The union was a partner in helping the company come out of, you know, nearly bankruptcy, right? And so to build back into a profitable enterprise, the union worked side by side with management. We don't want to up end to accommodate a business model. So we in the labor movement would argue that it's really the responsibility of our country to say is there a base line that we all agree that working people deserve?
Organized labor hasn’t had this much public support in 50 years, and yet the percentage of Americans in a union is near a record low. A.F.L-C.I.O. president Liz Shuler tries to explain this gap — and persuade Stephen Dubner that “the folks who brought you the weekend” still have the leverage to fix a broken economy.