You're listening to the labor radio podcasts, weekly excerpts from shows in the labor radio podcast network. You'll find them and dozens more at labor radio network. Dot org. you gotta look past the personalities here. And it's very hard to do. I realize that. But there are, there are some very smart and competent people. Even if you disagree with them, they're going to be working on some of these economic policy issues. They want to get deals done and they realize the clock is ticking.
And so there is an opportunity to engage . The Rick Smith show takes a look at dealing with the new Trump administration. what we're seeing now is the beginning of what's going to be a very rough couple of years and it seems increasingly likely institutions of the left in the United States are very unprepared for what's coming. The same thing for Canada, really, unfortunately, and everybody started scrambling to try to deal with this very dire situation.
John Milton wonders is the us of fascist country on radio labor. So, okay, he's transactional in the sense that he's a businessman. He likes to make money for him and his kids, right? He likes to do deals and wrote books about it and sees himself as a deal maker. I get that. But in actual reality, The man is a narcissist. He's a dumbass. He's an ignoramus. Um, he's a vain, thin skinned little man. And the idea that people can't manipulate him is absurd.
He's the most easily manipulated politician of our lifetime. On the real news network podcast, Mehdi Hassan and Francesca theater, and Tina on Trump's political strategy. if AI gets out of hand, out of control, which could be very soon, we risk AI taking over the world, like in the movies. It sounds like sci fi, but this is like, AI experts are worried about this Workweek radio investigates the strengths of AI. So Carter asked to find out what is going on.
And once he found out, he told this lady Wexler, to invite the gay churches to the White House to see how. The Carter presidency and gay rights on tales from the Ruth or library. I think the high was minus six today. Uh, this morning when we woke up, it was minus 13 with a wind chill of about minus 25. So those aren't fun conditions to work in. And in our final segment, we find out how airline workers cope with extreme cold on Delta workers. Unite. I'm Chris Garlock.
And that's all coming up on this week's edition of the labor radio podcast weekly. Here's the show. Let's get started with Harold's quick rundown of shows. You should know. Thanks, Chris. Social media guy Harold Phillips here, folks, and it's cold here in the Pacific Northwest. But I know no matter how cold it is here, it's a lot colder in other parts of the country. And you folks living in LA, well, you'd probably prefer some cold weather to what's going on down there.
Suffice it to A lot of us are stuck inside, or our normal routines have been disrupted. And that's not even taking into account the other disruption happening in the United States right now. Look, if you are trying to stay away from the news and find something to do to occupy yourself while all this is going on, I've got a suggestion for you. Why not listen to some podcasts that focus on working people standing up to the man? Here's some shows you should know for the week of January 19th.
Madison Labor Radio looks back at the close ties between the Reverend Martin Luther King and the labor movement, a nurse discusses the Oregon Nurses Association strike against Providence Health in that state, the SEIU rejoins the AFL CIO, and more. Victor Sanchez is back.
Executive Director for the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy discusses the ways Lane brings together community power and labor power to win policies that improve the lives of working families in Los Angeles and in Long Beach on the Writers Guild of America's Third in Fairfax podcast.
Kenneth talks with New York violinist and composer Conchetta Abati about coming up in a family of working musicians, her early days of subway busking, Working in New York City and becoming a death doula as a result of the COVID 19 pandemic on Art and Labor, Chris talks with Channing Gredvig, a psychosocial clinician too, who has been on strike against Kaiser for 14 weeks, about the National Union of Healthcare Workers issues, how Kaiser is responding, and how the unit has
never been more motivated on the picket line on the Union or Bust podcast. Kathy Newman talks class, work, and horror in Squid Game, the dystopian South Korean hit TV show in which desperate players risk their lives for a chance at financial security on the Labor Heritage Power Hour. And one more this week, Herald. That's me explains why now is the right time to bring back the Labor Week podcast and discusses SEIU's return to the AFL CIO.
And of course, you know where to find all these labor radio shows and podcasts, right? Just go to laborradionetwork. org and search in the shows section. And if you're looking for the latest episodes of labor radio shows and podcasts. Be sure to follow us on social media, on Blue Sky, and Facebook and Instagram, and Twitter, for now. Okay, Chris, back to you. I've got to get out of this cold studio space and into some warmth. Thanks. Harold, stay warm brother. Here's the show.
Come back to the Rick Smith Show. Now, here is Rick Smith. So, you're looking at the, uh, the executive orders as we've been talking about. Lots of them. Here to share some thoughts on what we know at this moment on the terror front, I've asked my good friend Scott Paul to come share some thoughts. He's the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, americanmanufacturing. org, the website. Scott, thanks for taking time for us. Hey Rick, good to be with you.
I want to get your thoughts on some of the labor leaders who have come out and say, look, we're willing to work with them. I've gotten some heat from people for Sean Fain, for instance, who wrote an op ed said, yeah, we're willing to work with him where our, our interests align. And I'm like, look, you know, the reality is that's what, it's what labor leaders should all be doing. Look, there are places where maybe you can work together and in those places where you You can't.
Well, then you, you got to put up your dukes and get in there and, and mix it up. But, uh, I got a lot of, a lot of blowback from the Fein thing. Well, look, look, and I think Sean Fein is right about this, that, you know, the USMCA, which Trump negotiated, uh, isn't working right now. There's too much auto production in Mexico. There's not enough in the United States yet. Okay. And so it does need to be renegotiated. And it's going to take a strong position to do that.
And what made it work the last time is that you had some Democrats who were trade critics, people like Nancy Pelosi, who were saying, look, we'll work with you on this to get this to cross. And so, you know, we, we obviously have a Republican, uh, Congress right now. Um, that's a little more free trade, uh, in a lot of ways than, than, than Trump is. So we'll see how this works. But I do think that, that, that, that, that ought to be the approach.
It's why, you know, the steel workers with the shipbuilding case, along with other unions, you know, Biden started it. They want Trump to finish it. Right. And, and same with the USMCA. Let's see if we can get this to work better. And here's a guy, you know, in Trump who talks about these tariffs and the, and the trade imbalances all the time. Put your money where your mouth is and let's get something done on this.
And I am all for, and I pledge, I know we will be working with folks in the administration to try to get some positive things done for working people. Do you think, are you seeing, as I am, a much more reserved tone, a more conciliatory tone, more of, yeah, we're, we're willing to work together where we can in the hopes that maybe The focus will be on where we can instead of where we can't. Are you seeing that as a different strategy or, or, or surrender? Yeah. You know what?
I, for me, it's too early to tell. Um, but, but what I, what I don't, what I don't like it. I, I raised this up at the beginning of our conversation, the democratic point of view that if Trump says something about tariffs, we have to say the opposite instead of having their own plan. Right. I think that's wrong. Uh, and I don't, I think that's self defeating. I think they ought to come to him. What they plan that says here how we, here's how we'd like to do something.
Let's talk, let's see if we can get something done. Yeah. Here's how we can put your name on something . Yeah, that's right. And, and and from the Trump perspective, look, I I think that, you know, the, the, the again, agree with them or disagree with them and, and, and, you know, and you gotta look past the personalities here. And it's very hard to do. I realize that. But there are, there are some very smart and competent people.
Even if you disagree with them, they're going to be working on some of these economic policy issues. And some of them may be entirely out of touch because they're hedge fund managers or, or whatever, but they're also very savvy. They want to get deals done and they realize the clock is ticking. And so there is an opportunity to engage. Okay? There is an opportunity to engage. We'll see. Last, last, uh, the, uh, the, the, the Gulf of America t shirts, where are we going to make those?
God. Next question. Uh, I can't even believe that that's even, nevermind. Uh, but Scott, as always, I appreciate the thoughts, the input, always great stuff. All right. Thanks. Thanks, Rick. Thanks so much for having me on. This is Radio Labor. With the inauguration of Donald Trump as the fascist leader of the United States on January 20, 2025, Canadians are wondering what can be done. This was the subject of a recent article published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
I talked to the article's author, CCPA Senior Communications Officer, John Milton. Is the reelection of Donald Trump and affirmation of fascism in the U S and if so, how is it being played out? Well, I think how the Trump administration of the second Trump administration is going to play out is extremely unpredictable. You know, we've seen this over the past months in between the election and the swearing in that there has been a number of.
sort of wild card events that the incoming Trump administration has been throwing out. Things like basically declaring economic war against Canada, making an increasing amount of what may be jokes or may not be about annexing Canada or Greenland, which he seems more serious about, threatening other countries in the region in the way that you probably And then we also saw what belligerent fascist governments in the 1930s. And so I think, yeah, like the American fascism has absolutely returned.
And I think what we're seeing, what we're seeing now is the beginning of what's going to be a very rough couple of years because we don't actually, we don't actually know what's going to happen. It's extremely unpredictable and it seems increasingly likely institutions of the left in the United States are very unprepared for what's coming. The same thing for Canada, really, unfortunately, and everybody started scrambling to try to deal with this very dire situation.
Aimé César, who is a sort of a Martinique born French poet, writer, politician, he wrote that fascism, and he's writing in the context of the immediate aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust, wrote that fascism should not be understood as a sort of unknowable, unexpected outburst of collective insanity that descended upon the sort of German population, but rather as The techniques of European colonialism being turned inward onto the European continent.
The way that we should understand what is happening in the United States and much of the sort of like global north rich countries of the world today with the rise of the far right. That's one of the ways that we can understand what's happening right now, is that this is sort of the way that these countries, particularly the United States, have always acted in the world.
And now that violence is being turned inwards towards the United States itself, as well as the rest of the countries of the global north. And that's it. Labor news you can use. Thank you for listening. And remember, it's all about solidarity. Up next to Maddie. Hassan and Francesca Tina. On Trump's political strategy on the real news network podcast.
One distinction that, um, you know, came up in, in the great interview that Jeremy Scahill did on drop site news yesterday, uh, with Palestinians, uh, reacting to the news was, um, uh, a sort of distinction that when it comes to Biden, he's very ideological in this regard. Like he's expressed himself as a full fledged Zionist who wants his legacy or wanted his legacy to kind of be pegged to standing with Israel. Whereas Trump's is more transactional.
And like, I mean, this Guys got a whole lot of things he wants to do right here. He's seen how much Gaza has like tanked Biden's administration, hampered that administration. He doesn't want to have to deal with that. I do think that's a useful distinction while, while, but I wanted to ask what you guys can I just jump in very briefly to push back a little bit. I hear that. Please. Yeah. The Trump is transactional.
The implication of that is that there is some consistent strategy to what Trump says or does. I refuse to accept that. Trump is only consistently inconsistent. So, okay, he's transactional in the sense that he's a businessman. He likes to make money for him and his kids, right? He likes to do deals and wrote books about it and sees himself as a deal maker. I get that. But in actual reality, The man is a narcissist. He's a dumbass. He's an ignoramus. Um, he's a vain, thin skinned little man.
And the idea that people can't manipulate him is absurd. He's the most easily manipulated politician of our lifetime. So when people say, Oh, well, he's transactional, he's not an ideological Zionist. Even if I accept all that, which I'm not sure I do, he's surrounded by people who are like, you're telling me that Marco Rubio and, and, and as I say, Michael Waltz. And what about Mike Huckabee? Huckabee, uh, Huck?
The man who says there's no such thing as Palestinians, there's no such thing as a West Bank. What is, I just want to know, what's Mike Huckabee thinking for the last 40 hours? He's okay with this? I mean, I think transaction can be taken in. In two different ways. Transactional can, it sounds like diplomacy, but I think when people say it, right, when people say it, it's more like anything for flattery. And to me, I think he is able to read the room, I think.
And there's a line from one of his rallies over the last year that really stuck with me where he said, he goes, well, and Biden, he's terrible on Israel. He hates, hates Israel, hates the Jews. He was basically trying to like, he does the brow beating of Jewish voters, you know? So he was like saying he hates, he hates Jews, but. I guess he hates Palestinians a little bit more. And there was like a smile. And I was like, that he, because even he knew what he was saying was bullshit.
And that actually Biden is helping genocide the Palestinian people. And there was that smirk as he understood that all of the democratic voters that now a you got approved that so many people voted on Gaza. I mean, he went to Dearborn, Michigan. That's Which Biden didn't dare to go to, Kamala Harris didn't dare to go to. He went to Dearborn, Michigan and said, I am a peacemaker. I will bring peace to the Middle East. Liz Cheney will get Muslims killed. Don't listen to Liz and Kamala.
I'm the peacemaker, right? And people lapped it up. Which is nonsense. Go back and look at Trump's first term. Again, I know Americans have the memory of a goldfish. Uh, the guy increased bombing in Iraq. Bombed Syria. Increased drone strikes in Pakistan and Somalia, helped MBS genocide Yemen, except I can go through the whole record. The idea that Donald Trump was some kind of anti war, anti interventionist candidate is a complete myth. But again, as you pointed out with the Bilbao report.
He's transactional. He didn't collude with Russia. He's anti war. He's a master of getting these one line narratives about himself out there, which somehow people stick to. He's Teflon Don. Good memories are forever, said the dog on the tombstone. If you're living underneath a bridge, man, all roads lead to home. I got a hidden flask, I'm paid in cash, got a cross above my bed. You know, I hitchhike from Chicago, and a man walks up and says, This is Work Week with Steve Zeltzer.
This week we will hear from participants at a rally against Trump, who has taken office. The rally took place on January the 19th. I'm Finn van der Velde, um, I'm originally from the Netherlands. I'm just here to, uh, to help, help this cause. And you have a thing, a t shirt, Stop AI, what's going on with AI and why are you for stopping it? Isn't AI necessary? Okay, so I majored in artificial intelligence. So I also know like the upsides.
It's been used in in medical stuff It's being used in, um, solve problems for people, but what it's being used for is to replace jobs It's already being used for that. It's only gonna get worse And so, um, open AI, the, the company leading this race to this artificial intelligence race, it's explicit goals to build artificial general intelligence, artificial general intelligence. They define it as something that's on their website.
There's something that's more economically viable or like that can do most economically valuable work. So they want to take most jobs. That's their explicit aim. And on the way, they are risking human extinction, which they have also admitted to. Like, because if AI gets out of hand, out of control, which could be very soon, we risk AI taking over the world, like in the movies. It sounds like sci fi, but this is like, AI experts are worried about this.
There's a survey of more than 2, 700 published AI researchers, and they estimate the odds of AI leading to, um, Human extinction or similar severe human disempowerment, um, on average at 19 percent. And these are people that are like, that are, these are biased people because they They thought AI was a good enough idea to do research on it. The idea of techno, techno billionaires, like, uh, like Musk, uh, Peter Thiel, uh, David Sachs. Yeah. Um, who are these people?
Because apparently they say that it should be completely deregulated. Yeah. Yeah. They're buying their way into political offices and they are, uh, like trying to buy everything including deregulation just to make more money. Um, yeah, and so them now being in, in power and the venture capitalists just funding Trump's campaign and Trump now doing stuff back for them just means that if they have their way we will have no regulation for this and the people will suffer.
And are you concerned about fascism because it seems there's a rise of fascism not just here but all over the world in, in France and Germany and that these fascists apparently are going to use AI to their advantage. Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, Musk meddling in even European elections, uh. What do you think about that? Yeah. You're from Europe. Yeah, yeah, I am. And my girlfriend's from Germany, and she hates the AFD. And like, that's, that's the, that's the far right. German, German right wing party.
Yeah, yeah, German right wing party. And so, Musk is now coming out, coming out in support of the AFD, and it's just, like, they had massive protests there against the, against the AFD. And it's, it's just, yeah, the alliance of these tech billionaires and fascism is wild. really no one should, should have power over this. AI and it should just be shut down, like, further development should be shut down completely because we just can't risk, like, everyone dying. That's insane.
But, uh, the billionaires being in power of it is like the worst way this could have gone. Hello, and welcome to Tales from the Ruther, a podcast coming to you straight from the Walter P. Ruther Library on the campus of Wayne State University in the very heart of Detroit, Michigan. I am Dan Geladner, your host, and with me is Troy Eller, English. Hello, Troy. Hey, Dan. How are you? I'm cold. It, it, it's, it's cold outside. It is cold outside. It's cold inside. It's cold everywhere, everywhere.
It is January. It is a January cold blast. But it warmed my heart to watch Jimmy Carter's service at National Cathedral. Um. It was moving.
Today's episode, we talk with Harris Dushamedis, a tutor at the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University, England, and holds a PhD in politics from the same university, and we're going to talk to him about his book that came out last year titled, The Carter Presidency and Gay Rights, The Revolution That Dared Not Speak Its Name, which was put out by Bloomsbury Press. The administration took several initiatives without being asked by the gay community.
For example, something that was very important, Was that the White House invited representatives of, uh, gay churches to the White House because Carter, he read somewhere about, uh, an arson in a gay church. Can't remember where. So Carter asked to find out what is going on. And once he found out, he told this lady Wexler, Wexler to invite the gay churches to the White House to see how. Uh, I spoke to two participants. One was Reverend Nancy Wilson.
And the other one was Bob Arthur, Reverend Bob Arthur. Okay. Oh, yes. And, uh, actually also to the person who invited them. Reverend Robert Maddox, who was Carter's religious liaison. So one of, uh, Robert Maddox asked the, uh, Uh, priests, is there anything I can, we can do as the white house to help you to stop all these attacks, everything that is happening against you? What can we do? How can we help you? President Carter wants to help you. What can we do?
So one of the participants cried when Maddox said that, and he said, uh, just by inviting us here, you have done more than you could ever do with anything else. And then the administration again took the initiative when there were many refugees from Cuba arriving to the country in 1980. Again, the administration and Carter himself was told that among them, there was a large, uh, portion, a large, a large number of gay refugees.
So the White House contacted the Metropolitan Community Church and asked them to collaborate in order to, uh, the word to, to settle, resettle the refugees. So this meeting was very important because it offered legitimacy. Although I do not fully agree with the word legitimacy, uh, but at the time it was legitimacy because the people were not recognized and they were seen, uh, you know, as in a bad light. Right, right.
So this, the meeting gave them respect in addition to everything else I've said. I do appreciate you being on our tales of the Ruther. I, I, it's an honor. And as I was telling you before we started recording, I love this book. It's a great need. Thank you so much. Special, special place that is needed in, in, in gay history, but as well as U. S. politics as well. So we thank you. And again, I'm stepping Fry here in Detroit, uh, 18 years worked in Atlanta worked in D. C. A. And, uh.
Detroit and, um, I want to thank you all again for joining us. Episode six, uh, Delta workers show up big during winter weather. We deserve better. so we've had some weather these last couple of weeks, uh, really intense winter weather, um, especially today, I guess it's like the polar wind or polar vortex, but, uh, some snow and, and things around the systems.
That have kind of hampered a bit of the operation and we've had to step up in a lot of big ways to, um, to make up for the shortfalls, um, who would like to kind of take control to go from here. Amanda flex Dan to kind of give your perspective on how you see things going so far with that. Yeah, I'll, uh, I'll start. If you guys don't mind, uh, here in Minneapolis, it was, I think the high was minus six today. Uh, this morning when we woke up, it was minus 13 with a wind chill of about minus 25.
So those aren't fun conditions to work in. Um, And I've got a little bit of a story from a few weeks ago. It was like three weeks ago. It was right before Christmas. It was on a Thursday, I remember. And we were severely short staffed and they were giving us flight after flight. You finish one flight, you have another one in the gate. Finish that flight, another one in the gate. And it literally, our pucks touched each other throughout the entire day to where you didn't get a lunch.
So whenever we were finished the next day, I saw my manager and I asked him, Hey, will you look into this because you schedule us for eight and a half hours a day, but you only pay us for eight. Will you give me the extra 30 minutes of compensation? Said, I'll look into it. So he ran it up to the director, uh, and nobody ever got back to me, but it was around Christmas. I was like, you know what? I'm going to give them plenty of time.
So like 10 days later, I go back to him and ask what's, uh, what's the verdict on that extra pay? And, uh, he said, yeah, it's not going to happen. Um, so I was like, all right. And I walked away, but it feels really disrespectful whenever you do get worked for eight and a half with a company that's that we make extremely successful and you can't even do things that union contracts do, which is guarantee a lunch or, or pay it a lunch for it. Um, and if to fast forward to yesterday, I got it.
I didn't sign up for overtime today. It's my day off. Uh, but I got a text. Hey, do you want to work an RDO for today? And I just said, no, thanks. Um, and the reason that I said no thanks is because I remember that, like, I want to feel respected, like I want to feel valued and I have a feeling if you're calling me on my day off for overtime, you're really short staffed and it's really cold out there, so. The least that you can do is staff the operation properly.
And even if I did go in, it's going to be severely understaffed. So it's just, it's, it's not fun. And I don't, uh, I feel that we deserve to be respected 365 days a year for the value that we put into this company. I'll pass it to Flex. Yeah, I appreciate that. Right.
I just want to kind of jump in and like, it's, it's, we really have to, we as employees have undervalued our worth at Delta Airlines sometimes, uh, Anytime they talk about the Delta difference, man, they're not talking about the technology alone.
They're talking about the services provided and those services are provided by the employees upstairs, downstairs, whether you're a mechanic, whether you're a pilot, whether you're a flight attendant, their experience is, is, is really built on how we treat them. And we don't always value that properly. I know in Atlanta, we don't have the ISIS and I'm just going to, I'm going to throw a number out there. I can't confirm it, but we lost like 250 de icing jobs.
We don't have de icers like we used to, and that work is done by Unified. So when people start coming in here to do Atlanta work, so if you guys all come down here, your station is losing people to come help ours because ours never had enough people to do our work in the first place. And that's the issue. You know what I'm saying? And it's not that people here aren't willing to work. It's because they're willing to cut profit.
Oh, I should say that they're willing to cut, uh, employee expense for profit. And that is one of the biggest things that we're fighting. We're not fighting like they try to make this as a, uh, seem like it's an anti union versus union thing. And that's. Clearly not the case at all. All of us want the same thing. It's just how they pitch it to the people that changes how we view it. It's the angle that you're looking at. So thanks for tuning in with us.
If you have questions that were not answered, or maybe a specific topic that you'd like to have address, leave us a comment And that's a wrap for this week's edition of the labor radio podcast, weekly, a Roundup of just a few of the programs they're at over the last week or so on more than 200 that's right. 200 labor radio and podcast shows. They are all part of the labor radio podcast network shows that focus on. Working people's issues and concerns. We've got links to all the networks shows.
Labor radio network.org. We just revamped the website, check it out, let us know what you think. Labour radio network.org. You can also find them use the hashtag labor radio pod on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. And don't forget, let us know what you think of the show. Drop us a note [email protected]. And you can be part of the network. You don't even need a microphone or a studio. Labor radio podcast network t-shirts are available. They're union may you'll find them in.
All sizes and two [email protected]. This podcast recorded. Under a sag after a collective bargaining agreement. The labor radio podcast weekly edited this week by a dedicated volunteer. I produced the show, our social media guru always and forever. Is Mr. Harold Phillips. For the labor radio podcast weekly, this has been Chris Garlock stay active. And stay tuned to your local labor radio podcast show. We will see you. Next week.