On this episode of Going Underground, we speak to labor journalist Hamilton Nolan, author of ‘The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor’. He discusses the soaring popularity of trade unions in the US and why the country may be at a tipping point to reclaim worker power, why US President Joe Biden has been disappointing for workers despite being the ‘most pro-union President in history’, the decades of decline of union power and why US laws incentivise union busting practices by companies, whether the AFL-CIO should be dismantled and replaced with a new labor federation, the successful drive by Starbucks workers to unionize stores one by one, why Donald Trump and the Republicans are a non-starter for trade unions in the 2024 election race, the relationship between America’s unions and the military-industrial complex, why new union organizing may be the only way to bridge the polarization gap in the US, and much more.
