Working Life Podcast

Episode 190:

Here is something we can all agree on I think—drug companies are blood-sucking, greedy cheats who cannot be trusted with the health and welfare of tens of millions of people. Am I right? And that’s even more true as we watch the global scramble to be the first company to profit big-time from a vaccine for COVID19. So, I’m going to focus on the Big Pharma corruption today with a friend and investigative reporter, Gerald Posner who is the author of a mind-boggling expose “Pharma: Greed, Lies And the Poisoning of America”

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Looking for the single most important thing you can do between now and the end of July to slow the pandemic? As I mentioned last week in outlining my proposal for a $6.5 trillion stimulus bill, badger everyone you know, and of course your members of Congress, to get behind Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s bill, and a similar bill in the Senate co-sponsored by Bernie Sanders, to pay people up to $90,000 a year until the unemployment rate declines below 7 percent for three straight months. I talk more about the bill (and you can see last week’s episode for the full plan) which would pay people enough money so they can pay bills like rent and food, and allow them to stay home, either because they are sick or simply to allow a community-wide lockdown for a number of weeks until the so-called curve is dramatically going down.

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-- Jonathan Tasini

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Episode 189:

Let’s go really big! I outline a $6.5 trillion stimulus—more than double what the Democrats in the House passed—because that’s what the people need over the next year: $1.3 trillion in wage guarantees; $715 billion for state and local governments; $600 billion for a “Pandemic Medicare For All”; $1.5 trillion to cancel all student debt; $200 billion for a rent and mortgage freeze…and a lot more. Fight me on the specifics—but let’s expand the debate and the way people think about what is possible, what is needed and what should be done.

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Just a few days ago, China imposed a new National Security Law which is aimed at shutting down the mass protests that have consumed Hong Kong for more than a year. In the crosshairs especially are union activists who have been signing up people to dozens of new unions which doesn’t thrill China’s leaders who manage the linchpin for the global corporate supply chain. Cathy Feingold, the director of international affairs for the AFL-CIO and deputy president of the International Trade Union Confederation, joins me with a look at the pressures facing unions in Hong Kong.

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-- Jonathan Tasini

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Episode 188:

Big companies don’t give a second thought to making big profits during the COVID-19 pandemic even if that means thousands of workers—and their families—will get sick and die from the virus. Actually, it’s a feature not a bug, no pun intended—in food processing, all those workers who make sure you get beef or chicken on your plate, are getting sick by the droves, and the only way that happens is because companies, big rich companies, keep dangerous plants operating unsafely because to make things slightly safer would cost them a few bucks. That’s criminal in a normal world. Debbie Berkowitz, director of the worker health and safety program at the National Employment Law Project, joins me to look at the threat to workers—a threat that is growing as the pandemic surges.

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A few days ago, Bernie Sanders introduced a bill to cut the bloated Pentagon bi-partisan budget by a very, very modest 10 percent, with the money saved slotted to underwrite human and social programs in cities and communities where the poverty rate is 25 percent or higher. Ashik Siddique, research analyst at the National Priorities Project, talks with me about where the Pentagon could be cut—and how the slashing could go far, far deeper.

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-- Jonathan Tasini

Follow me on Twitter @jonathantasini

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Episode 187:

Private equity vultures love a great economic crisis. Circling above their wounded corporate prey, they wait until a company is too weak to survive, and, then, swoop in to pick up the pieces at a bargain price—which usually involves cutting thousands of jobs, too. And, now, a new rule will allow private equity firms to put their grubby hands on everyone’s 401(k) plans. Eileen Appelbaum, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the nation’s leading expert on the carnage wrought by private equity pirates, exposes the looming attack on our savings in a riveting chat.

Then, while millions of people are trying to get a job or an unemployment check, not to mention just stay safe, states are facing what even The Economist magazine calls “The Calamity Ahead”—a brutal shortfall in revenue because of the economic collapse. Politicians of both parties would rather cut peoples’ jobs and cut services rather than raise taxes on the rich and send a large bundle of money to every state. I chat with Jacque Simon, the government affairs director of the American Federation of Government Employees, about the threat to federal and state workers.

-- Jonathan Tasini

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Episode 186:

I pull back the lens a bit on the Black Lives Matter movement to consider how the uprising is touching the consciousness of workers around the globe, especially in Africa. Chris Johnson, the regional director of Africa for the Solidarity Center, joins me in a conversation about the close relationship between racism and economic oppression, and how African workers are linking the BLM movement to their own economic oppression.

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How would you like to have a governor who saved a man five hours before his state-ordered execution? That’s a choice New Hampshire Democrats will have in the September primary to choose their nominee for governor—he is Andru Volinsky who joins me to talk about his long-time civil rights advocacy, not to mention his work on jobs, climate change and taxes.

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Stop the looters! Jail them now…people like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, HCA Healthcare CEO Samuel Hazen and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin—all of whom, as I discuss, are the real big-time looters who are fleecing the country.

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-- Jonathan Tasini

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Episode 185:

The big news—it’s the first regularly scheduled Working Life TV Show!!! View the show now and sign up at:

www.youtube.com/WorkingLifeWithJonathanTasini

But, all our audio podcast listeners will still be able to hear the show in the long-time format.

The unemployment system is in chaos—jammed phone lines, crashing websites. People can’t get the checks they desperately need to pay for simple things like food, utilities and rent. So, I decided to devote the lion’s share of the show to dig into why this happening—and give concrete tips on how to access the system. Do not give up—that’s the message Judy Conti, government affairs director for the National Employment Law Project and I deliver in our conversation (you can see the slides Judy and I are talking about here: https://www.workinglife.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Working-Life-TV-slides.ppt)

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As hundreds of thousands of people are massing in the streets, we are inundated by a slew of corporate commercials and corporate statements from Amazon, News Corp and even from something called the Hedge Fund Association, all falling over to show enlightenment about racism, even embracing the slogan “Black Lives Matter”. But, as I explain in the show, once people win an unwinding of the militarization of communities and the unwinding of policing as it’s been done for decades, that’s only half the battle because the corporate PR bullshit is trying to hide the depths of how the corporate boot remains firmly on the neck of African Americans, and all Americans, but especially people of color.

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-- Jonathan Tasini

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Episode 184:

In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr gave a speech entitled, “The Other America”, in which he said, “It’s much easier to integrate a lunch counter than it is to guarantee a livable income and a good solid job.” This was a theme he repeated time and time again throughout his life because he saw the unbreakable bonds between the twin evils of racism and economic oppression. He made those links right up to the day before he was assassinated in Memphis in 1968 when he marched in support of striking sanitation workers.

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And if King were alive today, he would link the murder of George Floyd and mass uprisings taking place across the nation with the economic oppression, the scourge of capitalism, that has brutalized people of color for decades. That’s what I talk about today featuring segments with two guests, Janelle Jones and Valerie Wilson, who outlined the realities of economic racism in two past episodes.

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And, alert, alert…The Working Life TV Show goes live TONIGHT on YouTube where we will continue the same conversation from today’s audio episode with a line-up of special, amazing guests! Tune in at 8 p.m. Eastern/5 p.m. Pacific at:

www.youtube.com/WorkingLifeWithJonathanTasini

We will take audience questions! When you do come by, please do subscribe to the channel! See you then!

-- Jonathan Tasini

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Episode 183:

If I say that drug companies are sleazy leeches whose CEOs make millions of dollars while basically killing thousands of people who can’t afford outrageous drug prices, you’d shrug your shoulders and say, “yeah, well, duh.” Drug companies make these huge profits largely because of an absolutely insane system of patents, which you could stop with a change in the law. It’s especially important to get this idea in our heads right now with the rush to create a vaccine for COVID-19, which makes drug companies salivate over the prospect of pocketing huge profits for something that should be ours to own—which is what I talk about with Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

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Here is a prediction that I’d go to Vegas and bet a huge pile of money on: when it comes to making up big state budget deficits looming in the coming months because of the pandemic-caused economic crisis, and eventually in a year or two when the hand-wringers in Congress consider the pandemic-generated larger federal debt, it isn’t going to be rich people paying, nor corporations. It will be regular people.

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Politicians will cut jobs and screw workers, cut pensions and screw retirees and cut school funding and screw children. This is all a consequence of bad tax policy over many decades—and Joe Biden is only making it worse by promising not to raise taxes on people earning less than $400,000 a year, which lets plenty of well-off people off the hook. Matt Gardner, senior fellow at the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, and I chat about Biden’s folly as well as the not entirely surprising hypocrisy of a Wall Street titan, Jamie Dimon.

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I also reflect on the amazing and shocking news that the American Federation of Teachers dug into its own treasury and spent $3 million to buy 500,000 N95s, 50,000 face shields, and more than 1 million surgical masks to make sure its members—thousands of whom are frontline workers—do not get sick and die. Amazing because it shows the greatness of the labor movement. Shocking because it exposes how the country’s political leaders running the show are just deeply dysfunctional and incompetent.

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-- Jonathan Tasini

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Episode 182:

Calling people “gig” workers is a subtle trap. “Gig” can sound anywhere from upbeat to just a mundane description. The truth is the “gig” economy is just another way of exploiting people and it’s a dream for all capitalists to have a pool of workers who can be used and abused at the beckon call of a supply chain or a big tech company, at the lowest cost possible. And not a surprise—lots of gig workers are at great risk during the pandemic. I explore the lives of “gig” workers in a conversation with Bama Athreya, an economic policy fellow at the Open Society Foundation and a veteran social movement activist.

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The pandemic has put domestic workers at risk. Think of it logically: you can be locked down in a home with your client, essentially enslaved, with nowhere to go and no social distancing space. You could easily be trapped in a home, forced to stay inside because of a curfew, without personal protection equipment. Elizabeth Tang, the General Secretary of the International Domestic Workers Federation, joins me from her perch in Hong Kong to talk about the pandemic threats facing domestic workers.

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My rant of the week is simple: we need to nationalize all payrolls. It’s breathtaking how badly the elected leaders of the country are handling the economic fallout of the pandemic, not to mention the medical crisis—it’s a bi-partisan catastrophe, with the worst human in the Senate, the wealthy Mitch McConnell, showing no rush to stop the implosion of millions of peoples’ lives, while Nancy Pelosi refuses to entertain Pramila Jayapal’s fantastic proposal to pay every unemployed person up to $90,000 on an annual basis while the pandemic rages.

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-- Jonathan Tasini

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Episode 181:

Here’s a no brainer observation: It would be hard to find any areas of agreement between the AFL-CIO and Goldman Sachs. Well, I got one—it turns out that the AFL-CIO and Goldman Sachs, along with scores of heads of states, labor folks and business titans, are on the same page about one idea which hasn’t gotten a lot of attention—creating $3 trillion in grants for worldwide distribution by the International Monetary Fund to countries needing immediate financial aid to contend with the pandemic. You’ll learn all about this fascinating global tale in my conversation with Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

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And speaking of money, Morris Pearl, the chair of Patriotic Millionaires, joins me to explain how we can free up $200 billion for financially-strapped charities by just a little jiggering of the rules for philanthropic foundations who sock away tax break-driven contributions from rich people.

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My rant for this week: to be sure, COVID-19 closed down retail stores lickety-split but the collapse of name brands like J. Crew was already in the cards—Wall Street pirates, especially private equity companies, had been looting big chains for years, piling on huge debt burdens that all but guaranteed scores of retail outlets could not weather an economic crisis. It’s an example of the way in which the pandemic has exposed even further the rotten so-called “free market” economic system.

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-- Jonathan Tasini

Follow me on Twitter @jonathantasini

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