investigate and debate all so you can get the big picture. on thom hartmann in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture the barbecues beers and burgers are still around but whatever happened to the labor movement that gave labor day its name as richard wolfe in just a moment and jeff sessions says the repeal of dhaka is compassionate but what's so

compassionate about kicking eight hundred thousand young people out of a one country they were really called home last brian pruitt and a christian at tonight's politics. american celebrated labor day this past weekend they did so it's a moment in time when the labor movement itself is weaker than it's been for generations in two thousand and sixteen just six point four percent of private sector workers and just ten point seven percent of all workers belong to a union. this is a sharp decline from just the one nine hundred eighty s. when around a third of american workers were part of a union so who or what killed the american labor movement and how can we bring it back to life joining me now is richard wolffe visiting professor at the new school co-founder of democracy at work and the author of numerous books including capitalism is crisis deepens essays on the global economic meltdown professor

richard wolfe welcome back thank you glad to be here after the labor day all of the indeed it's great having you with us so as an economist richard can you explain for us what's happened to the labor movement i mean is the decline of unions just a natural process in the evolution of capitalism or was organized labor intentionally destroyed. oh i'm quite clear in my mind that it was intentionally destroyed you know you have to go back to our history just a little bit in the one nine hundred thirty s. when we had a terrible depression even worse than the one that we've lived in a living with these last ten years the american working class of people reacted very differently from the way they did this time they joined unions by the millions people who had never been in a union people whose parents had never been in the union they saw being in a union as a way to get through a terrible depression with less damage to their lives their incomes their property

their very existence then by not joining a union so that by the end of the great depression and after world war two we had a very strong union movement that was able to bargain with the business community as a whole and to be strong not to be an individual worker who can always be replaced by somebody else but to be a union in union there is strength is a very old idea and as a result the fifty's sixty's and seventy's were a time of rising wages of good job conditions and indeed of rapid economic growth but while that was good news for the working class of people the business community always had resented that during the one nine hundred thirty s. unions got stronger unions forced them to pay higher wages and in the aftermath of

the war and in the aftermath of the pression they wanted to undo that and starting right away in one thousand nine hundred seven with the taft hartly act they rolled back everything that the working class had won and made it harder and harder to organize a union to finance a union so in effect yes there were. as a concerted effort to demobilize to undermine and look this to to stick show it for the last fifty years almost without exception a decline in the percentage of american workers that are either members of a represented by a union till we get those numbers that you quoted at the outset so back in the one nine hundred eighty s. lee atwater and other reagan consultants i suppose on numerous occasions were quoted as saying the. unions were in their crosshairs not because they hated

unions and not because they were dancing to the tune of fat cats in the corporations but because the union movement along with trial lawyers which they tried to take down with the tort reform laws that the union movement was the principle funder of the democratic party whereas the republican party was principally being funded by big business. how much of how much of that is real how much of how much of the takedown of the unions was just purely political and partisan as opposed to or i suppose if the republican party is beholden to big corporations it's also part of you know enhanced in their profits really right it's really the same thing in the immediate aftermath of the war in the late forty's we had one of the most amazing strike waves to hit the united states huge strikes involving millions of workers so that was a direct confrontation between business and the union movement that didn't go so well for the business community the workers proved to be quite strong so i think

they shifted their focus and saw that they could undermine the laws through making it a political issue tying the unions particularly with the left in american politics and having that great anti communist witch hunt of the forty's and fifty's and even into the sixty's. we kidding this alliance between labor and the progressive left of america at the same time that the business community was strengthening its alliance with the conservative right wing political establishment and they saw this kind of maneuver which literally culminates in trump as their strategic way forward in the decades after the war it might not have worked were it not for the fact and this is crucial that the labor movement accepted that they shouldn't have an

alliance with the left they wouldn't go further than the democratic party social movements whether they were anti races whether they were anti sexist and all of that they were constantly suspicious of gave limited support to they fell for the notion that we had to be patriotic pro-american in the way of cutting the alliance with socialists and people like that which was ironic because it was that very alliance in the one nine hundred thirty s. that brought the labor movement to the strength it once had and when he gave that up it unfortunately fell into the very strategy that the business community had hoped for no alliances on the left they have to worry about between labor and more progressive forces while they were cultivating the very relationship with the conservatives and the fundamentalist religious folks that they have been building

ever since now it's a remarkable remarkable story which if i could slightly change the subject we've got this giant hurricane. earl on its way and we just had harvey just we know wiped out large chunks of texas back in two thousand and five when katrina came through and you know so. so thoroughly and did so much damage there was a spike over the next year or two in the price of building materials to the point that we were importing crappy sheet rock from china that was literally poisoning people and and you know there's one theory of that that drove up housing costs manufacturing costs new home costs and that's in some way affected the real estate bubble that ultimately burst in two thousand and eight. eight do you think that there's anything to that theory and i've heard it from several different sources now and b.

if so with hurricane harvey and if my hits in florida for example i mean we're talking billions of dollars of rebuilding. the national weather service in sterling virginia has issued a special memory warning for patapsco river including baltimore harbor in both seven thirty pm at seven o four pm strong thunderstorms were located along the line extending from ten nautical miles west of middle river to ten nautical miles west of fort smallwood state park moving northeast at fifty knots answered wind gusts thirty four knots or greater source radar indicated packed boaters and small craft could be thrown overboard by suddenly higher winds and waves capsizing their vessel areas impacted

include baltimore inner harbor curtis point port of baltimore in the francis scott key bridge move to safe harbor immediately as gusty winds and high we expected. this had no plan had not done anything to prepare for this kind of an event to limit the pain the loss of life and the damage and that has been true over and over again that's part of the business republican anti government anti raising the taxes on our people in order to save us so we end up having these absurd costs like you just mentioned but part of that is nature a much bigger part of that is our failure to plan to deal with these kinds of events because we don't understand and value collective expenditure taxes to pay for them for our own well being it's kind of chickens coming home to

roost but the label on the chicken is a capitalist system that constantly under values that kind of activity it's truly remarkable richard wolffe thanks so much for being with us tonight my pleasure thank you tom coming up have a right to work for less laws turn america into a colony for giant corporations that are more into nights politics panel with brian pruitt and doug christian right after the break. all the fuel we can bring. every the room if you do here. and you can get it on the old old. old according to gesture.

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to tonight's big picture. with me for tonight's politics panel our brian pruett contributor read stay. and doug christian political commentator thank you both for being with and the great to have you so protesters took the streets took to the streets of washington d.c. and across our nation yesterday today after the trouble going to officially announce the end of daka daka better known as the dreamer program was created by president obama and allows undocumented immigrants who were brought to this country as children to stay and legally work in the u.s. the only country they've ever really known under trump's plan congress will have six months to come up with an alternative to dhaka after which time the program will expire putting eight hundred thousand immigrants at risk of being deported attorney general jeff sessions called this compassionate so why question under what possible definition of the word compassionate is

a compassionate to throw eight hundred thousand people out of the only country they've ever known well first of all let's say what it is and what it isn't it isn't going to immediately throw eight hundred thousand people out. i think the ministration got this wrong trying to claim that it's compassionate what it basically is trying to reset ourselves back to where congress sets immigration policy this is a reaction to again and obama era executive order so this i think i actually am and i think modestly i'm cautiously optimistic that the congress will actually be able to get get its act together and pass something very similar to dhaka i think they're going to have to but you know let's keep in mind that executive order was in response to congress to republicans filibustering the dream act in in the summer so it's like the republicans is kind of come full circle for the g.o.p. it seems dug well and also. the people have to have most people have to have legal

status to work and so you're throwing these people out of a job and so you're disrupting both the macro the micro economy as well as the. not to be to much to parenting over another six months unless i'm missing so i don't think this is the best politics for the president because his base cares about the wall they don't you don't see the republican base having you know huge discussions about repealing daca that the base cares about the wall i think this puts him in a really difficult position to attempt to get wall funding which is where his political bread and butter is one of the comments i heard from a republican today was that the one of their goals or at least he hoped one of their goals would be going back to the one nine hundred twenty four law the first immigration law that was in the united states the johnson and something act and and what that said what that law said was if the united states is seventy three percent

white then all immigrants who come in the united states had to be seventy three percent white that you can't you can't change the racial makeup of our country via immigration that changed in nine hundred sixty six lyndon johnson got that changed got replaced by a race neutral immigration law and since that time we've seen prior to that time basically the majority of integration in the states was white people and since that time it's been more representative of the planet as a whole and and that you know this is pat buchanan's ultimate goal and not just pat buchanan obviously bots it also goes back to the southern strategy really in. to the fourteenth amendment the whole reason why. people born were citizens is to make sure that former slaves were in fact citizens because that was going to be a problem so in fact this whole piece or it doesn't make people who are who are born

in this country who are not poor in this country but are are can come here is children slaves but it at the same time it puts them as it makes them deal legitimacy. it makes them into a situation where they cannot move forward their lives it's cruel it's also expensive ten thousand dollars at least a person to to go real quickly are you hearing anything about this so-called comprehensive immigration republicans are referring to as a way of rebalancing the racial situation in america i haven't heard anything about that and i think trying to trying to turn the tide back to a one nine hundred fifty s. america is useless now let's also not forget about the optics of this this is a horrible idea optically because the news media is going to bring out all these heroes that are doing relief you know dodge what happened died in his time trying to save somebody exactly so it's horrible optics i think you and the liberal press

is going to me of this one as my part of the ongoing nafta renegotiation talks canada has called on the u.s. to ban a right to work for less laws project of alec in the billionaire koch brothers right to work laws are now the on the books in twenty eight u.s. states these laws devastate unions by forcing them to pay for all the legal fees and the bargaining costs of workers who do not pay union dues are not union members it's like hiring a lawyer to work for you and then refusing to pay him for his right to work is also incredibly deceptive a more accurate term for these laws of the right to work for less laws workers in states with a right to work laws make around six thousand dollars less per year than workers in states that defend unions so are what the canadians are objecting to here is the fact that their workers have to compete with a third world style labor market here in the united states is this what conservatives want to turn america into a third world country that's effectively a colony for transnational corporations i think this is ridiculous you're not going to get any changes to the lathe and the nafta labor especially anything more

restrictive or more pro union this is it's a nonstarter i think this is this is dreaming on the left of the republicans in office yeah ok doug i get it. it does it also pushes back very hard on people saying ok we're going to renegotiate nafta to get out of nafta i mean the fact is that trade i mean this is the one thing i don't understand about trump's trade policy is that i thought the republicans embraced free trade wanted trade wanted to nafta. has benefited. these economies. to a huge degree as many of trade agreements have i would respectfully disagree. that's all right you're welcome to you know we'll we'll see where it goes yeah i'm i'm skeptical and i was texas begins to clean up the damage from hurricane harvey

south florida's batten down the hatches in anticipation of another massive storm hurricane irma now hurdling towards puerto rico and the caribbean islands is a category five storm with winds speeds as high as one hundred eighty miles an hour it's so strong that it's now setting off seismometers the equipment used to detect earthquakes irma's on track to hit south florida this weekend a meteorologist expected to still be a category four for storm when it makes landfall there the devastation the past few weeks the devastation come from are a preview of what's going to happen as climate change really kicks in as it obviously is doing right now at this point how is anything less than a world war two style investment in clean energy and infrastructure acceptable if we want to stop the impending catastrophe of global warming. global warming isn't is an opinion it's a fact on the ground you're actually seeing it with with these with these strong

hurricanes the scary part about this the situation is that i read today that the maximum sustained winds that are currently being reported are the equivalent of the storm being a sixty mile wide. tornado that's something unheard of at least in as far as i know in my history and my short time on the earth so far but again this is not this is not denying a problem i believe what most republicans want to do is figure out very constructive ways to address it that do not involve radically changing our sort of the way we live our lives what the flinging democrats or more appropriately far left leaning democrats want to do are impose radical transformations on the american way of life and i don't think there's the political support to do what i would disagree with i would say that the left embraces new technologies see it as

that economic opportunity sees the transformation absolutely of taking place but not necessarily that somehow that we are all going to have to go back to energy free says i see a republican party that is completely beholden to a couple petro billionaires the koch brothers and other big fossil fuel interests massey and exxon mobil and what not and therefore they're willing to lie about science on this the fact of the matter is nobody is disputing this the temperature in the atmosphere temperature worldwide is nine tenths of a degree celsius about a degree one point three degrees fahrenheit warmer than it was the year that ronald reagan was inaugurated there's six percent more moisture in the atmosphere the gulf of mexico was between two and seven degrees depending on where you measure in the gulf warmer than it has ever been measured in all the time that humans have been measuring temperatures in north america and these are and that is the fuel for

hurricanes and these are those these are the signals of global warming in these are the things that make it worse and i just find it mind boggling that republicans in order to maintain the good graces of the koch network and other petro billionaires . i get it that the koch brothers network literally has more employees more money more offices than the entire republican party but they are more powerful when it comes to republican members of congress they're the ones who can who can primary somebody they're the ones who can destroy or build careers they're doing this from the federal level all the way down to the local level with their states projects and alec and everything else you know i get all that but we're talking i mean fifty people died last week you know many more people may die next week billions of dollars in property damage also that koch industries an exxon mobil on a couple of dozen other fossil fuel companies can make an extra billion dollars and we only first of all i do not do not accept the precisely that anything scientifically inaccurate well they're not beholden they're they're damn beholden

donald trump is not beholden to the koch brothers coarsely no it's not he's absolutely not they didn't support him and they go brother and i spent nine hundred million dollars in the last election supporting republicans all over the country and doing a massive get out the vote effort donald trump would not be president there's you and i both know that but there's but there is no sort of overwhelming the koch network you know the cutdown right or de certainly not they're not going trolls of the republican party the republican party and fox news and right wing hate radio they're all dancing to this tune and trump really has no choice if you were to say you know there's climate change you know they're they all turn their back on what we need to do as conservatives if it is embrace proper pricing for homeowners insurance for all these sort of risks that people that live on the coasts instead of expecting expecting the climate not to change but i do browbeat embarrassingly embarrassing zoning exactly but also being a bridge seeing the homeowners and i mean it was the republican congress who

actually has not embraced flood insurance has actually gone against it because what guess what premiums would go up in order to adequately cover people so in fact i mean yeah it would be great if in fact there was the if there was. that kind. that kind of a bracelet kind of a separate debate the fact the matter is in the united states companies that offer homeowners insurance used to offer flood insurance i remember years ago i used to have a house in michigan in the one nine hundred seventy s. on a river i could buy flood insurance my local insurance company they've decided not to do that anymore because the federal government is doing it's like it's as if you know all the health insurance companies said you know we're just not going to pay for cancer anymore we'll pay for anything you get sick except cancer and you know it just seems crazy to me and i agree with you brian on the side that you know i think that there's been massive dislocations in the marketplace in the insurance marketplace as a result the federal flood insurance program and it's principally supporting wealthy people who can own beachfront property which is probably why it's still around. but there is no denying that the koch brothers have

a huge impact upon the rule of the republican party the koch to put on that why then why isn't their agenda being completely put into effect in the congress it hasn't i mean they're just the conspiracy theory does not exist because the conspiracy theory doesn't exist well why not realize it that it's not a organizations that are lying about climate change in the heartland institute and all these other groups they're all funded by the by the koch network i think you create in your mind these people that control american society and they just don't they they are doing the same thing as multiple other organizations which are out there advocating for a particular political position i guess i'm just here. brian doug really have you both with us thank you and that's the way it is tonight and don't forget democracy is not a spectator sport get out there get active tag your it our.

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