"the centrist solution." on tuesday economist and activist heather mcgee with "the sum of us." wednesday former presidential candidate andrew yang with "forward." on thursday former trump fda commissioner dr. scott gottlieb discusses his book "uncontrolled spread." on friday community activist bob woodson with his book "red, white, and black." be sure to watch washington journal next week starting sunday, december 26 at 7:00 a.m. eastern with our special holiday week author series on c-span or on the new mobile video app c-span now. ♪

host: the closing of that factory in indianapolis was the subject of a book by farah stockman called “american made: what happens to people when work disappears." thanks for joining us. guest: thanks for having me. host: how did you come across the story of this plant and what story are you trying to tell from the closing? guest: i started working on the book the night of the election. i was dispatched to be part of the new york times coverage of what everybody thought would be the first female president, the election of the first female president. i went to hillary clinton's alma mater. i was standing around with people who were waiting to celebrate her victory. we all saw what happened next.

i am from michigan. i grew up in the rust belt. i started asking around. why donald trump? what is it about this guy who had never served one day in office, not one day in government at any level? how is this some -- how is it so many millions of americans voted for him? i started hearing back he is going to save my job, my factory. that is what maybe want to follow this, to see what it feels like when your job is sent away. that is how i started this book. host: talk about the plant itself. what did they make there? what led to the job being transferred and where did it go? guest: they made ball bearings and roller bearings. it is kind of an anonymous gadget that is in every machine that moves.

the plant had been in indianapolis -- that plant had been there since the 1950's. it had been there a long time. it moved to mexico for a couple reasons. one is that a few years prior the company had asked the union to basically cut worker pay by 30%. if you do not agree to this, we are going to move the plant. workers rallied. they got it back, but they ended up deciding they would make more money if they moved it to monterey, where workers got paid three dollars an hour instead of $25 an hour. host: in part of the book, you

offer profiles of three workers. one of them, shannon, is part of the profile. talk about her story and how it relates to the larger picture especially when the situation of a drop going overseas happens. guest: shannon was a single mom. she had worked her way up from being a janitor at the plant to being one of the most dangerous and highly paid jobs on the factory floor. she was the first woman to get that job. when she started her training commitment tried to get her fired. they played tricks on her. they did not teacher. they did everything they could to get her fired at first because she was the first woman and one of the guys told her it was not for a woman.

she overcame a lot of obstacles to get that job. the whole reason she had the job was because she had been an abused woman. she had been with a guy who used to beat her up and she got the confidence and money to leave him through the job at the factory, which she got through her uncle. to me, she was the last person i expected to meet at a plant like that. when you think of steelworker, you do not think battered woman, but that is what shannon was. i came to see her as a blue-collar feminist who was out there trying to become a breadwinner for her family. host: farah stockman is the author of the book and serves on the new york times editorial board, here to talk about the findings of her book and the nature of work and what happens in the situations she has described.

if you want to ask her questions, it is (202) 748-8000 for those in the eastern and central time zones. (202) 748-8001 in the mountain and pacific time zones. perhaps you are unemployed and can relate to themes in the book. (202) 748-8002 is the number to call. you can also text us at (202) 748-8003. you write in the book, work matters. often those who champion the working-class think only of social safety nets, not the jobs that make a working person's identity. can you elaborate on that question mark? -- on that? guest: the people i followed were not looking for a government check in the mail. they look down on those who lived off safety nets that they had not paid into. one of the guys i followed was named john. he was the union vice president. he was a white guy who came from

a diehard union family. he was the grandson of coal miners. i followed him after the factory had closed. he had to go get unemployment insurance. there was a problem with his check. he was running around trying to fix it. they had to pay the rent. he told me, at least i paid into the system all my life. i can handle excepting a government check for something i paid into all my life. if it is welfare -- the word welfare made him bristle. a lot of these steelworkers i followed had family members, relatives, neighbors, friends who did game the system, who did not work as hard as maybe they could have. for a lot people i followed, they took pride in not doing that, and being able to support

themselves and not game the system or live off the government. one of your recent callers said it. he does not trust the government. a lot of people do not. imagine being forced to live off a social safety net, being forced to run the gauntlet of trying to make sure the government check you rely on comes. that is not the reality of these people want. they are not sitting around talking about universal basic income, at least not the ones i was following. host: you started by talking about the election of president trump. he tweeted about the situation there. what was the reaction among workers at the plant? guest: a couple weeks after he was elected, he tweeted it was closing and moving to mexico.

he was talking about them viciously firing their workers. workers of that plant, shannon, she thought president trump or president-elect trump is thinking about me. me personally. he created this feeling he cared about them personally and they sat around for hours discussing what does he mean? does it mean this plant is not going to close? does it mean no more after this plant? they took him at his word. there were workers who were writing to him daily on social media begging him to save the plant until the very end. workers who had no plan for what was going to happen to them after the plant closed. they kept writing to trump and thinking he was going to come and save the day.

some of us do not -- i personally did not understand the extent to which this promise to say factory jobs because people to put their faith in him. it was such a big thing at his rallies. he would talk about i am never going to eat another oreo cookie after the factory that mix oreos moved to mexico. this was part of his rally. i think a lot of us missed it we were not living in an industrial town in the midwest that got hollowed out. host: if your offer twitter talked about the situation that occurred there and what role the union played. they say unions backed politicians who supported nafta.

guest: the union leader that caught the attention of sony journalists, chuck jones, he got into the high-profile twitter war with trump around this time. trump had spoken a lot about a factory that belonged to the same union. he and mike pence announced a deal to save jobs at carrier. trump said he was saving all the jobs. in fact, some of the drums were still moving. chuck jones called trump out, called him a liar. it became an ugly feud. a lot of union members were

angry at chuck jones for doing that. they blamed chuck, not trump, for the fact that the factory continued to move because they said trump would have saved us if chuck had not started that feud. and chuck was ungrateful. it is interesting. i think trump wanted to be a champion for workers, but he did not champion unions at all. he wanted to cut out the middleman. he knew there were people who thought unions were insular, took too many dues and did not deliver enough. part of that is because republicans past things like right to work laws that have made it harder for unions to actually continue to survive. host: let's take calls. this is from michael in new york. you were on with the author of this book, “american made: what

happens to people when work disappears." go ahead. caller: the problem is we have a global economy, which is important. america is losing its war on technology and manufacturing and need a national program like the new deal, which roosevelt had in 1930's to start rebuilding the american economy. $3000 a month. it includes rental and food assistance and establishes a national minimum wage of $15 an hour and a national health plan that would be like the affordable health plan but for

everybody. we need a new marshall plan or a new deal to restore the american economy. host: thank you. guest: i wish i could've have asked him a question, but i think there is a lot of truth to what he is saying. of course globalization is there. nafta did not create it. china did not create it. our leaders have been trying to figure out how to navigate it. the problem is that there are parts of the american electorate and economy that have benefited from globalization. companies have done well under globalization and under free trade agreements. college educated people like myself have tended to do well.

workers, average, ordinary workers have not done as well. the wages of americans who do not have college degrees have flatlined. they have not done as well. they are suffering. we haven't actually -- there's a disconnect between people in washington who make decisions about the economy, about tax policy come about trade agreements, about these things that shape the direction of the economy. those people are people with college degrees. those people are the kind of people who benefited from globalization and free trade agreements. they have not really understood what is going on in parts of the country that have been hit hard by globalization and free trade agreements. i should say i think trump and

biden have taken steps to change course. there are people now talking about what globalization looks like when it is centered on ordinary people, not just corporations. corporations want to sidestep minimum wage laws come environment of standards. they want to pay as little as possible. if globalization just facilitates that, we are going to get a race to the bottom, but maybe we can have a globalization that looks different. i also want to say the caller was right about health care. in a world where people are working in a gig economy, where we are not going to spend at one

company, health matters and should not be tied to employment. that is what -- was one of my big takeaways. all the people i followed struggled to find affordable health care. one of my friends i was following, a steelworker, did not go to the hospital he had chest pain. he died because he did not have health care. we cannot go on like this is a country where so many people do not have access to health care. look at the pandemic and how many people lost their jobs and health care in the pandemic. host: this is sean in colorado. caller: obviously this lady is a liberal that hates trump. i had real questions for her about private equity and hedge funds that have come in and taken these companies apart with

help from swamp creatures in washington that destroyed jobs. obviously she's protecting the hedge funds and private equity groups that actually even dismantled this company. guest: i write about that in my book. he is right, private equity and short-term thinking is a big part of the reason this company, this factory closed. absolutely. there was two private equity companies who bought the company that owns the factory. one of them is called apollo. it bought the company, borrowed almost $400 million in its name, took most of that money, put it in its own pocket, and then sold

the shares. basically, there was a lot of debt from the privilege of being owned by apollo. that is one of the things the ceo was trying to balance. they were trying to pay back all the debt that apollo had put on them. i write in the book that if an individual drive someone to a bank and forces them to borrow a bunch of money and hand over the money, that is larceny. if private equity does it, it is leverage. they were like bandits. i do not say that lightly. i looked into it. it was very unsavory. family-owned companies have

tried for decades to get by without layoffs. private equity does not care. they have no allegiance to american workers. they do not have allegiance to places where these factories are. i think the caller is right that the financial system in this country is losing credibility, not only because of the financial crisis that spread a contagion around the world in 2008 but because of the hollowing out of american towns across the country. they should stand for account because that is not corporate response ability. i think there has to be more balance, more long-term thinking and places that -- companies and

factories that are family-owned rather than at the mercy of wall street have done better at keeping jobs, at keeping americans employed. host: you tell a story either in the piece or in the book that when it comes to the one worker, shannon, she was comparing how much she made to how much her counterpart for mexico makes. will you tell that story? guest: i should say everybody at the plant agonized over whether to train their mexican replacement. it was a huge issue. broke friendships. it caused turmoil. shannon decided, i'm going to do it. i am going to train my replacement because i need the bonus and i have to keep a roof over my kids' heads.

she had taken one of the mexican trainees into this laboratory where she worked and showed him her paycheck. how much are you -- they paying you? he says there does a calculation and says, 16. they can get 16 ricardo's for one shannon. that is why they are closing. she was stunned and like, they have the money. they use -- just do not want to give it to you. she was saying, why don't you join a union, try to get more? i think that is the anecdote. i should also say she forged a close bond with another of the mexican trainees who was the same age as her son.

she was protective of him. she was afraid if she left him alone in the plant somebody might do something to him. at the end of the training, he takes her aside and puts his hand over his heart like he is trying to apologize to her for taking the job. taking her job. she said, i was blessed to have this job and i hate to see it go but now it is your turn to be esse they are still friends to this day. i found him in monterey, mexico. i went and interviewed a lot of mexican trainees as part of the book. to a person, they were disturbed by the experience of watching a company through its workers away. they saw that they also would be thrown away i that company in a heartbeat.

and they left. mexicans who she had trained left within months and became socialists. he said, this is wrong. it was an extra ordinary thing to hear their point of view. host: we will hear from cindy in illinois. caller: you was talking about president trump and campaigning about the oreo cookie and the plant. you also don't remember how he got on the gm and was trying to close them. he did do a lot of stuff, like the mexico-canada-america agreement. what do you think about biden? about electric cars and how he is propping up union jobs over nonunion jobs.

i believe it is not part of the president to do that. i believe he is overstepping the constitution. what do you think about these companies paying millions of dollars a year to the democrat and the rino's to keep illegal immigrants here to keep wages down? if you was one of the workers you were talking about out of the plant like we was and see how terrible they are treating american citizens over non-american citizens, i believe you would talk a little bit less. if you believe the union should have all the jobs and nonunion workers should not have any jobs -- what do you think about the unions as the president and democrat party take this money from corporate offices to keep cheap labor? host: let me stop you there. guest: i would love to know what

factory she worked at. host: she hung up. guest: i always want to ask. host: give me a heads up next time so i keep them on. guest: sian vesely worked on a factory floor. i think there is more continuity between biden and trump on this that people want to admit. i think the renegotiation of nafta was a bipartisan thing that no one wants to talk about. it would not have happened without trump, but it would not have been as good for labor without democrats, who worked to change the playing field on labor. i am working on a piece about this now. a lot of the media downplayed the renegotiation of nafta, saying it is not that different than the original but it is.

it gives more rights to workers in mexico. it puts more teeth into labor enforcement. it has a rapid response mechanism if workers in mexico are being prevented from unionizing. they have recourse for the first time. we do not know if it is going to work yet. the jury is still out, but it is different than the original nafta, which hardly gave workers rights a second thought. globalization is here to stay. it is not going away. we have to figure out a way to make it better for workers. the reason it matters for american workers is if mexican workers can unionize and have --

fight for higher wages, that removes some of the incentive to move to mexico. if you look back at the promises of what nafta was supposed to do, it was supposed to raise standards for mexico, raise standards for mexican workers. raise the pay. there were supposed to be this convergence. that never happened. i think the way forward for the world is for environmental standards and labor standards to improve around the world so when we are importing products it is not made with slave labor, under duress, by companies who just pour poisons into rivers. that is not fair trade. that is not the kind of trade we want.

i am more hopeful. the colorado -- caller also talks about nonunion jobs and whether biden is privileging union jobs over nonunion jobs. biden talks a lot about unions. i do not know about her specifics but it is true that biden and a lot of democrats believe rights for working people means fighting for unions. and the ability to unionize. there is that. host: in detroit, michigan, we will hear from alex. our guest may want to ask you a question as well. caller: good morning. ms. stockton, you are a breath

of fresh air. the union i work in had a maximum of 20,000 people. when i left 48 years later, they were about 1000 and closed that union down to go to another union. i have friends that are still working who relocated to tennessee. the people down there are so brainwashed into thinking because of right to work and they make so little money when they brought the jobs in. they really are just sacrificing. they do not want to join unions because they are afraid they might close their plant and move somewhere else, that they do not

want to pay people enough money. it is amazing. we used to actually go out and pick it even grocery stores who were bought out by big chains who was going to come in and remove the union and make it nonunion. you could drive a car and park it into a union job place. back in 1967, we were campaigning buy american. it is so amazing now that is the slogan everybody wants to talk about after the jobs have left. host: hold the line because i want to see if our guest wants to ask a question. guest: i appreciate the

sentiments expressed. i guess i am curious what the young people in his community are doing now. for work. caller: there probably at mcdonald's or a short order cook somewhere making $10 an hour. or a lot of the spinoff plans that were jobs inside the plans when i was in there, a lot of the executives might have left and started little companies. and bring them back into the plant so they cannot have to pay people inside the plant to do those parts. that is prevalent in michigan. a lot of little plants that are doing parts and stuff. host: thanks for your perspective.

guest: i have a lot of family in detroit. a lot of them moved up from the deep south to work in auto plants of detroit. it was a great living for a long time, especially for black people who have been paid next to nothing picking cotton. i know very much what he is talking about. it is complicated too because unions were so strong. auto unions were so strong. they got a great deal for their people. if you remember the strikes after world war two culminated in the treaty of detroit in 1950. they signed us -- essentially a deal.

some people think it was the backbone of the middle class in the united states, health care, pensions, all kinds of stuff that had only been available to management. now all of a sudden you got it as a worker. that set the gold standard for what an employer should give workers around the country. even if you are not in a union, unions can still set the standard for what a good employer is giving. that was the beginning of the golden age of manufacturing in the united states. it was why we had this period of growth in the middle class among people who had access to those jobs. a lot black people did not. women did not at first. then we had a civil rights

movement to get access to those jobs. they made some strides. as soon as they made strides from out the factory started moving away. this is a history that is affecting millions of people around the country. a lot of people blame unions. they say the autoworkers were making so much money on the factory floor. they did not want to take a promotion because if they can became a manager they would make less. that is real. they were making a lot of money. i do not blame the unions for that. it created more pressure later to say, let's move this plant. it is cheaper to move it away. host: we heard in ministrations talk about the value of programs

when situations occur like they did at the plant. are there examples of how the programs work? guest: they are not great lessons. i did not know too many workers who did the job retraining. there were a lot of hoops they had to jump through, a lot of red tape they had to cut through to get a program approved. the kind of things people were doing with the retraining -- one guy got an hvac recertification. another became a truck driver. they were not making anywhere close to what they were making. if you look at the studies of the program, you will find people have gone through it and

ended up making less money. end up making less money that if they had just been given unemployment insurance for that time. i do not think we have the answer yet. this is a shift of the economy. people in their 40's, it is not so easy for them to go back and retrain for a drop of the future. in fact, even for a 20-year-old right now, i do not know what to tell them to train. i do not know what field they should go into to have a definite job in the future because that is how quickly the economy is shifting. it is tough to say a government program is a solution for these workers. it is hard, especially the older ones. they just want to get another

job. the ones that i followed, they were taking jobs that were earning $15 an hour, $10 less than they were making before just so they could get back to work. host: let's hear from alan in indiana. caller: good morning. thank you for accepting my call. greatest show ever in the history of cable. i love this. i had a couple comments. i would like to see what miss talked and -- missed stockton says. we talked about trump and annapolis. donald trump is a demagogue he knows how to work with crowds and say with the people want to hear. one of them was he said he would bring back manufacturing and

corporate taxes are too high, that is why they left. we need to give more money to the rich and they will help us, which is a fallacy. at least be honest. trump did try to keep those from closing in ohio. all you did was say don't close. that did not happen. they closed anyway. i do not believe corporate taxes had anything to do with these manufacturers leaving the united states. i put that at ronald reagan's feet. i know he was against unions. he felt give more money to the rich and they will take care of americans. the government are not good to take care of you. he lowered corporate taxes.

that is when you started getting corporate takeovers dividing up these companies. he encouraged companies to move to foreign countries for cheaper labor. host: what would you like our guest to address? caller: do you think ronald reagan was the stimulus -- or made it easier for manufacturers -- michael moore even had a shower he snuck into meetings the government had about the advantages of manufacturers to relocate there. guest: a lot of people blame reagan for the firing of the air traffic controllers and say that was the beginning of the end of unions in the country. did reagan encourage globalization and the off shoring of american

manufacturing? i am not sure i have heard that before, but what i can say is that for more than 30 years it did not matter what party you were from. if you were an american president, you were supporting free trade until trump. trump was the first american president since before bill clinton who said no to free trade. he got a lot of crap for it because there are parts of the country that rely on exporting. they were afraid of the trade wars that were going to start. it is complicated. i think there is an economic populist faction of the

democratic party and republican party who have always been angry about unfettered trade. look at how our workers are getting screwed. it encompasses people like sherrod brown in ohio, who is a democrat and even jesse helms was talking about this stuff. it does not fall easily on republicans and democrats -- democrat lines. bill clinton signed nafta. he sold it to the american people. he is hated to this day in large parts of the midwest because of it. i walked in the union hall in indianapolis and heard the story for the first time from these steelworkers who said -- one of them told me my daddy would roll over in his grave if you knew i had ever cast a ballot for a

republican. i come from a long line of democrats. we were coal miners. i was always told don't cast a ballot for the republicans. those are greedy pastors. democrats -- bastards. democrats are for the working man. after bill clinton, factories started closing. this particular steelworker told me he stopped calling himself a democrat. he was angry. he thought the democrats had sold out the working people. he enthusiastically cast a ballot for trump. a lot people do not understand the depth of anger at nafta, at bill clinton for nafta, the sense of betrayal. there was no way they were going to vote for hillary clinton because of it.

host: you write, the fear of being replaced, of no longer being needed, is an anxiety that has only grown with time. billions of americans are coming of age in places where jobs are expected to be outsourced or automated in the coming decade. the deep insecurity of unskilled workers has been exacerbated by a global pandemic that put millions of people out of work. even with this new variant, how much do you see the pandemic being part of concerns you write about particularly for unskilled workers? guest: i did not miss a day of work because of the pandemic. the pandemic was great for me >> we are taking a live to a briefing by the white house