The Unionization Comeback

TOPICS DISCUSSED

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UPCOMING EXCITING PROJECTS AT PANTSUIT POLITICS

EPISODE RESOURCES

Kentucky Legislature

Unionization Trends in the US Labor Market

Outside Politics: The Lost City

TRANSCRIPT



Sarah [00:00:00] I don't really know how to transition out from naked Channing Tatum. But, again, this is the journey. Pantsuit Politics furious about Republicans. Optimistic about unionization trends. Feminist ode to Channing Tatum. We do it all here. We do it all here.  

[00:00:27] This is Sarah Stewart Holland  

Beth [00:00:29] And this Beth Silvers.  

Sarah [00:00:30] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Pantsuit Politics, where we take a different approach to the news. Today, we're going to talk about state legislative sessions, in particular the one that just closed in our home state of Kentucky. We're going to talk about the latest unionization efforts at Amazon and Starbucks and Apple across the country. Last, since it's the week before our book launch, we're going to talk about The Lost City. The latest Sandra Bullock romp about a very different kind of book launch. Let me tell you, Beth, our book launch doesn't have near enough naked Channing Tatum, and I can tell you that much.  

Beth [00:01:16] I think it has zero, which I'm sorry to announce. That's not really selling it. Is it?  

Sarah [00:01:22] Who's in charge? There should be more. Okay, it's fine. I guess it's us, but whatever.  

Beth [00:01:27] Well, and here we are. Because Now What comes out next Tuesday, we are one week from launch day. We'll be in Waco, Texas, this weekend, celebrating that launch with Clint Harp and Kelley Harp at a live show Saturday night. It's going to be a stupid fun. We would love for you to be there. If you cannot be there, we would love for you to preorder the book and then join us for our virtual launch party on Tuesday night. All the links that you need for all the things related to the launch are in the show notes, and I just have to say again that the reviews coming in on this book from our launch team who got to read it early have been so touching and they are exactly what we wanted. I think, Sarah, you know we wanted to write a really practical book that helped people get unstuck in their relationships. And that's what we're hearing. 

Sarah [00:02:12] Yes. We are grateful for every single member of our incredible launch team. We're grateful for all of you who've bought tickets to Waco, who preordered the book, who've told a friend about the book. Now, let's do this podcast thing. Next up, we're going to talk about legislative sessions.  

[00:02:36] So Kentucky's legislative session ended this month. We got lots of national attention for they call it an abortion omnibus bill, which makes me so nauseous. It's kind of hard for me to articulate how I feel about just the term. But the term really captures the energy, which was this was their top priority. They did some other stuff. Like, they almost sent teachers to jail for teaching social studies, but they were like, oops, sorry, we didn't understand the law. It was ridiculous. They continue to just strip as much power as humanly possible from our Democratic governor, Andy Beshear. So they were busy. Important to note, it is a part time legislator. They only have a limit of 60 days during even numbered years that they can legislate. This is what they chose to do with their time.  

Beth [00:03:24] In addition to the omnibus abortion bill, we got a transgender sports bill. We got basically a critical race theory bill, which is how we almost expose teachers to criminal charges. There's some decent stuff that happened to one of the most encouraging things that I thought came out of this session was that our KEYS Program, a state scholarship fund, will now have some eligibility for people with low level criminal backgrounds. So a few things happened that you could feel good about. The problem is they did so much during the session and they did so much that is just clearly culture war is unconstitutional, incompetent in many respects, just fully incompetent and charging against our Democratic governor that you can't really pull out the things that you might feel good about.  

[00:04:18] I was reading a blog post from a Republican state representative this morning who said we have made our governor very inconsequential in terms of policy in the state, and that seems to be the goal. And I think coming off of Covid, I both understand why that's the goal and also want to yell into the universe that it could possibly be the goal when we have seen how important state leadership is during a crisis. And as you said, we have a part time legislature. Even if you want to make an argument that this ought to happen with greater representation for people, then maybe you need to look at some structural issues because our Legislature is not capable. As they've showed clearly during the pandemic, our Legislature is not capable of providing the kind of leadership that we need full time.  

Sarah [00:05:08] Yeah, because it's just consistent leadership. You can't be consistent leadership if you're only there for 60 days an even number of years and 30 days, an odd number years. Guys, just do the math. It's so frustrating to me. I also think it's shortsighted. Like, who's going to want to be even a Republican governor if you keep this up? But it's also not new to Kentucky. I mean, North Carolina's dang near not a democracy because they keep doing this. They can't stand losing. They can't stand losing. I'm feeling a little feisty. I'm just going to put that out there right now. I told Beth before we started recording, I woke up one day and I thought reading all the January 6th committee reports and the updates, which I know you're going to do a deep dive on this week on more to say which I think is really important.  

[00:05:57] And I don't know if maybe it's like the Watergate Anniversary, I just feel like why is the Republican Party never held responsible for their bad governance? Why? Why doesn't that happen? Why would they do something so sloppy as to almost send teachers to jail and then are like, oh, sorry, I wouldn't read the bill. And then no one wants to pitch a fit when they continue to strip powers from the governor and give power to themselves that they are clearly not capable of handling. It makes me furious. It makes me so furious because ambition and corruption are enough to send me into flames of rage, but just layer a big old, thick layer of incompetence on top of it and it sends me through the roof.  

Beth [00:06:42] I have looked for and not found examples of democratic supermajority legislatures passing such a flood of partisan priorities. That is what irritates me here. You might read news coming out of Kentucky and other parts of the country and think to yourself, how could they have allowed this to happen? Well, because it happens in such a flurry. And this has really been a pattern with our Legislature for several sessions in a row now. They make the most of that part time session and with supermajorities just rammed through a ton and you can see our few Democratic representatives on Twitter kind of saying, "Hello, everyone, please pay attention to this process trick that just happened, to the way this is being jammed through, to the fact that no one read this and it has this unintended consequence." But it's very difficult to bring attention to one partisan bad for Kentucky maneuver, let alone multitudes of them within one session. And I think you're right, especially talking about North Carolina. I can imagine that listeners in Florida feel this way right now, in Texas, all over the country. When you have these state legislatures moving so fast in such Partizan ways, using a lot of procedure, you are stripping back the arguments in favor of states having more control in our system because they're more responsive to constituents because they're not.  

Sarah [00:08:15] They're not.  

Beth [00:08:15] They can't be the way that they operate.  

Sarah [00:08:18] For example, in Kentucky, they passed this bill. They thought the override wasn't going to make it, and then it end up making it. That basically removes the power from our local library boards and gives a lot of it to Partizan politicians. And they couldn't even articulate why, but they have 75 percent, so they don't need to. Who cares? This isn't a democracy. Like, one of the representatives, Patti Minter, was like, "Can you even tell me the motivation behind this? Why do you want to do this?" And they couldn't or didn't care to express that motivation. And that is infuriating to me. Like, can you just pretend. Like Marjorie Taylor Greene up there going, "I don't know. Don't remember. Don't know. Don't remember." Or Mitch McConnell in that interview with Jonathan Swan. Like, can you please just for my sanity fake it? Fake like you care like you have any desire to be a transparent, ethical, authentic leader. Just please, please, because I feel like I'm losing my mind here watching adults with an enormous amount of power over other people's lives not give two shits how they make those people feel.  

Beth [00:09:28] We had a candidate's spouse come to our house over the weekend. His wife is running to the right of our Republican representative.  

Sarah [00:09:40] I mean, stop, just give people more context. Tell them who your representative is. Tell them how he rolls. Just give the people context.  

Beth [00:09:48] Well, our local representative is Sal Santoro. He's our member of Congress in Kentucky's House. He has been in his position for a long time. He's a very conservative guy, a pretty traditionally conservative Republican, responsive to constituents. My favorite thing that he does is a survey before every legislative session. It's a long list of here are the things we anticipate are going to come up, how you feel about this stuff. So I think he does a pretty good job. Do I agree with all of his votes? I do not. But I think that in terms of being responsive to constituents, he is. He's well known in the community. Anyway, running to the right of him is a woman and her husband comes to see my husband. The first piece of information we got is that he was coming to see my husband and one other guy because apparently on my street, they were the only two names he had as registered Republican primary voters, which was very surprising to me and I stored away.  

[00:10:48] But he had a conversation with Chad. He told him first that his wife, the candidate, stood for Christianity and the Constitution and small government and low taxes and this whole list of things. And Chad looked at him and said, "In what order?" And so I think that was not the conversation that he was expecting to have. As it unfolded, what we learned is, one, this woman had considered running for school board and then found out that the Kentucky state legislature actually has more control over schools than the school board. And so that's why she decided to run for a state office, which I think is a piece of information that we should all hold on to because I really do believe that the Virginia gubernatorial election kicked off loads of coverage about education that's going to inspire lots of really weird candidacies across the country.  

[00:11:45] But, anyway, they keep talking and he brings up masking in public schools and how ridiculous it was that the governor was able to make orders respecting masking at public schools and it ought to be everyone's choice. Chad at one point said, "I did graduate work in public health. This is probably not a super fruitful conversation for us to have." And the guy said, "But don't you think it ought to be everybody's individual choice?" And Chad said, "Well, not when the science says that does no good." I tell the story because this guy was really proud of the fact that incumbents were finally getting primary challenges across the state of Kentucky. And we agree with that. More people running for state office is important. What doesn't feel great to me is more people running for state office to the right of our already Republican supermajority in Kentucky. And if you are a Kentuckian to whom that kind of language appeals, you're not paying attention to what our Legislature is actually doing.  

[00:12:46] Our governor vetoed over two dozen bills and was overridden on almost all of them because this Legislature has no accountability outside of the court system for its actions. And this is pretty representative of a number of states in the country. So I hope, number one, that we can encourage more people to run for these state offices, even though that is asking for a lot because as you said, this is a part time job with enormous power and consequence attached to your service. But, number two, I hope that we can appeal to the folks in our lives who might get that knock on the door and just kind of reflexively go, yeah, let's get those incumbents out of there and understand that if you are looking for an extreme right wing agenda to be passed in your state, it probably just was very recently.  

Sarah [00:13:40] That's what's so frustrating to me. Look, it's not like there aren't democratic supermajorities in this country. There are. And honestly, like, I'm not sure any place that there's a supermajority is breaking new grounds policy wise, right? Like, you have to have accountability. You have to pretend that you're trying to reach a compromise that serves the most citizens and not just your Partisan culture wars. It's so disturbing to me. Look, we haven't even talked about Florida, the don't say gay bill and the stripping Disney of their special tax district. Because, honestly, I'm still so furious at my own state legislator, I cannot find the brain space or I'm a little worried about my blood pressure if I go too much into Florida. It's the procedural shenanigans to silence those who disagree with you. From the people who want individual choice, you don't want choice. You want control, that's what you want.  

[00:14:46] You don't want democracy and liberty, you want control, you don't want an open democratic process, you want to win. And that's it. And it's so abundantly clear, and it's so frustrating that there's not more consequences electorally for these attitudes from in the state houses, in Congress and the White House. Because I feel like that is the priority and it is abundantly clear. It's abundantly clear when you listen to state legislators, it's abundantly clear when you listen to Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, and it sure as hell is abundantly clear when you listen to Donald Trump. And I'm just so frustrated, honestly, with not just Republican voters, but moderate and independent voters, because, well, inflation's high and that's all that matters. And I'm just feeling a little hot today. I'm sorry, everybody.  

Beth [00:15:38] Well, I understand. I mean, to me, one of the reasons that it's important to talk, and to use Kentucky as an example of this agenda, is that it's easy to go, "Inflation's high. Let's mix it up as we come into the midterm elections." What this legislative session from Kentucky tells us is that the Tucker Carlson agenda is a serious one that is being implemented. No one is just stoking voters anymore. They are putting these things into practice. I am gravely disappointed in some of what came out of the Legislature in the session and truly thought Kentucky was better than this. I really did. And, again, there are some things they passed that I agree with. It's just hard to get to them because they are buried beneath some truly unconstitutional and just ugly action. And so I hope that diving into this is not only depressing, but it is motivating going into the midterms as we have conversations with folks who say, "Well, I'm not voting about this or that."  

[00:16:46] And I say this is a person who used to talk like that. I'm not voting on the culture issues. I'm voting on the fiscal ones because my bet used to be that that's what people would actually act on, because that's the actual responsibility of people in office, to pass budgets. But the truth is, the budgets and everything else are being used primarily, principally to promote that culture war agenda right now. And that is something that I feel complicit in that for some of my past votes. I will not make that mistake again. I take it literally and seriously now what is being campaigned on, because that's what they're governing on now too.  

Sarah [00:17:30] Next up, we're going to talk about a more positive trend in unionization across the country. All right. This week, a second Amazon warehouse in Staten Island begins a week long vote on whether to join the new Amazon labor union. The ALU is brand spanking new. Christian Smalls, a former Amazon employee and his best friend, Derrick Palmer, started the union. It started in the Amazon warehouse across the street from the one taking the vote this week, and it became the first Amazon warehouse in the U.S. to unionize. It was just less than a month ago. The facility that unionized is massive. It's like 8300 workers. The one that's voting this week is much smaller. And the story of this first unionization, I think, is so encouraging and empowering, filled with lots and lots of great details. It started when Christian Smalls wanted to organize a walkout. The New York Times did some great reporting on this, and they talked about that there were more executives, including 11 vice presidents, who were alerted to his walkout. Then there were people actually at the walkout who attended it.  

[00:18:55] But it started during Covid concerns about worker safety. Some really ugly racist communication coming from Amazon about Christian Smalls and Derrick Palmer, including one that accidentally sent to a thousand people. But they did fire Christian Smalls, and so him and Derrick Palmer just grassroots organizing in the purest sense of the word. For a long time, they stood at the bus stop outside the warehouse in Staten Island. They built bonfires. They made Tik Tok videos. They had tons of homemade food and music. And they did at one point have free weed and food, which is now before the National Labor Relations Board. But they only spent about 120 thousand dollars raised through a Go Fund Me. Now, this is not to be confused with the Amazon vote in Alabama that we talked about here at Pantsuit Politics in Bessemer and the first vote there, which was led by a big national union, the retail, wholesale and Department Store Union.  

[00:19:57] And, Beth, this was what I thought was one of the most interesting pieces on the reporting at this Amazon warehouse, which is that Christian Smalls and Derrick Palmer took a trip down to Bessemer in early 2021. And they basically blew him off. They were not welcoming, and they felt like they saw the professionals from the big union there and had just kind of come in to the community, didn't understand the communities, didn't care about the community. Now, what may worth noting that that vote has been challenged. They've taken another vote. It's really close in Bessemer right now. They're still counting. There were 993 no votes, 875 yes votes, but more than 400 contested ballots remain. So that's not settled in Bessemer. But I thought the part where you have this interaction between the small grassroots union organization coming from inside the plant and this unionization effort coming from a big national union was super interesting and gets at a lot of what's going on and these other efforts we are going to talk about.  

Beth [00:21:00] Yeah, I think it was Axios that pointed out you see a trend of grassroots movements having momentum, but still a sense of sluggishness that has accompanied a very consistent decline in union membership across the United States in the major labor unions. I was reading a New Yorker piece about this this morning, and the phrase that jumped out at me is that young workers fueling these grassroots movements want power without bureaucracy. We are seeing similar trends in Starbucks. Again, Starbucks, like Amazon, is organizing store by store. In 2021, Starbucks workers from a store in Buffalo voted to form the first union at a Starbucks location. Now, this one is being led by one of the giant unions, the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU. Employees at 54 stores in 19 states are pursuing union elections now. This is not going over well with Howard Schultz and the leadership at Starbucks.  

[00:22:07] I was just reading a story about how he has invited employees to come in to have meetings with him where they can co-create, and employees that have thoughts about unions. Like, he said to one woman, "If you hate Starbucks so much, why don't you go somewhere else?" Just not the temperament that we want to bring to these meetings, just the former H.R. person has to say. Starbucks is notorious for having fought back previous attempts at unionization, and that's one of the big headlines that jumps out at you right now. You see Big Tech, Amazon, Google, Apple, and I don't know if it's fair to categorize Starbucks this way, but these companies are really resorting to old school union busting techniques to try to keep this momentum down.  

Sarah [00:22:55] Well, hopefully not old school when they used to just beat the crap out of people. But I think it's really interesting. And I want to be clear here, I'm pro-union. I'm pro big national unions. I'm not mad at them because I think it's easy to craft a narrative where they are seen as corrupt and bureaucratic, and they're the problem. And I don't think that big national unions are perfect, and I do think there's a lot of bureaucracy, and Lord knows there's a long history of corruption. But. Unions now are some of the most like tightly regulated organizations in America. And I feel like what you're seeing is not necessarily just the cumbersome ness of big national unions, but the result of the past two, three, four decades of anti-union legislation coming through state legislators and Congress and administrations, right? Union membership dropped because you had a concerted effort, particularly from the Republican Party, to craft all kinds of legislation and policies that was incredibly unfavorable to unions.  

[00:24:08] And unions, to me, are an incredibly important societal institution. You have to have a way for workers to advocate for themselves. And this is not accidentally a very tight labor market. And so now there is a little bit more bargaining capacity on the part of the workers, and so these shifts to unionization don't surprise me. I mean, look, nobody in America, I don't think, should be surprised by the fact that non-union workers earn way less than union workers. People in a union earn more money. And I'll never forget a couple of years ago, a study came out and I read it in this article that was talking about we have this narrative in America about how children do better than their parents, right? That's what we want. We want kids to to rise up the socioeconomic ladder. We want them to do better, and we have a narrative about how education is essential. We have a narrative about how family support is essential, and I'm not saying it's not.  

[00:25:08] From researchers at Harvard, Wellesley in the Center for American Progress, which is a liberal think tank like full disclosure. But they released a paper in 2015 showing that children born to low income families typically ascend to higher incomes in metropolitan areas where union membership is higher. It is like one of the biggest factors. And it makes sense, their families are earning more, but it's more complicated than that, right? It makes people feel like they have some control, that they have some power inside this incredibly important relationship between employer and employee. And you wouldn't expect that to impact the parents lives, but it impacts the children's lives as well. And so what I desperately hope is not just that these individual union efforts are successful, particularly at Amazon, but that we start to reevaluate our narrative about unions. It's dated. And, look, I think some of those dated narratives exist inside the unions. Like these big national unions need to look at this effort and Amazon take note and become adaptive. And are some of them big, bulky, cumbersome bureaucracies that are not exactly known for the adaptiveness? Absolutely. Absolutely. Of course, that's true. But they had to adapt that bureaucracy in reaction to this massive amount of anti-union regulation, legislation and policy. So I just feel like there's responsibility on both sides.  

Beth [00:26:27] I feel kind of neutral about all of this. Mostly curious. I'm curious about what happens with the ALU next. When you took a really different approach to getting to the formation of this union. What does that look like going forward? What does it look like for that to expand to another warehouse or two or three or four? I'm interested in what happens next because this is obviously a moment when we're all sort of redefining work and what we expect of work and what work owes to us when we're all really looking for a sense of community. That's a lot of what makes it so appealing to read stories about this effort in New York, that this group of people tried to take care of each other, that there were fundraisers for people who were just workers who were experiencing difficult moments in their lives, that there was food, that bringing food of different cultures, representing different workers was a big part of this. I mean, there is a real undercurrent of just community and care in this effort that I think people are searching for in so many different contexts.  

[00:27:31] And I think that work is a very neglected part of how we understand community and care. Someone just said about our book. They were really surprised to see a whole chapter dedicated to work in a book that's about political relationships. And we say right in that chapter, like, we don't talk enough about how much our work influences our politics and our relationships and how we feel about our lives in general. And so I do feel really curious about where all of this is going, and I feel curious about the role of the big established unions and the startups. You know, I listen to someone talking about wealth inequality a couple of years ago, and this person was making the case for greater federal involvement to reduce wealth inequality because corporations have become so big. And her point was that bigness is the challenge right now. And that if you're going to have the size and scale and scope of Amazon, Google, Apple out there, then you need a matching bigness from the government to regulate those entities.  

[00:28:41] And you might make the argument if you've got the bigness of a warehouse that employs over 8,000 people, then you need the big ness of a well-established national union to actually give workers power in that context. And I'm curious about whether that holds true. I saw an example of union activity that made me really encouraged at my local school board. There was a union representing custodians who organized custodians to come out against a proposal to outsource some of our open positions. We have a dire shortage of school custodians in our district, like many districts across the country do. And there was a proposal in front of the board to approve a contract with a staffing agency to fill those positions, and the union and many of its members came out in opposition to it. And it was a very good conversation that the board listened to, and they ultimately tabled the measure so that they could keep talking.  

[00:29:36] And I thought this to me has none of the stereotypes attached to unions from either dimension, right? Everyone was just there in good faith to try to work out an issue. And I hope that efforts like what's happening with the ALU can destigmatize the corporate side of the union conversation as well. If I were advising Howard Schultz, for example, I would say, just welcome this. If you believe you have a great corporate culture where employees are really supported and you have people wanting to organize, why fight so hard? Why have stories appearing in your Google search results about how anti-union Starbucks is. Welcome and work with them. See what happens. I think everybody needs to be part of turning the page here towards a more productive relationship around collective bargaining and worker rights.  

Sarah [00:30:34] As I was reading all these stories about the votes that Amazon and Apple and Starbucks, what really struck me is how low the participation in the vote is. At Amazon, it's like half of the people that work there. Bessemer was even lower, especially on the revote. I don't know exactly what to think about that. It makes me really sad. I think it speaks to the way workers feel, not just about these specific employers, but about their role and space inside our economy. I think it speaks to how hard these jobs are, that I think there's a sense like, I've got a job, I've got a health care. Can you just let me be? Like, I have enough to deal with. But I was interested to see if you noticed that and what you thought about it.  

Beth [00:31:30] My admittedly very limited H.R Experience. So I have only done H.R In the context of a law firm, which is a very different working environment than an Amazon warehouse or retail, food service, something like that. What I learned in that very different context is that if someone believes that there is an atmosphere of retaliation, in any respect, you cannot talk them out of it. If there is a fear that if we speak out about something we're going to be punished for it, that fear metastasizes very quickly. And I can't even imagine the depth of what that paranoia could be like in a place where your performance is technologically measured all the time, and where you already have a feeling of surveillance, even if it's a somewhat neutral feeling of being surveilled. But knowing that you're being watched constantly, that everything is on a timer, that everything is tracked, I can imagine that it gets harder to put yourself out there in any meaningful census as someone who has a complaint about something.  

Sarah [00:32:42] Maybe is the best act of protest that people can make, right? Because if they felt surveilled and they just don't want to get fired, well, then they'd vote no, right? Like, you'd have a really, really, high voter participation and they'd vote no. And that's how what we see. You just see a lot of people choosing not to vote, which is probably maybe like that's the limit of what they feel comfortable with.  

Beth [00:33:03] I think that could be. And I also think that it's this sense that someone's watching is getting more intense and starts earlier. I mean, my fifth grader took a survey at school and believed for a few days that her teacher was angry about the survey results. That it was supposed to be anonymous, but it actually wasn't, and that they looked at it and the teacher was upset about it. And I don't think that's correct. I just want to be clear, I don't think that's what was going on. But I do think this sense of someone has power and they're asking me to say something and telling me to trust them, I can really say what I think, it's a big lift.  

Sarah [00:33:42] Yeah. With increased worker power and increased unionization, even if that unionization comes primarily to most of our lives through media coverage, I am hopeful for a different path in America, because this is related to our first conversation, for sure. You know, the income inequality is a fuel for authoritarian populism. I'm not breaking any new political science ground here. And until workers and people and citizens feel empowered, our democracy is going to be in danger. And I don't even want to frame it necessarily just through like how this benefits all of us because we should just want better for people. Outside of the sort of political science lens, we should just want the people that deliver all of those dang packages to be treated fairly. We should want the people who are making all of our endless river of caffeinated drinks to be treated like human beings. And so I find this trend really positive and I hope it continues and I will do whatever I can to support these workers, because I think what they're doing is amazing  

Beth [00:35:09] When you see in polling that American support for unions -- not membership, but support for unions is rising, and I think that's because there some specificity to what doing better by these workers looks like. During the pandemic, it became really clear that workplace safety is not a bygone issue. That the number of hours people are being asked to work is not over. If you walk in a fast food restaurant right now you can see numerous issues that people are dealing with in terms of short staffing, balancing out the order at a kiosk versus I order from a person. Like, roles are changing. I just feel like we're watching sort of a slow motion movie about change in the labor market. And so it isn't surprising to me that support for unions is increasing because we understand what the ask is right now. I think a lot of these issues seemed more esoteric before the pandemic than they do now. And now you think, well, of course, people have safety concerns. And I think I am becoming more and more clear all the time about the fact that one person's rest always requires another person's labor.  

[00:36:27] Erin and I have talked a lot since we did some research about Tonga after the volcano there, about the fact that they have this kind of mandatory Sabbath. Like, you can't even work out. One day a week, everybody is off. And we were talking about the interesting parts of that and the benefits, but also the fact that it's never going to be true that everybody gets to have the same Sabbath because people still have to eat. Children still have to be cared for. The sick still have to be cared for. Someone is laboring to enable everybody else to rest. And I think getting clear on that during the pandemic helps you understand again why why a union or a union light, like some of these groups that organize at Wal-Marts without being full fledged unions but who are negotiating on behalf of workers, you can just understand why that's needed and why it would have benefits. And I hope that this is a moment when we can sort of rewrite the whole story because, as you said, I think the story is really dated right now in terms of all the characters in it.  

Sarah [00:37:29] Absolutely. I don't think there's any argument that this is a new chapter in this story, and I'm incredibly encouraged. Next up, we're going to talk about chapters and books of another kind. Beth, upon the passionate recommendation of Maggie, we both went and saw The Lost City this weekend. Now, for those of you don't know, The Lost City, directed by Aaron and Adam Nee, it stars Sandra Bullock. She's a romance novelist, but like a begrudging one. And she gets kidnaped by Harry Potter, Dana Ratcliffe, who's like a millionaire who wants to solve this archeological mystery. And her books have all this archeological information because that was her background, and she just wanted to be able to write about it. So she had a bit like a romance layer over top of it. And he wants her to help him find this lost city, hence the title. And then her cover leading man, the man who like poses for all her book covers, played by Channing Tatum, comes to rescue her. Brad Pitt makes an incredibly amazing appearance. Da'vine Joy Randolph plays her publisher, Beth, and friend. High jinx ensue. I loved it, I thought it was a delight.  

Beth [00:39:07] It's just nice to see anything that doesn't take itself too seriously in any context, and that's what I thought was so fun about The Lost City. It was like it just said from the beginning, this is silly. It's going to be silly and it's going to be fun. You're going to enjoy it. You're going to leave having been delighted. And we don't really need to say anything here. We're just enjoying ourselves at the movie theater. And I did.  

Sarah [00:39:30] The funny part for us is that she's like launching this book. Like she doesn't want to participate in the book launch. She definitely doesn't want to participate the book watch with him, but then they come along. I think there are lots of really great parts about it. One, yes, it didn't take itself seriously, but also it felt like it treated the audience and it treated the readers of romance novels like adults. That's a part of the movie I really enjoyed. I'm tired of the busting on romantic comedies, and there is a fun, delightful undercurrent to so many of these movies, and I love that they leaned in without making fun of it, without making fun of the audience. Also sort of made some cool stances about the readers of romance novels, which I think, under very gendered perspective, often get short shrift.  

[00:40:18] I thought it was freaking amazing. Sandra Bullock, who is 57, holy crap, how'd that happen? And Channing Tatum is 41, and it just was like a non-event. Nobody even talked about it until I looked up afterwards and I was like, "Holy crap, she is over 15 years older than him." This brings me a lot of joy, just joy that existed, that it wasn't mentioned that it wasn't a big deal. I thought that was fantastic, and I thought it was very cleverly written. Like, yes, they weren't breaking new ground. Like, it owes a big debt to like Romancing the Stone, but it also was clever and funny and incredibly well acted. It is hard to do physical comedy. It is hard to make a role like that seem easy. And Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum both did an exceptional job of the physical comedy component. I laughed until I cried.  

Beth [00:41:14] Yeah, I thought it was really cute and fun and funny. I thought he especially was good. He brought dimension to a role that it would easily have been not a dimensional role.  

Sarah [00:41:28] Okay, listen to me. I have a real soapbox about Channing Tatum. Back in the day, one of my friend's friend, I think the friend just made up this nickname for him which was charming potato, which is pretty funny. And at the time, I was like, that's right, because all I knew him from was like, Step it up. I think it's the name of that movie. But then the Magic Mike movies came out. Have you seen any of the Magic Mike movies?  

Beth [00:41:48] No, and I know what you're going to say. I've heard this many times.  

Sarah [00:41:52] Listen, people of the world. Listen to me. Listen to the sound of my voice. These movies are amazing. Now, they are very different. The first one is basically biographical. Channing Tatum worked as a stripper in Florida. Fun fact. One of my friends worked with him at a bar, not at the strip club, at a different bar. But so it's very autobiographical and still a delight. Listen. Listen to me. If Channing Tatum is going to dance on film, you want to be there. It's an incredibly sexy, fantastic dance scene between him and Sandra Bullock. And I was like, God bless you one and all because if you brought me into this theater with a romantic comedy with Channing Tatum and he doesn't get to dance, I want my money back. I want my money back. So the first one is great, and I think it immediately gave me just like a deeper appreciation for him. I was making some very short sighted judgments about him.  

[00:42:50] And then the second Magic Mike, though, is like everything you thought the first Magic Mike was going to be. And it is just truly one of the most feminist films ever made. It is an ode to female desire. He is so good in it, and it's just one thing after they're like, oh, is this what women would like to see? Or maybe, like, maybe want to see this different? Or let's talk about the complexity of female desire. Like, I can't even with this movie. I love it so much. I love him so much. When they open Magic Mike in Vegas, which I not been to, which is a tragedy. A personal tragedy. I really need to prioritize that in a way that is reflective of how much I love him. But they have like this Instagram video, and he was like, we've never had a place like this for women. And instead of sitting around as a bunch of men thinking about what you want and we thought we'll just ask you. What do you want at these places? What do you want to see? And so now I'm just devoted him. I think he's an incredible actor. I think he is an incredible feminist. I think that he is so sexy. Again, not enough naked Channing Tatum in our personal book launch. I will just like zeros like we're failing, where's our publisher on this?  

Beth [00:44:04] Well, so Maggie did want us to talk about this because it is about launching a book and how it is very unrealistic portrayal, at least of launching a nonfiction book at this stage in our careers. It's so funny to me how many people are like, "So are you going to do a book tour?" I'm like, "That is so sweet. I wish that that was still a thing that happened for people like us. But you absolutely do not get to do a book tour just because you have a book coming out." Listen, I love our publisher, but Da'vine Joy Randolph is a different species in this movie compared to the real world of doing this.  

Sarah [00:44:44] I've not even really understood the business model there. Like, she's publishing a book, but she kind of seems like a agent.  

Beth [00:44:49] Yeah, there's a lot that's off about the portrayal.  

Sarah [00:44:50] A lot is happening in this movie. I don't think any of this is right. That is not to say that, like, I'm trying to create a scenario in which a millionaire would want to kidnap us, but I'm happy to have Brad Pitt and Channing Tatum try to rescue us. Like, I would not be mad about the scenario. I am furious, though, and for anybody who goes to see it on our recommendation, there is a mid-credits scene that I missed. Did you stay for it?  

Beth [00:45:15] Yes, because the gentleman who took our movie tickets said, "Be sure that you stay."  

Sarah [00:45:23] Dadgumit! Where was my Cinemark staff on this?  

Beth [00:45:25] He said, "My wife really enjoyed it." And I loved him so much.  

Sarah [00:45:29] I'm so mad.  

Beth [00:45:30] And when we sat down in our seats, I looked at Chad and I said, "Have you ever seen a more caring act by a movie theater employee?" And we left after the credits. Chad did not love this movie as I loved it. He was not ugly about it, but it wasn't his thing. I said to him, "How kind and generous was it that employee told us that we needed to stay?" It was really, really, sweet.  

Sarah [00:45:52] Well, I am going to call Cinemark and be like, "You need to tell people every time they go see The Lost City to stay." Because I'm so mad I missed it. I've, obviously, since read about it. And I won't spoil anything here, but it does have to do with Brad Pitt, who I adore and who I also thought was incredible in this movie. So good. I just love him. 

Beth [00:46:09] Brad Pitt is so good at a bit part. That's a little [Inaudible].  

Sarah [00:46:12] I love him.  

Beth [00:46:12] It's just he is made for a role like this.  

Sarah [00:46:16] And you know what I also love? His sexy face. He's just getting hotter and hotter every year, just like George Clooney. And Alison Sanders look good too. Fifty seven, are you freaking kidding me?  

Beth [00:46:29] If we are to get kidnaped at any point in the process of bringing our book into the world --  

Sarah [00:46:34] By a millionaire looking for some sort of archeological discovery.  

Beth [00:46:37] I am going to need more comfortable clothes than she had to wear for the vast majority of this movie. 

Sarah [00:46:43] I know. But it was like also part of the joke.  

Beth [00:46:45] Yeah, it was funny. It was cute. It was delightful.  

Sarah [00:46:48] And I didn't watch her scary movie on Netflix because, pass. And so I can't remember the last movie I watched her on, but I adore her. I think that she is such a phenomenal actress. When she is trying to get on that stool at the beginning of the book launch show about [Inaudible], she's so, so, good. Again, such an undervalued skill that is an incredibly difficult thing to do, and she does it so well. Again, and just the dancing -- Listen, y'all go see this movie. Is such a delight.  

Beth [00:47:22] Maggie was correct.  

Sarah [00:47:23] Maggie was right. Two thumbs way up. I guess, six thumbs between the three of us. Loved it. Loved it. Loved it. I don't really know how to transition out from naked Channing Tatum to the end of our show. But, again, this is the journey. Pantsuit Politics furious about Republicans. Optimistic about unionization trends. Feminist ode to Channing Tatum. We do it all here. We do it all here. And we will be back in your ears on Friday as we get even closer to our book launch. Please, please, join us in Waco. Preorder the book. Join us for the virtual launch party. We love all of you. We will be back in theaters on Friday, and until then, keep it nuanced y'all.  

Beth [00:48:18] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production, Alise Napp is our managing director.  

Sarah [00:48:23] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.  

Beth [00:48:29] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.  

Executive Producers [00:48:34] Martha Bronitsky, Linda Daniel, Ali Edwards, Janice Elliot, Sarah Greenup, Julie Haller, Helen Handley, Tiffany Hassler, Emily Holladay, Katie Johnson, Katrina Zuganelis Kasling, Barry Kaufman, Molly Kohrs.  

[00:48:52] The Kriebs. Laurie LaDoW, LilLy McClure, Emily Neesley, The Pentons, Tawni Peterson, Tracy Puthoff, Sara Ralph, Jeremy Sequoia, Katie Stigers, Karin True, Onika Ulveling, Nick and Alysa Villeli, Katherine Vollmer, Amy Whited.  

Beth [00:49:10] Jeff Davis, Melinda Johnston, Ashley Thompson, Michelle Wood, Joshua Allen, Morgan McHugh, Nichole Berklas, Paula Brimmer and Tim Miller.  





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