“Men in hard hats were once the heart of America’s working class. Now it is women in scrubs,” says historian Gabriel Winant, author of The Next Shift, who joins Suzi to explain how deindustrialization made health care the country’s largest employer, but the jobs are lower paid, understaffed, and more precarious.
That’s playing out now at UVM Medical Center, where Vermont's own regulator found the nonprofit hospital was over-earning. Its response? Cut union jobs while nineteen top executives split $3 million in bonuses. Three union leaders — Melissa LaVallee, Teagan Cook, and Emma Galvin — from AFT Vermont, a branch of the American Federation of Teachers, describe the fight from inside for safe staffing and common-good demands. Their contract expires midnight on August 13th. The stakes are national.
Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.