More labor power—and the Biden of it all

Hello from the negotiating table! 

This week, it’s just us, talking more hot labor summer and a bit about poetry (Tammy recommends the work of Mai Der Vang!). [9:00] After 146 days on strike, the Writers Guild of America, which represents about 11,000 screenwriters, announced on Sunday that they’d reached a tentative agreement with the AMPTP studio group. (Forgive the timing of this ep: the WGA released details of the tentative agreement on Tuesday night, after we had recorded; members will still have to vote on the deal.) [23:00] Meanwhile, as one strike (maybe) ends, another expands! Nearly 20,000 United Auto Workers members across 40 states have walked off the job to demand a fairer share of record profits from the Big 3 automakers, seeking to reverse Great Recession-era losses and prove the might of a new and improved UAW. 

In this episode, we ask: 

Why does so much of the public support the WGA strike, a white-collar union whose ranks include very highly paid (less sympathetic?) members? 

How sturdy is the very new, seemingly democratic operation of the UAW under Shawn Fain?

Can this union wave bring back American manufacturing, or are we just buying time before another big offshoring push? 

What’s with EVs and the enviro dimensions of car-making? 

For more, see: 

* Tammy’s dispatch on the WGA strike and animation labor for the New York Review of Books

* An In These Times podcast that touches on UAW’s unionization push within higher ed 

* Previous TTSG convos we reference in this ep, about the WGA, UAW, Labor Notes unionism, deaths of despair, and more: 

* Listener Qs: Barbenheimer, hot labor summer, & white-Asian relationships in film (July 2023) 

* A.I. scab-bot$, with Max Read (June 2022) 

* Is it finally Strikevember?! (November 2022) 

* Inflaaaation, cool unions, and "We Own This City" (June 2022) 

* SCOTUS trouble, working-class white people, and Taiwan's military (October 2020) 

* Some background on Walter Reuther’s UAW, from 2009

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