Jacobin Radio w/ Suzi Weissman: John Logan and Veena Dubal
In this episode: John Logan on organizing at Amazon in Alabama and Veena Dubal on anti-worker Proposition 22 going national and global.Suzi talks to John Logan, labor historian at San Francisco State (https://cob.sfsu.edu/faculty/faculty-spotlight), about the organizing initiative of Amazon workers in Alabama, taking on a notoriously anti-union company -- in the midst of a pandemic. The implications for this struggle are nothing less than historic, and titanic: taking on Amazon is akin to what it was to take on General Motors in the 1930s, with the same implication for capital-labor relations in contemporary capitalism. We also get John Logan’s views of President Biden’s promising labor-friendly measures and appointments. Veena Dubal, Law Professor at UC Hastings (https://www.uchastings.edu/people/veena-dubal/) joins us to talk about the exploitative condition of precarious platform workers, particularly in the ride-share companies. She says the passage of Prop 22 in California has emboldened these companies to go national, and is a grim precedent that poses extreme danger to workers everywhere. Veena strikes a note of hope for the new administration so far, but affirms that organizing will be the key.