Jacobin Radio w/ Suzi Weissman: Mike Goldfield & Gabriel Winant

Mike Goldfield, whose recent book is The Southern Key, discusses the unionization drive underway at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer Alabama. Mike’s book analyzed the history of efforts to unionize the South in the 1930s and 40s, and that history is the context for the struggle to unionize Amazon today, in the same area as the fight that failed in the 1940s. The current unionization drive is widely recognized as pivotally important, and is being extensively covered. A new Brookings Institution report says Amazon’s union battle in Bessemer is about dignity, racial justice, and the future of the American worker. If successful, this will become the first unionized Amazon warehouse in the country and will also mark one of the biggest union victories in the South in decades, potentially galvanizing the labor movement and inspiring workers far beyond Alabama. We get Mike Goldfield’s view.

Gabriel Winant, author of The Next Shift: The Fall of Manufacturing and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America, joins us to talk about the expanding care economy. Gabe's op-ed in the New York Times on March 18, Manufacturing Isn’t Coming Back, Let’s Improve These Jobs Instead, looks at the underpaid and overworked health care workers whose jobs are critical to our society. Using the example of Pittsburgh, where the care industry arose on the ruins of the industrial economy, this sector has come to dominate employment across American cities, and is the face of the 21^st C workforce. We get his insights on how to translate the recognition of the essential nature of the work they do caring for society into getting this sector paid their economic value, which requires more political power.