across the country. we will talk about public opinion polling and campaign 2024 with director of the suffolk university political research center and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for middle east in the trump administration on the latest in escalating tension between israel and iran and monday's one year anniversary of the hamas attack on israel. join the conversation live at 7:00 eastern sunday morning or online at c-span.org. >> the house will be in order. >> c-span celebrates 45 years of covering congress like no other. since 1979 we have been your primary source for capitol hill providing balanced unfiltered coverage of government.

all with the support of america's cable companies. c-span, 45 years and counting. powered by cable. >> joining us now to discuss labor unions is a labor reporter for bloomberg law. welcome to the program. >> thanks for having me. >> a lot of news this week in terms of unions. let's start with the deal of the port workers. >> it's really more of a cease-fire than a tentative agreement at this point. the only thing they have worked out his wages. granted that is a big issue on the table. they have agreed to a 62% increase. that's not quite as high as the 77% the union originally wanted but it is still one of the biggest jumps in wages we have

seen in this post-covid union resurgence and basically this buys them time until january 15 for leadership to negotiate with the port operators and the importers to come up with a deal and noticeably does punch the issue until after the election. >> until right before the inauguration. let's talk about one of the big issues that is still to be resolved and that is the issue of automation. wanted to redo this quote from the washington post from heather long. she says it'now possible to run a dockyard with almost no humans pre the two key jobs can be automated. cranes pick up the heavy containers from the ships. from the dock to wherever theys need to go next.

people are needed to oversee things but their role is now more akin to a air-traffic control. maintenance and i.t. jobs also remain but the bottom line is if fewer workers are needed. talk about where the agreement or cease-fire as you put it leaves this particular issue. >> essentially it leaves the issue of automation completely open. this is not a new issue. this is something that goes back multiple agreements. it concerned the west coast dock workers as well when they were negotiating recently for a contract as well. and it is something that's a very real issue for these workers. there are already automated terminals at the ports of long beach and los angeles. the east coast workers which is

the agreement we are talking about, they really don't want a sort of unchecked carte blanche automation for the port operators to put in whatever they want without negotiating over it. so it really leaves the issue of automation unsolved and puts a stake in the wage issue as a way to pause the strike, avoid big economic disruption and be able to continue forward toward this issue. >> it's not just the port workers who have concerns with automation. how have other industries tackled this issue? >> that's a great question. one thing we can look at that may seem counterintuitive to compare are the workers in hollywood. the actors on the writers. this was a huge issue in their strike in 2023. they ultimately were able to

bargain a system with the studio operators to have workers share in profits from their likeness being used via ai and other projects going forward. obviously that's a very different industry than the one we are talking about right now. what a lot of unions have done including sag-aftra and the hollywood writers is negotiate a clause in the contract than any big new introduction of technology must be bargained over. so at least give them a seat at the table and prevent the employer from doing whatever they want to put in whatever technology they want and the operation may or may not affect workers jobs. >> what did we learn from the port workers strike?

does the short strike indicate anything? >> historically as experts have told me, port strikes tend to be shorter, because they have such a broad economic disruption all across the country. think about how many industries rely on things being shipped in. without those shipments coming in, it can take a toll on the economy really fast. even before the strike starts as importers start redirecting cargo to the west coast, making contingency plans. all of it disrupts the entire supply chain. so it would have gotten really bad if it had gone beyond two or three days. that's when you start seeing some real consequences.

i think the fact that they were able to get a deal on wages which is about half the battle signifies they probably will be able to get something done before january 15. it may come down to the wire. it certainly is something that protects the economy from a lot of turmoil. >> you mention the wage increase over a period of years. is there potential impact for inflation or that raised to be passed on to consumers? >> i think if you ask the port workers this or other advocates in the union space, they point out that these companies, importers have been making a lot of money for a long time since the pandemic. for example, profits in the

import sector as a whole were about $2 billion in 2020. by 2022 it was $63 billion profit. so this is something that, this money has been coming into the industry for a long time and workers feel very strongly that they should share in some of that profit because they were helping to make the profit. so that's the fundamental argument from their side. >> we are talking with the ian kullgren about the state of u.s. labor in campaign 2024. if you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now. republicans (202) 748-8001. democrats (202) 748-8000. if you are an independent, (202) 748-8003. we also have a line set aside for union members, you can call

in at (202) 748-8003. the contract is now extended until right before the inauguration of the next president. talk about the approach the biden administration took to deport workers -- the port workers strike. >> the administrations involvement ramped up pretty quickly here. in the early days of the strike i was told by folks close to the situation in the administration that they want really getting anywhere in trying to parlay with the union to come around to getting a deal to avoid the strike. as soon as the strike started, there was a very big push by the administration to end as quickly as possible and involves some of the highest level folks in the administration.

pete buttigieg, the labor secretary. they were all sort of involved in this coordinated effort to end the strike. and not hit a tipping point thursday morning when there was a zoom call with some of the port operators where they pressed the to get a deal and in fact the washington post reported that the port operators were told the president was going to be informed that there would be a deal by the end of day even though there wasn't at that time. at that point labor secretary julie soup went up to new jersey to speak with union leadership and it was something that -- a lot of folks were wondering whether the administration being

a lame-duck administration would be able to really do anything. and the answer in this case was yes. they came together pretty quickly and were able to get it done. i think it's interesting to note that president biden himself was not quite as involved in this one as he has in the past during the real dispute in 2022. he zoomed into the meeting and talked to the rail operators and the union leaders directly and held a big victory celebration in the rose garden after when they got a deal. of course that ended up being more complicated than he thought and congress ended up having to approve it to enforce the deal. if biden himself was not as involved as he was before, but certainly the upper ranks of his administration were. host: something that was noted

is that the taft-hartley act was an option for president biden but he did not use it. remind us what that does and doesn't do. guest: the taft-hartley act allows the president in times of economic turmoil in certain limited circumstances, the ports being one of them, to essential blue -- essentially forcibly legally break a strike and force the workers back to work. that is not something unions like at all. typically any sort of resolution brokered or ordered by the government is going to help management because it erodes their economic leverage. there were warnings early on from afl-cio president and others warning him not to get

involved. so the administrations involvement was kept pretty low-key for most of the deliberations because they really wanted to avoid any sort of perception that they were going to use taft-hartley and break the strike. that would have been a very difficult situation for president biden it probably would have had blowback on kamala harris as well. host: let's bring our audience into the conversation. joe is in maine and a member of the union. good morning. caller: good morning and thank you for taking my call and i want to thank your guest. this is the first time in five shows you have had a guest on that wasn't a republican lying through his butt. you had representative but he caught her on here talking about

how he didn't say there were 5000 dead people who -- host: joe? we are talking about unions with our guest right now. do you have a question for him. caller: yes. i'm thinking him. and my question is would you please go through the republican's treatment of unions. you just expressed how joe biden has got support. could you show donald trump's nonsupport? could you make examples of that. thank you. guest: certainly. under president trump leading the party, the party's position on unions has gotten a lot more complicated. it used to be pretty across-the-board antiunion. he saw the teamsters president speak at the republican national convention this year. jd vance in his speech at the rnc talked about bringing in

union workers, union household voters. however, there is a disconnect between some of the rhetoric and the policies the unions support. they being republicans are still on the opposite side of a lot of the legislative priorities of unions. they will tell you the one thing that former president trump and his campaign has pivoted back to on this is the focus on trade protections and how that can ultimately help union workers. it is true that some of those positions align pretty seamlessly with what unions have advocated for over the past eight years. the afl-cio did endorse the usmc ia try to treatment -- trade

agreement that was approved by congress. but you don't see many unions endorsing former president trump. and that's for many reasons. they point to him not supporting reforms of labor law that would make it easier for workers to organize. a lot of the biden administration's priorities have been also supported by unions. he has rarely done anything that has gone against what unions have wanted and what they have stood for. if president trump wins, he certainly is going to have a task ahead of him to bridge that gap which he really was not able to do the last time he was in office. host: you mentioned there aren't a lot of unions endorsing former president trump. one notable union, the

teamsters, declined to endorse either candidate. why? guest: if you look at the internal poles that the teamsters ran, you will pretty much have your answer pretty quickly. there was a big disparity between support for kamala harris and support for former president trump. the final number they released on the day they didn't endorse was 58% of respondents supporting trump, 31% supporting harris. that's more than 10 points down from where president biden was. so if these internal numbers are to be believed, teamsters members pretty resoundingly endorsed former president trump, as he said that day when the poll came out.

but at the same time, there was not enough support among the teamsters leadership to endorse president trump and any marginal support there may have been evaporated pretty quickly when he said in that twitter spaces event with elon musk that elon musk should just fire any striking worker out there in his company. that's a pretty nuclear thing to say for unions. those are fighting words. that was not what they wanted to hear from the former president at a critical moment like that. host: let's hear from jeff in massachusetts on the independent line. caller: i had two questions. one was can you kind of say what the amount of automation the u.s. compared to china and japan

is? in other words, are those countries much more automated than we are as far as the loading of the ships and the like. the second one was whether or not u.s. companies have been trying to incentivize workers to get trained. by better pay if they train on the automation. has another path to better standard of living. those are my questions. two of those are great questions. -- guest: those are great question. more of the concern for unions is the cheap labor in china that can undercut u.s. wages and make it harder for folks to stay in

business and harder for companies to operate in the u.s.. the ioa has noted how many shipping companies have gone offshore and are based off shore as well, not just in china but in other countries as well. so it is something that economists are going to be watching closely in the coming years, especially as china outpaces the united states and other technology like ev battering making, which is a big one. the u.s. has been falling behind on. it's an evolving issue that the negotiations in whatever agreement they reach will be very telling. >> next, 20 24 vice presidential nominee senator jd vance and governor tim walz take part in a

debate hosted by cbs news in new york city. and then a look at global security challenges posed by climate change. the expansion of nuclear arsenals and threats from china, russia and iran with current and former government and military officials and foreign policy analyst. and c-span's 2024 campaign trail. a weekly discussion with the political reporters on the latest developments on the senate, presidential and house races. >> c-span's washington journal, our live forum involving you to discuss politics and public policy from washington and across the country. coming up sunday morning, we will talk about public opinion polling and campaign 2024 with director of the suffolk university political research center and the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for middle east in the trump administration on the latest in

escalating tensions between israel and iran. and monday's one year anniversary of the hamas attack on israel. c-span's washington journal. join the conversation live on c-span or online at c-span.org. >> attention middle and high school students across america. it's time to make your voice heard. c-span's studentcam documentary contest 2025 is here. your chance to create a documentary that can inspire change, raise awareness and make an impact. the documentary should answer the question, what issues most important to you and your community. studentcam is your platform to show your message with the world. with 100,000 dollars in prizes including a grand prize of 5000

dollars. this is your opportunity to an impact and be rewarded for yoativy and hard work. enter your submissions today or vit udentcam.org for all the details on how to enter. the deadline ♪ announcer: the book is titled all the president's money. it is about how the men who govern america govern their own money. the author megan gorman is the founding partner of checkers financial management a san francisco-based firm specializing in tax and financial planning for high net worth individuals. megan gorman says american presidents are a complex group to tackle. while they live in a mudslinging reality on the way to enter their presidency, the moment their term ends they become

historical figures carved in stone. announcer: megan gorman on this episode of boos plus with our host bamb. notes plus is available on the free c-span now mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. announcer: c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more, including comcast. >> you think this is just a community center? it is way more than that. >> comcast is partnering with a 1000 community centers so students from low income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything. announcer: comcast supports c-span as a public service along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit icap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024 announcer: next 2024 vice presidential nominees senator