Professor Joshua Freeman, Distinguished Professor, City University of New York (CUNY) School of Labor and Urban Studies
Professor Freeman received a B.A. from Harvard University and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Rutgers University. He previously taught at Columbia University and the College at Old Westbury, SUNY. He has written extensively about the history of labor, modern America, and New York City. His books include Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World; Working-Class New York: Life and Labor since World War II; American Empire: The Rise of a Global Power, the Democratic Revolution at Home; In Transit: The Transport Workers Union in New York City, 1933-1966. He is the co-editor (with Steve Fraser) of Audacious Democracy: Labor, Intellectuals, and the Social Renewal of America. Dr. Freeman has appeared in several television documentaries, including the American Experience episode, “Blackout,” and Ric Burns’ New York. He has consulted for unions and for the New York City Central Labor Council on strategy and internal education.
Transcript
Hello. Um, I’m Katy Reedy, today’s moderator. Welcome to the foreign press centers Video conference briefing on understanding the history of labor in the United States. Please keep your microphone muted until you’re called on to ask a question. If you have technical problems during the briefing, you can use the chat feature, and we will try to assist you as a reminder of today’s ground rules. This briefing is on the record. I’d like to introduce our briefer professor Joshua Freeman. He is the A distinguished professor at the Graduate Center of Queens College of the City University of New York. He previously taught at Columbia University and the College at Old Westbury, Sunni. He has written extensively about the history of Labour, modern America and New York City. His books include Behemoths, A History of the Factory and The Making of the Modern World. Working Class New York Life in Labor since World War Two. American Empire. The Rise of a Global Power, the Democratic Revolution at home in Transit, the Transport Workers Union in New York City, 1933 to 1966. This press briefing is an opportunity to better understand the history of labor in the United States and to ask any questions you may have on this topic as a reminder. Our briefers opinions are his own and do not represent those of the US government. Professor Freeman will provide opening remarks, and then we will open this briefing to questions and answers. Professor Bremen, Please go ahead. Thanks a lot. I want to thank the Foreign Press Center for inviting me and for the journalists for joining in. It’s always a pleasure. Have journalists who want to know about history. So I’m gonna try to give a concise history of labor in the United States. And with a few remarks about where things are today and then the plenty of time for questions, the U. S labor movement is almost a Zolder as United States itself. Association of Shoemakers in Philadelphia in 17 92 not long after the Revolution founded what’s generally considered the first union to be established in the country. And over the next century, unions grew in size and power very episodically. They’re expanding in prosperous times, shrink in economic downturns, as in many parts of the world. Originally, union members overwhelmingly skilled crafts people. These room men. They were white, and they organized according to the particular craft Barrow makers, carpenters, bakers or whatever. Uh, but by the middle of 19 century, you began to get a kind of expansion toe. Other types of workers miners, railroad workers, factory workers, unskilled labourers now will begin to join unions in relatively modest numbers. The growth of industrial capitalism and the emergence of national corporations after the American Civil War, first in the railroad industry and any other industries. Let’s just really titanic clashes between workers and employers. I think one reason for this was that many workers sweat development of these kinds of unprecedented concentrations of wealth as threatening not just their employment situation, but the very nature of American democracy. And you saw this kind of explosion in 18 77 when, uh, this is an economic downturn period. The railroad lines, which of the biggest corporations and in the country cut wages over and over again, and the result was the first national strike in U. S. History, which resulted in scores of death. And I have a photo. I want to show you if I could get up here. Uh, that gives you some sense of the intensity of, I guess what you quote class conflict in the United States. This is the roundhouse of the Pennsylvania Railroad in Pittsburgh. To put down the strike the governor sent in the state militia, which proceed to kill 20 strikers and the retaliation, they burned down what was one of the largest railway complexes in the world. Um uh, less than 10 years later, 18 85 86. Another huge wave of strikes, this time primarily in an unsuccessful effort to achieve the eight hour day workers typically were 50 60 70 hours during that period of time. 18. 93 economic depression. Yet another wave of strikes and one notable characteristic of these 19th century strikes was the high level of violence between workers and employers and workers in the police between 18 75 and 1910. State malicious, Which is what today, we recall. The National Guard was called out nearly 500 times to deal with labour unrest, and it’s interesting you’re prior to the 19 sixties, when the National Guard and even the regular army was repeatedly mobilized to deal with race related urban disorders. The main reason that military force was used domestically in the United States was to deal with labour strife. Well, as you get this rising level of kind of conflict and militancy, there are efforts to create national labor organizations that would bring together local and craft based groups. The Knights of Labour. Let’s see if I could put up another illustration that’s got, um, depiction. Ology is here. The Knights of Labour was the most successful 19th century labour group. It was a kind of odd mixture of ah kind of labor union and a reform organization. It wanted to get rid of the emerging industrial capitalist system with replace it with some sort of cooperative system. It was briefly very successful, but then, by the end of the 19th century, really fell apart and the organization have proved more enduring. Was the American Federation of Labor and a lot of the traits of the American Federation of Labor? Uh, really still characterized American unions, And so let me say a few things about a FL Unions tended to be very contract oriented. They saw their main goal as signing legally binding agreements with particular employers that sort of set the terms and conditions of employment and they developed kind of bureaucracies. T enforce these kinds of contracts. So thes became led by full time labor leaders. Kind of labour leadership became a kind of career. If you want to think of it that way, um uh, also, the A f l was quite exclusionary organization. The Knights of Labour were very inclusionary. About 10% of the members were African American. The A F L many of its components band, black members and female member. What workers were kind of largely ignored after you just had to be very pragmatic politically, they avoided sweeping reform programs in the electoral well, they concentrated on to use the phrase of the day we reward our friends and punish our enemies. The United States, unlike most industrial countries, never developed an independent Labour Party. American unions have operated through alliances with the major parties. And, of course, in recent years, this is fine merrily met alliances with Democratic Party. So this is the kind of the model of American unionism that develops by the end of 19th century. It had a lot of critics, mostly from the left and the same kind of wave of radicalism that you saw in Europe in the early 20th century hit the United States. The greatest strike wave in U. S. History took place in 1919 1 out of every five workers in the entire country went on strike. One of the interesting things about this that I think no one thought about two recently is this actually overlap with worst pandemic in U. S. History through the influenza epidemic of 1918 1919. There’s no research of after relationship of these two things, but it doesn’t seem as if the epidemic caused strikes. But it didn’t inhibit political action either. It’s sort of I was thinking about this because it’s kind of similar. I think of the situation we’ve seen recently with the anti racist demonstration since the killing of George Floyd. About 10% of nine agricultural workers belong to a union in the beginning of the 20th century. That number plunged after the stock market crash in 1929 Aziz mass unemployment developed, but the depression turned out to be actually the greatest moment of labour advance in U. S. History and had two aspects to it. One was a big wave of union organizing. Um at the forefront of this was a new union organisation, which was called the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Uh, that was found in 1935 and it still has a group of in the A F L but broke off the A f l was still concentrating on skilled workers organized by craft. The CIA said, Forget it. If you want to organize the giant companies that dominate the economy for GM US steel, Goodyear, these air all nonunion and it says the old methods will never organize them. We have to organize everybody skilled, unskilled, white black who, working in a given workplace into the same union, and within a decade they pretty much succeeded in doing that. They organized the entire steel and rubber and, uh, automobile electrical equipment manufacturing, ah, industries. If you want thinking contemporary terms, Issa’s If suddenly, uh, someone succeeded in unionizing Wal Mart, Amazon, FedEx, McDonald’s, Burger King, IBM in Home Depot. I didn’t pull those names out of the hat. Those are all among the 10 largest employers. The United States. They’re all non union. It’s a Ziff. Suddenly they all became union. And with this gigantic increase in union membership from three million to 15 million in 1940 five. So that right after World War Two, you see the peak of US union membership, with about 35% of workers belong to unions. The other thing you see in the same period is changes in labor law. Uh, in 1935 Congress passes the National Labor Relations Act well, what was called the Wagner Act after Senator Robert Wagner, its sponsor and this for the first time, says American workers have a right a federal right to belong to a union to engage in collective activity, to go on strike without Reprisal. And it required employers if the majority of workers indicated they wanted toe have a union it requiring employers like it or not to recognize the union and engage in collective bargaining and establish a system of what was called exclusive representation. The union that indicated it had majority support represented every worker, including those that joined it and those that didn’t and any contract. That sign covered every worker in the workplace. So this is a different system than you see, and let’s say, France or Italy, where you might have multiple unions in the same workplace. All this is still the case today. Um, the other thing you saw in the same time period was the Social Security Act, which created are still existing system of old age pensions and unemployment insurance. And then, three years later, in 1938 the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established the minimum wage 40 hour week and the idea of over time you have to pay people extra if they work more than the designated work week. One thing to note. These laws were not universal. They only covered people who could be considered involved in interstate commerce. In some way or another, They explicitly excluded farm workers, domestic workers and public employees. And to this day, for example, public employees are not covered by federal labor law, and in many states they are not allowed to join unions. And collective bargaining is illegal. Uh, but all in all, this was a tremendous advance, and the Post we weren’t Quarter century was a kind of golden era for American workers because you had an expanding economy and a high level of unionization which met a wages went up and new benefits became common pensions to supplement Social Security health insurance vacations. This was a time when, uh, economic typically income inequality was at historic low. And you, year after year workers you could and their families. They sold life gang bending of things that were previously almost unimaginable on your car. Owning a home, taking a vacation, sending Children to college, retiring when you were still, uh, able to do things. These became kind of commonplace. So this is, I think the kind of golden age reveals a Make America great again. I think a lot of people’s has. This is the moment they’re thinking about, um, if you look really carefully. There were already signs that Labour’s have dances stole 1947. Congress modifies the Wagner Act with something called the Taft Hartley Act that diminishes the rights of unions. It’s a kind of shift in favor of employers in terms of the rules and regulations, and I could go into the details, but but I won’t do it now. But the Net effective is to make it harder for unions to organize and to create a two tier system where some states could opt out of some of the rules which happened in the South, making them more attractive to employers who want to minimize union presence. Um, so you know, kind of labour advances pretty much stopped by the late fifties early sixties. The big exception with public employees private. Prior to the 19 sixties, very few public employees belong to unions. But then came a two decade waving, organizing the put millions of teachers and policemen and fire man parks workers and so forth into the labor movement. Many of these workers were female or non white, and this organizing success in part was the result of a spillover, I think, from the civil rights movement and then the women’s movement, which were contemporaneous with it. So all mid thirties to mid seventies period of big advance on, then a 40 year decline begins in 1970 27% of all nine agricultural workers blown through union. By 1983 that was down to 20%. By last year 2019 it was down to just 10%. I throw up a picture here, which I hope we’ll give you an image of this, uh, as you could see from this chart, I hope most of the decline is in the private sector. Eso that the public sector later to be organized ends up being much more heavily organized on by recent years. You actually have about the same number of private and public workers in the union movement in the private sector, what they call union density. The percentage of workers who belonged to a union is only 6%. In other words, lower than it waas. And let’s say 1900. Okay, now, now why this decline happened. That’s a complicated question, a couple factors I’ve mentioned. One is a much tougher anti union standby business, starting during the very deep recession of the late 19 seventies and early 19 eighties. Another is the decline of industries that were traditionally strong, the union manufacturing and mining in particular, while the growing industries were particularly in the service sector, which had lower unionization rates, ah, similar on equality in regional patterns, you know unions have been strongest in the Midwest and Northeast, but since the 19 eighties, the greatest growth of United States in terms of jobs and population is in the south and southwest areas traditionally weak in unions. Today, uh, you have 23% of workers in the U. S state belonging to the union. That’s the highest number in the country in the Carolinas. North Carolina, South Carolina. It’s 2% so tenfold difference in different parts of the country. In very recent years, they’ve been some signs of revival of labor movement, but not primarily taking the form of growing union membership. But alternative strategies. Alternative organizations I think probably the most impressive is what’s called the fight for 15. This was a campaign launched by some fast food workers in New York in 1920 in Excuse Me in 2012 who were seeking, you know, better pay better conditions. They demanded a $15 an hour minimum wage, which is the time seemed like totally off the chart because the federal minimum wage at the time and now is $7.25. What’s amazing is that within a few years in seven different states, the states passed minimum wages of $15 of mawr. Some cities have done this. Eso there’s been a tremendous increase. Now there’s actually was a union that was kind of looking behind this s e I u. It provided political financial support. It hoped this would convert into bigger union membership. That didn’t happen. So you got improved wages but not increased union membership. You’ve seen this similarly, in the growth of what worker centers. These are nonprofits that serve primarily low wage immigrant workers, many undocumented. They’ve been pretty successful in winning some advances, but it has not converted into more union members of again. Another thing like this. A lot of online worker advocate organizations. Ah, some in the tech industry. These have grown up. They’ve had some success, but not in terms of union membership. So what we’re seeing is with not significant union gains. But we are seeing questions of labour and labour rights and the treatment of workers as being more central to US political discussion. I think in the last few years, then for quite a while on understand, by pointing out that we’ve certainly seen this in the current pandemic, Um, in the issue of so called essential workers, you know, the warehouse workers, the meatpacking workers, the delivery workers, um, you know, frankly, generally ignored by the public. But, you know, they have now received a lot of attention, and their conditions have been highlighted, and companies like Amazon have found themselves facing rather unusual levels of public criticism and worker protests because of what is seen as a failure to adequately protect the health of their workers. You know, does this mark the beginning of some long term shift, or is this just a very short term temporary cove? In a related development? Uh, I don’t know. It’s very hard to say. I think when we come out of this, the world’s gonna look out different in a lot of ways. Whether it looks different, terms of labor relations remains to be seen. So I think I’ll stop there and happy to answer any questions that you folks have. Thank you so much, Professor. Let’s first hear from those participating via the zoo map, and then I don’t think they actually have anyone who has called in. So, um yes. So for those of you who have joined, please click the rays hand, but I already see a hand up. It’s great, um, at the bottom of your screen, you should able to choose that option, and I will call on you, Um, and please, as a courtesy. Please do on. Provide your full name and outlet. Um, Okay. So, Pearl, I really leave a question from Koroma today. Thank you very much, Katherine. I appreciate this platform again. Minimus pearl. I’m with the Mail and Guardian South Africa. Uh, thank you very much, Professor Freeman. And more importantly, I always appreciate data and data visualization. So I really appreciate you sharing the slides that you put up today. You brought up a question in terms off the fact that labour is becoming an important issue, particularly in the face of covered 19. But it’s also prior to covered. 19 was a key element in the 2020 US election. Especially when Senator Sanders was running of the issue of unions. Was risky, I believe maybe in textile Arizona part. Remember which state. Um, how do you see that playing out its I find it interesting that you pinpointed certain sectors in my mind. I thought union activity was more prevalent in the hospitality sector. Could you speak a little bit about where you see unions being impacted in this current election? Thank you. Yeah. That’s a really complicated question. Because, you know, the the American Working class is so diverse and union membership is so diverse. So you know, for example, you put into the hospitality industry, which has been a success story for unions. You know, in the era when their traditional strong areas that’s a construction and manufacturing had been a particular manufacturing, have been shrinking. Well, hospitality workers are heavily nonwhite in this country, heavily female, and their union is quite progressive. You know, I think the spectrum in the hospitality union goes from your critics on the right. You know Bernie Sanders on the left. I think they will be a very important a pro. Biden, if you know, uh, element that they could be mobilized to vote in large numbers and their many other unionized areas like that Donald Trump, Obviously with a great deal. Publicity did win a fair number of white male working class boats, particularly in some key areas like the Midwest. Um, I think that factor perhaps, has been overemphasized, but it’s certainly a real factor. And when you have such close elections in certain key states, um, we had those workers land up, you know, will be very important. And I don’t think any of us really know you know. I mean, uh, Trump is pretty good at the symbolic level, but he hasn’t really delivered a lot of things. He promised. So will it be a disillusion in that group? It remains to be seen. So I think, you know, uh, looking up Americans without more than a high school education, who, working relatively low paid jobs of the majority of four people in the country, you know, And most them don’t belong to unions, but a fair number do, and they will be critical. But, you know, I would get a lot more money if I could tell you how I thought it would be playing out. Thank you very much, Professor Freeman. I do have a follow up question, but maybe after the other journalists have asked if indeed there’s any time I’ll ask Follow up questions. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Do we have any other? Anyone else would like to raise their hand to ask the question. Um, Pearl, do you want to just go ahead? That’s be great. And we can Good folks. Home quacks. Yes, Yes. Thank you very much. Katherine. So Professor Freeman, my follow up question is you mentioned the fact that for government employees, for example, it’s illegal for them to belong to a union. And yet we see the I guess, um, this bargaining has helped other other people in other sectors. And yet we’ve also seen in recent years where the government has actually shut down and so government employees cannot bargain. You know a lot of that bargaining process who is who’s bargaining on their behalf, And I just want to raise another element to my question there in. But Pearl let me let me fire fight, cause I I obviously was not clear. And so let me explain this. And now take the rest of it is no federal regulation or federal rights for public employees, which means that every state is different. So in some states it is illegal to have collective bargaining for public employees. For example, in the state of Virginia, it’s elite. Let’s say this some local school board public school system it wants to bargain with the union signed a contract is not legally allowed to do that. Then there are other states, for example, like New York that do allow bargaining and there’s lots of unionization. Your state but strikes or illegal. Okay, Then there s states like Pennsylvania where public sector bargaining is legal and public employees strikes or meal, so there’s a huge range. This issues gotten a fair amount of attention last couple weeks because among the workers who in some places unionized our police, you know, um, but in other places, they can’t engage in collective bargaining. So it’s really kind of mishmash. So I hope that’s a little clear than my initial presentation It is, but it s so I just wanted to add at the second portion of my But I want you to try and clarify. Clarifying my understanding is, for example, a to the end off 2019 government employees in the District of Columbia, for example, um, in order for them to get in a raise and increase a certain percentage to their to their earnings, they weren’t part of the ones who were bargaining with negotiating. I think the recommendations, I think, came one recommendation from the White House with a certain percentage increase, and another recommendation came from Congress with second percentage increase. So are they waiting on them to decide whether or not the get over it increases and how much they’re not playing a part on. Did you see the few messiest smiling way? Yeah. You What? What? What can other countries learn from him from this process? Yeah, uh, you picked such an odd example because the District of Columbia is the Onley local area, the only city which is directly controlled by the federal government. So there, you know Congress can overrule the local elected government and actually do anything it wants. You know, this is not a state. It’s directly has a special stand. So that’s a very unusual circumstance. And it becomes, Ah, a football. You know, partisan football if I gets about to happen all over again because the Democrats going to pass a bill in the house to propose making it a state and then their opponents get turned down. So it’s unusual Case, I think if you looking in other countries, in a way, the United States is a kind of natural experiment because you don’t have one system. You have 50 systems in different states, and you know you could look and see which one do you think works better? A lot of states who do allow collective bargaining, don’t want have strikes, makes strikes illegal and use arbitration systems to determine wages for public employees. Sometimes they have to go that route. Sometimes they can choose to go that route. So there’s a whole variety. Whether this makes sense as opposed to having a national system, I don’t know. But this really has to do this is going into the weeds of the constitutional basis for labour law. Why can the federal gum regulate things like wages or union rights? Well, it’s because Congress get the Constitution gives Congress and the federal government the right to regulate interstate commerce that does not interstate commerce. Then it falls to the individual states. So that’s why we have this crazy hodgepodge. And it’s led to a very decentralized and fragmented labour movement in the United States in the public sector compared to most other countries. Thank you, Pearl. Did you have a fell upon that? Are you all set? Um, um let me think, because, uh I mean, I certainly appreciate Professor Freeman’s explanations. I think they’re very, very helpful. You had one slide that you put up, but I noticed that the slide only ends in 2013. So I was taking a look at that. Graphically. We’re emphasizing the flying. I believe in the private sector. Do you have another other information? Perhaps I could reach out to you by email that go? Sure. Your more recent data. Yeah. You know, you’re welcome to I’ll just had a piece of data and then, you know, I’m happy to say my email Right now it’s J. Freeman as my name, and it’s at G c dot C u n y dot e d you feel free? I could bring the chat on the one peace, I would add, is that since that chart ended in terms of absolute numbers, they’re actually now Mawr publicly employed workers who belonged to a union that privately employed and that is unprecedented in the past. US history. This is a new situation. Thank you very, very much. Thank you. Thank you. All right, So we have a question from the chat. This is from Takashi Obuchi from the Asahi Shimbun from Japan on Their question is Thanks for the informative talk. Some say we now need a new a new new deal to deal with the fierce economic prices. What should be done in terms of labour policy. Do you think Biden can be the FDR of the 21st century? Well, I think American labor laws pretty much broken, I think the rules that were established in the 19 thirties, and that’s a long time ago at this point and they no longer correspond to the way workers were being recognized. And we have so much subcontracting gig work, shorter term employment stents. Um, we also have much fiercer employer resistance. Eso that you know, if they do polls. The majority of all workers said they would like to be in the union. Yet on Lee, you know, about 10% actually are able to achieve that. So I do think we need I would say, we do need a new new deal. And it does need a revision of labor law to more effectively achieved the aim of the original 19 thirties legislation, which is to give workers a voice in employment to bring some component democracy into the workplace. How you have lots of proposals. There was just a big study up at Harvard University at the Kennedy School off a proposal for a revision, and there are other things like this. So there’s a lot of talk about this, and I’m sure people are. I’m buying a very well aware of these issues, uh, can buy and be the next FDR. I don’t know, but I would say the only reason why FDR could be FDR was because there were massive popular movements, uh, dealing with issues like housing, unemployment, labour relations that were pressing, you know, the whole political establishment to be much more proactive. So if Biden is going to be able to achieve big scale change, you know, here I think Bernie Sanders was right when you said, you know, it has to be a movement. It can’t be a person. Uh, and I don’t know, we’ve seen a lot of very unprecedented level of I give in the last couple weeks, but it’s been around a very specific set of issues. Thank you. All right, we have a hand up from Alex from Tehran News Agency, and I will turn it over to him. Thank you. Katherine and Josh, this is Alex. Raf Ola from Tony, Stages of Azerbaijan. Wonderful presentation. Thank you for doing this humane. Sure. If plans on your you spoke a little about the behavior of American labor during that time the last centuries, the two questions popped up in my mind. One is American labor rebound on once again, extraordinary right now. So keeping cart, you know, so contested over it and your men off us are focused on the response off the government for pandemic. And obviously it’s a comet impact. But the private sector must lead as well rights not just in the recovery of face, but also in crisis response. Given its capacity for rapid adaptation and innovation, understanding off consumer behavior flexibility. Just name it. So my question is, how can the public and private sector collaborate most effectively in restarting financial floors, delivering essential health and other services to vulnerable and restoring life was, Thank you very much. Yeah, that’s a big question. A couple questions. I’m just historian, but let me let me look back first. You know, it’s interesting. American labor has made some of its greatest advances in periods of crisis or, uh, great national stress, and particularly during the two World wars, because there was some sense in these moments that the country’s security, it’s it’s victory depended not just on the soldier in the field, but on the industrial worker, you know, these are the the great industrial wars. And unless you could turn out the planes and the tanks, you can never win. So the there’s a kind of, uh, strategic and moral, uh, rise in the standing of workers took the industrial workers, which translated into greater union strength, political strength, ultimately greater wages and benefits. You know, I think we sort of saw something a little bit like that in the past few months with essential workers. You know, Ah, lot of companies felt the need to raise their wages by $2. This became a kind of new norm, uh, to recognize the risks, but also, frankly, the kind of high profile of these workers who they often creep real Owsley toe the pandemic it. So you know, there is an opportunity for workers. I think who’s conditions have now been exposed to the public? Um, a sympathetic public, I think, you know, to the grocer, to the delivery man, to the person who they have been depending on whether this will be capitalized on in a way that goes beyond just the covert epidemic. I don’t know. You know, it’s just interesting Right now, for example, major corporations have so divided on what to do with this high pay. You know, the extent I hide but $2 extra. Amazon is cancelled. Ready? You know, Target announced. I think just today that then making it permanent. So, you know, behind the scenes. I think this is very much in play right now. Um, in terms of moving forward economic recovery? Absolutely. You know, you can need both public and private involvement right now. You know, we have that. But it’s mostly in terms of the federal role. Is giving money lending power credit into the private sector? It’s not providing a whole lot direction in terms of investment priorities and so forth it, you know, And it’s leaving that kind of to the individual private companies. I wonder going forward if we’re gonna need a more ah, guy given balance. Let’s put it that way between public and private, with more of a composed opponent of planning, which is something that you did see in the New Deal era. A lot Americans don’t like that, but a lot of Americans, you know, also other Americans think that that that is important. So I think that will be very much kind of attention. And I think, um, who wins the presidential election? I think that issue’s gonna be lurking there. Thanks so much. Thank you. It looks like pearls. Hand is up again. Or maybe that was from before world. You have another question? Yes. I will make this my last question for you. Thank you very much. I make this my last question for you, Professor Freeman. Um, right around. Now, the United States government is exploring how to have more resilient engagement with Africa. I’m part of that is engaging us businesses with Africa’s. Already they are have had these decades and decades off knowledge in terms off how they work with their relationships with their workforce. Um, if you what to think off perhaps three things as takeaways as lessons from history lessons from history of labor that you think had long term gain in terms of being drivers off. Four for workers. What would those be? What key? What? Three key drivers were lessons from history. Well, you know, I think I would go back to that mid thirties moment and and you know, it’s interesting. What was the thinking behind creating these new rights and these new structures? And I think it was multiple. No one was a kind of democratization instinct that said, You know, why should workers have rights every place except where they spend most of a day, which is the workplace, You know, where you have no rights of speech or, you know so forth. But there were under instincts to one was to channel eyes, high level of disruption. I mean, I showed you that picture that burned down, you know, train yard. You know, for people like Robert Wagner, who wrote that Bill, they all on that. So they want to create institutional frameworks for what they see as inevitable conflict between employers employees. So it’s not going to eliminate that. We’re gonna find institutional means to regulate that. And then there’s 1/3 piece, which I think is very relevant and not just Africa, but you, China and a lot of the world, which is there is a kind of can zine assumption behind a lot of American labor. Lol Oh, no one in United States realizes if you read the preamble to the bill. The idea is not just a give rights but also says, Look, the problem United States has is not that we can’t make lots of stuff in 1935 it’s that we have. Overcapacity does not enough demand. We have empty factories. Factories aren’t working farms that are making too much food. How do we solve this problem? You have the increased consumer demand. How do we do that? Give power to workers to succeed in raising their own wages. And this will create a kind of virtuous circle where higher wages will stimulate the economy, which will increase output in productivity, which could then support higher wages and so on. So, um, you know, this is a different model that, for example, China used until recently, which was so much based on infrastructure investment as stimulating demand, you know, which. Not that something is wrong with that. But I think even a lot of Chinese policymakers now realize that you need increased consumer demand, so labour relations and unionism actually can be a macroeconomic tool to stimulate demand. America’s been going the opposite direction of the last 20 or 30 years, and, you know, uh the ability to buy things for a lot of Americans is gone. Now, I think that is one of the reasons why I had pretty chronic economic problems in the 21st century. Uh, what I’m saying, not everyone would agree for sure, but I think you know if if you asked me for a take away for another region. These are parts of American history I would look at. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Um, all right. Do we have any final questions? Okay, well, with that, I want to thank Professor Freeman for his time and forgiving this presentation today. As I mentioned, it was on the record. And so we will have a transcript that we will be able to post on our website. And hopefully we can refer those with questions about this topic to that transcript for many years to come. So thank you again. It’s everyone nice