bottom and that what we've seen when the bell system was broken in 1964, two thirds of telecommunication workers were union. if i were to ask you what the percentage is today my cwa research department colleagues could tell you it's under 10% now. it's not because.

we've lost the industry. you know how dynamic community is. it's growing some overseas, albeit, but it's growing. but what's growing are these nonunion companies. so that's why i wrote the book. well said. the passion that you hear that answer. let me assure you, servants, the book, as debbie tells the story, is about communications workers and their struggles. yes, but i it's also about the whole labor movement. all of what's happened to working over the past half century or so in some ways the workers described in this book, the ones that debbie spent her working life at cwa devoted to trying to help and to keep organized and to fight. in some ways, those workers were like canaries in the coal mine

of what was to the working class in general. i would say in the late 20th century. this book in the sixties and ends around 2000. in between those times, a vast change has taken place. part of it is a change in the nature of capitalism as we move from a kind of managerial to a financial capitalism. part of it is a change in technology from analog to digital, as debbie is talking about. part of it is a political change away from new deals style regulated economy to the neo economy. so all of that is in the book. and that's one of the things i think that makes it a really powerful book for helping understand not just communications workers, but what's been happening to workers in general. and part the problems that they've been facing back. so, debbie, to to bring our audience into that story, could you say few words about what it was like in the pre divested era

of at&t where you a unionized workforce service workers predominantly women? yes. as you would note it was paternal. but the fact that they were a union really crucial. what was that world before all these changes started? i love to tell this and i actually had to learn it because i came to cwa after computers had been brought. so i did interviews with folks who had been service reps in the 1960s, seventies and. they told me and taught me that at that point the customer service business office was a small office located in your community. often the service reps knew local community. they worked only on paper records. there's a picture in chapter one of my book that shows what the office was at that point and if

you called in the person who would answer the phone and you answered on the first ring, there's a story i hear from hazel olivia that she says to this day, she cannot stand to have a ring twice. they were trained customer was absolutely the culture of bell system at that point she would use the service rep would get the call somebody in her area and she had next to her a file cabinet of paper. they called it a tab that had all the records. and you would search for my friend cathy riley is nodding because you had summer jobs and she got out in an office, you would pull the paper for that customer. you would if they wanted you know there wasn't too many choices at that time. you could have a princess phone. you could a black rotary dial phone.

yes. and you could you might have a question about your bill and the service rep would solve your problem. and then make the notation by hand and put it in the outbox and like cathy riley would by and pick it up and take it to the service order writer who would type it up and then it would go to the appropriate department and then it would finally come back to you, the service rep, and you would refile it. now if it turned out you called for and the person who's in your area is busy, then the call would go to another service rep who then get up? i'm sorry, i shouldn't out of this chair. who would get up and walk over and pick the paper and maybe be able to talk a little bit to the other 30 or so service reps in office? build camaraderie, build, learn from each other and up. i would ask.

how many times a day? 20, 30 times a day. now, think about that. you all probably have a picture of a where sized call center with cubicles dividing people one from the next. they do not get up from their seat except for their if they are union. they're negotiated breaks their lunch hour. what it just in terms of health and and building friendship and camaraderie that's what it was like in period too. to what extent the breakup of the bell system begin change all of that and along with the introduction of new technology and how did workers react to the changes they came. okay. the bell system was broken up in 84 and i'm not going to tell that story. have that in chapter two of the book. what driving it? it's interesting to see that it was democrats as well as

republicans who thought that competition should regulation. competition came first to the long distance industry. and i can see the demographics. this audience you remember when sprint and mci were offering you a $100 so that you could switch your phone, long distance service. so at&t now had to set up brand new customer service operation prior to this. if you had a question about that for the breakup of the bell system with your question about your long distance bill, actually the local company handled that question. now with the strict wall between the at&t, the long distance company and the regional bell's. at&t had set up a brand new customer operation and came to cwa and they said, we're probably going to have to hire

10 to 13000 people. they could be union. we're going to fight that. that was in the old days. they actually thought that, as you grew a title, they that they would be union. but we can't compete with the nonunion costs of mci and sprint at the wage rate of the service reps that that are in your title. so if you want keep those folks in-house. you need to agree to a 20% wage cut. now, there were no service reps in these centers, so it wasn't a political that people would see their wages cut. but the. oh, and by the way, what were they going to do. who were they going to contract with? american. which at that point with the saber system had the most

advanced call center technology. so if you the union leader and i see my friend larry cohn in the back thinking this through, what would you do? would you believe them that they were going to contract it out and refuse to take the and and take the wage cut? or would you think they're not really going to do it? you don't know. and much soul searching the unit that bargained with at&t agreed to the 20% wage cut so that's competition meant in the local bell companies they couldn't do that so they tried to divide the job and take the skilled parts and make a 20% wage cut for that. but it didn't work. they had to they wanted one stop shopping. but that's what competition meant. a race to the bottom and part of

that race to the bottom was driven, as you allude earlier, by by federal policies like telecomm act. and could you to the fact that you noted earlier it was both democrats and republicans were favoring competition. opening up markets in telecommunications field and really not caring much about the impact that would have on workers. well, this was a period in which it was a lot of it was by democrats. it was senator kennedy's committee. did the investigation that led and stephen breyer who we many us lost on the supreme court justice his his top aide that wrote the airline deregulation act that not only put downward pressure on the airlines but as

we've seen over the past decades customer service has just gone to you know it's disappeared in the airline industry trucking in all of this. and and telecommunications. the idea that if we only have competition that is going to drive innovation and lower prices. the problem, of course, is that at least in an area, communications is so vital everybody has to have access to the internet, then to the telephone telephone. once you introduce competition, where do the companies invest, where they can make profits. so we still see that we have ten, 20% of our ip americans who can't afford internet or who don't have good internet service because the companies are no

longer and they used to to when they were regulated but they no longer have to build everywhere and and they don't have to meet all the and it's gotten so bad. and my friend nell gaiser, who's now the cwa research director and she's pointing my colleague human her diety i saw a couple of weeks ago the fcc opening an investigation into the quality of customer service. it is so bad this is never anything that we were able to get to pay attention to during my 30 years at cwa. but it's gotten so bad. let's see if they can do. anything. so you tell the story of how public policy, corporate policy changing technology begins to erode working working power the power of workers on the job and to to hit at union membership.

now cwa is a remarkable union. we many people here from cw away because all through this it was one it was a fighting union and in the post pat co era i wrote a book about pat go when strikes started to disappear largely from our. industrial relations landscape. cwa really continued to fight continue to go on strike. and you tell the story in the book of worker resistance to these trends. how would you, you know, talk about that part of the story here, too and to what extent that workers back how did they fight back and you know what what did they have workers the service reps used a variety of strategies collective bargaining contract enforcement. they even tried to labor management joint initiatives. not so success for fighting the

outsourcing of their work somewhat successful, but the book the last chapter of the book about a verizon strike in the year 2001 always likes to end a book on a high note. and this was a high note don't read the epilog if you don't want to see that in in the year 2000. cw a recognized well, first of all, by this time you'd had in the post telecom duplications act of 96 opening up of all markets. you had an enormous amount of mergers and acquisitions going on. so by this point there was one phone company for, maine, to virginia. in west virginia, 87,000 union members and bell atlantic had bought merged with ti and renamed itself verizon just that

year. at the same time, cwa was going into contract negotiations and cwa recognized that it needed to do it. verizon what it had successfully done down with southwest bell telephone company, which eventually became sbc which if i'm going to keep you dissing eventually merged with at&t and took the name of at&t. okay if i confused you totally at any rate, back to the year 2000, down in southwestern bell area, cwa had waged a five year campaign, call it five years to card check. and one of my dear friends, judi graves, from that area is very familiar with this leveraging variety of regulatory opportunities while on the front line organized wireless workers saying that this is in the

mid-nineties when wireless was growing but yet dominant cwa was able to leverage through a variety of mechanisms to eventually get us southwestern bell to that it would step back and be neutral and recognize majority sign up for a way to unionize and print collective bargaining and under that as sb si bought pacific bell then ameritech, then s&p and eventually bellsouth and eventually at&t. this meant that 45,000 at&t wireless workers were able to win union and get a contract. and by the way, if any of you care, at&t is still the only union wireless. remember that. back to 2000.

cwa recognized that it needed verizon was becoming now a company and all of you i assume think of verizon primarily as a wireless company you might get your broadband from them as well your internet and needed to negotiate a similar agreement with. the verizon leadership. at the same time the service reps were completely up in arms about the stress in their call centers and by this time after. ten years of educating the predominantly male but now they weren't only male bargainers about the situation. the call centers, the union, stress relief in the call centers as one of its top three issues jobs security organizing rights at verizon wireless and

stress relief and the call centers. and service reps got together put together an agenda. well bargaining not going well and the unit of 7000 somewhere ibew in some areas mostly cwa went out on strike for those three demands. and the service reps one enormous protection was remember i said you how do you relieve stress? they won the right to 30 minutes off the phone every day except busy mondays. for most of us who work professionals, that may not sound like a lot, but that was huge. they won on the amount of supervisory monitoring. they won the right to transfer

out of their jobs if weren't doing well with sales. the company had this really weird policy. if you didn't do well with sales, you couldn't transfer to non sales job. they won the right to do that and a variety of other that they won. so a strike with the men technicians and there were women technical. one of my friends laura unger was one of the lead and annie hill two women who became technicians and then leaders the customer service bargaining units. now, in terms of the verizon wireless. let me tell that story. and larry, probably tell it the best, but i'm going to tell the story, bryson signed a deal that it would agree to neutrality and majority sign up among its that wireless workers.

and that was signed on the contract it would be for four more years. from 2000 to 2004. after the contract was signed. they just went and violated it. they closed down three verizon wireless centers in the northeast where there had been organizing going and they moved the work to the south right to states. so now you had the area with with stronger support closed and then they just went and violate the they set up websites that told their wireless workers why it would be bad to be with the union. the managers were instructed to tell folks why it would be bad and it under those conditions, the verizon workers some them

more recently even some of them have organized but it's a very very tiny amount. so that's the kind of situation that we're faced with. and so i could not end this talk without saying that part of the challenge is that our labor laws are just so weak, not just that they're not enforced. they're weak. you fire a worker, you don't have to pay a penalty. until maybe you're found guilty and you have to pay any back pay that that that they may have missed unless. they've been working because, after all, take years. you close the call center. they say it's for economic reasons even though it was because there was strong union support. so we need stronger. and we need ultimately a radical

change in the way in which we see our ability to have union representation. because now i have a chapter in the book about what's happened with the outsourcing under the. neoliberal ideology, that the most important thing for a corporation and for a company is to increase shareholder. one of the ways you increase shareholder value is you outsource a lot of the work, and particularly and with telecommuting actions like it is you, you outsource lot of the work. and in call centers you send it overseas. and so we need to go back. we have a law which in essence brings us back to what we had under the monopoly bell system, which was as the company grows, as the union grows, the entire industry is represented by the union. so you don't have a race to the bottom. you have real natural

contestation between labor and management. but it's not with the nonunion inside of the industry. in essence, sitting on the same side as, the employer. and this is what we call sectoral bargaining. and there's there's thoughts about that we need to begin to look toward that. and, of course, we need to reregulate our economy. competition is, not serving all of us equally well. well said. and i was going ask you, what are some of the lessons you draw your story, but you've really covered the? so i do want to say we have a microphone here and we have a very knowledgeable audience. and please come up to the mic. but before we take the first question, one quick final question for me this is a story largely about women and the role

that they played in fighting back. and could you say a word about what story offers us as a bit hope? the labor movement now is led by the afl-cio, by a woman. but when you begin your story were very marginal still in the movement, women fought for and gained their power. a it at that. i want to i want to do one other thing with those my colleagues from cwa who taught me so much. please stand all of you. thank you. wonderful. let's go to a question. so i was a summer intern. the united mine workers, in 1973

or for i. i grew up in new deal. i believe in labor unions. i saw on c-span a couple of days ago. and the only thing you left out was the implacable resistance of business from. 1935 on it never stopped. it never was reduced. it just got worse and worse and worse. and now, you know, they ran everything. my question is and it's for both, you. i was i worked for the united mine workers, places like that. and you about the role of united mine workers and john lewis and all of. what's happened to the union members. west virginia was a state when was growing up and that was miners. i mean they were treated terror, really. they're still treated terribly. i think they they get paid.

but the mine working conditions despite msha, the working conditions are still terrible. and they you know, they screw up the pensions of. but west virginia has a red state. and those miners who are voting a trump and very anti-union people. why don't we like joe answer your question. sure thank you. and debbie you offer your own thoughts. i would just say most those people probably are not union anymore. and that in a way what has happened in the coalfields is a similar story. i think to what debbie tells in this book a story of the arrival finance, finance, capitalism and, how that changes things and how the competition within that field began to break down. there used to be about 2 minutes coal operators association that sectoral bargain with the mineworkers and that fell apart so that was among the of changes

that happened in the why did the miners their vote. why did the miners vote republican. well in some cases i think as debbie story shows, were voting for democrats who were putting through some of these deregulatory policies and it wasn't this any partizan story. debbie has, it happened did it happen at cwa too, or are they still union members who are pro-union? yeah, i heard our members are pro-union. there's no about that. the miners are not. i want to also let other people have a chance. sure. thank you. thank you. come on up. thank you. to to ask your question, please. yes, it's it's. yeah, right. i have. please go ahead. just get in a line there. that's best. thank you. it's really sad but informative

story and hopefully the next in the us government will make an improvement. what i. my question is really and professor, you've been speaking about difference between finance capitalism and business capitalism. and for those us not familiar with those, perhaps you could elucidate a little bit. thank you. you use the term business capitalism. would you call it a managerial capitalism? there's a there's a general sense that during the new deal period from the thirties through about the mid-seventies, businesses understood that what they needed to do with their profits was not only share it with shareholders, but also reinvest in their production or their services so as to consider and improve with the advent of deregulation, financial markets, companies not just financial

companies, not just hedge funds and private equity, but other companies. the kind of their profits to invest in private equity, hedge funds and other mechanisms to increase the investment capital. but they were not reinvesting in the same way in their companies. and so economist, labor, historians and have now come to talk about this period as a period of financial capitalism which imposes all kinds of different challenges about than we had during that period from the new deal through about the mid seventies where u.s. economy really dominated the world. europe and japan were still recovering and it's once they recovered and you the global competition that unfortunately too many policymakers and

elected officials bought into idea that if we just the markets have free reign and got rid of all regulation it would both create investment and it would trickle down to working people. we see, with the huge gap now in which i don't know what it is that, richest 20 americans owned more, 80% of the rest of the population and this has not led to neither equity nor democracy which is so important. and i think that gets at some of questions you were asking. and just to add on to that a little bit, the maximizing shareholder value that didn't exist before seventies that became a concept in which the focus the sole focus was about improving stock prices before that as debbie said, many capitalists in, the u.s. tended

to balance stockholders and stakeholders interests. stakeholders went to the side, especially workers, as the shift happened and that's part of what she documents, i think. yes. okay. i want to turn this to a little bit of a self-interested question. what has happened to the call centers, for example, with comcast, you wait forever for them to up and often it's a gentleman usually but sometimes a woman the philippines. okay. who answers the call center. i'd like you to talk about the little bit of diverting some that work overseas and the implications for payment and i must be one of the few people left with a. what has happened that and verizon. i went to one of their outreach places they don't even deal with that. so some of us who like landlines left to drift out. i'll get to that. secondly first of all, the prior

questioner said this was a depressing story. i am really sorry. i do not want to leave here feeling depressed. yes. working people in these service reps had tough fights, but they fought and they often won. so this is not just a story of defeat, but they are up against huge, huge barriers. and we all need to take from this. not only that, we need to support unions, but we need to support a regulatory and public policy changes because that provides the grant the guard rails which companies then operate now let get back to your question which first of all, i'm glad you mentioned how comcast is. it's a company i love to hate. they are vicious, anti-union and in fact when they bought at one point at&t had a a broadband

company cable company. this was in the 2000 when comcast bought it. they then systematically we had 20 bargaining units. they system manically refused to bargain any of those bargaining units. the worker saw that the nonunion were getting for case and they were. well, you're a union. we we have to negotiate it. you can't get your 41k and then they systematically refuse to bargain. and eventually the workers said, okay, then we're deserting from the union, so at least we can get our four one case. that's the kind of thing comcast did. so its i love to hate but you asked about offshoring. yes. what happened was that? first the phone companies realized that they could save some money by outsourcing their work. then those companies came their the phone and said, you know, we

can save you even more money if you let us first send it to india and now for the kind of call centers talking about to the philippine so there's probably at least a million call center in the philippines for whom this is better pay than a nurse or a teacher. so interest and i want to again is an example of i don't want you to leave depressed but just to understand how hard it is. but at least the union is fighting fight when there was a more recent verizon strike? 2016. some of you may remember it and calls were being sent from the verizon call centers to philippines. the philippine workers who really have no rights, collective action reached out to

cwa and said we're getting your calls and brilliantly sent a delegation over the philippines and initially met with some violence but eventually it was recognized that was not a good idea anyway. and so cwa established a relay ship with these filipino workers and the verizon workers in america who some of them said, you know, we like those filipinos. they're taking our work. came to understand that the one that they ought to be at is the employer, not the filipino workers. and cwa and i worker centers in the philippines which under incredible repressive conditions have maintained that relationship. and we have helped them when

they've asked for it. another example and now you're going to have to help me on this. i believe we have with the call center teleperformance workers in the dominican republic. and do we a contract with them. no. we have a cooperative agreement. come to the mike. this is really quite impressive work. but. yeah, cwa sign a cooperation agreement with doe treasonous which is a union organized free trade zone workers in manufacturing. before it started organizing center workers who were also being treated as in free trade. so but you should also mention percentage protection of calls, call routing as a response to say i knew i had to bring her up to the microphone. one of the things that nelle and

our other in our elected leadership in prison is and, i think also maybe an at&t wireless is that we have to protect keeping some jobs in america. we have a watermark and the company cannot outsource jobs if it would cause our members not number we represent to go below that watermark and the future of landlines completely and the future landlines is is there going there's no regulation they're going california has still. will not relinquish over the site over landlines but the real tragedy is that no regulation over wireless or over our internet. and that's where all the communications is. and you and i may be the last ones in watching dc with a

landline. okay, thanks. i think we have a couple of questioners lined up here. okay. there are some landlines in the audience. i see. yes so i want to thank you both for a wonderful present. and debbie, thank you for work. i, i, i came to the mike because i want to ask about the whether you thought about reframed ing the in a way that reaches an audience. the union. and here's what struck me about it you talk about stress poor calls workers of being pushed not to provide service they were used to taking care of people they were part of the community that was their job. that was how they saw in work.

we did. we saw a literature of distress among who were pushed not to care for patients. pediatricians in dc have been leaving pediatric centers because. the employer wants them to do ten minute visits with seriously ill dr. or etc., etc., etc. and it's not just professionals. craftspeople also take pride in their work. construction workers want do it right. they go through lengthier practices on the union side. they know how it should be done and they're being pushed to do it faster and on the cheap in ways that are dangerous for, everyone. so it seems me your themes are not just about call center

workers, not just about unions but about the nature of the we want to live in and the quality of life. everyone around us. i couldn't say it better. yeah. please hey, nice to be here. nice to celebrating your book. i the whole time you were talking and about the changes that have come with the call centers and cubicle walls and what i was thinking of is gig workers, right? because that's sort of the next thing and you could imagine them saying, well, everybody's got a phone sit at home and make answer the phone calls. we'll just them to your phone and you'll answer and you'll be an independent employee. how that this whole move towards pushing more and more not only

offshored not only to centers but to these non gig workers. that's a really important question. i think probably a third of the workforce now works for a subcontractor or or is an contractor. that's my for a gig worker and we have two vehicle loads and i think it addresses what david was saying first of all because of the way we now have economists call it a fissured work workplace that's with an f, a fissured workplace. we've broken the between management and who actually controls the work and the people who do the work often temporary jobs through gig work, through sub-cabinet, etc. and so one of the things that people who are

thinking about, how do we then have collective representation for these people, there's some progress under this really giant nlrb general counsel jennifer abruzzo, where she's trying to say that in many cases there is a joint employment relationship. and so you hold whether it's the franchisor, the gig or, whoever you hold the the those that have the ultimate economic control response, but ultimately that's why i talked about sectoral because then the gig who might be at home taking the call for an at&t would be represented by a in a union that represents the whole. but back to david's point as well not only do you collective

representation what is weaker than people what is the the feeble of one you need collective action that's the whole basis. the national labor relations act that you cannot you have to balance between the one worker and the company that has all the power. but we we actually need to look in many ways our regulatory system. so whether it's the medical system, whether it's the system, the commuter system, the various ways in which we've got to reregulate so that that race to the bottom and the irony here is and if my friends from the sumer federation or the consumers union were here the irony and in communique patients is there should be a alliance between the consumer and the union but the policies that talk to you about

the competition was embraced by the consumer organizations because they wanted lower priced us and we all have to think a lot. it's the wal-mart strategy. right. and so how can unionized giant and safeway compete we have to think a lot about if low price is all that we want to to being an amazon. it does because has this incredible audience right but it's a very unique place. tony, let me just say, we have just couple of minutes off and i see two people waiting. if you both could ask your questions and then we'll let that be. have the final word. debbie, thank you for great book. looking forward to reading it. i want to ask if if you were advising all the workers who are organized in starbucks, it seems like there are all kinds of lessons that if you take a step

further, the monitoring, all the orders going into stores. i met noel. how long ago is that a of weeks ago at the only unionized starbucks. up street here in connecticut avenue. i mean, there's over five, almost 500 stores and over thousand baristas that have signed union cards. but it seems to me that we've still got a long ways go with our time. so i'm going to do something. well, let's hear this and then let that be self-interested question. the pensions that these companies control, that they're to the lowest bidder, getting rid of the pension benefit guaranty insurance. cwa has a lawsuit against it for at&t and some of the other companies, verizon any comment and raise your hand. yeah. okay, so be a final to you. so, tony, don't think i have to give any advice. the starbucks baristas, they know they're doing and i we need

to recognize the incredible victories that they got, that starbucks now said we're going to back off from our anti-union and we're going to negotiate a contract. so i think that's the kind of scale that need and i just have to close another incredible story cwa that i hope points to the kind thing that we need. and my dear friend alan gruen knows this very well. when microsoft wanted to buy activision a gaming company and gamers have been coming to cwa and saying, help us, help us, you don't know the kind of pressures that under in our work and cwa had been working them and helping them organize, had organized a few small places. and when microsoft wanted to. find out whether there was mood in capitol hill to support this

merger, they were advised you better go talk to. and they did and they said okay, what do you think? and then our president whose name was chris shelton. now president, is clyde cummings. chris shelton said, if you the union to grow and we need for you to be truly neutral if any microsoft worker wants have a union and would you believe it microsoft agreed and since then various units of the gaming companies that they bought and microsoft itself have begun to organize and i believe even negotiated contracts. cwa is getting into supporting and helping tech workers, high tech workers, you think of them as libertarian, the same kind of

things, david, that you talked they're experiencing, they understand that they need collective representation in order to have good working at jobs that otherwise they would love. thank you very much. thank you,