Rachel Slade, the author of Making It in America, joined the America’s Work Force Union Podcast to discuss the subjects of her recent book, Ben and Whitney Waxman, and how they created an American-made apparel company with a United Steelworker-organized workforce.
Slade’s book, Making It in America, took a decade to complete. Slade found her subjects, Ben and Whitney Waxman, after learning how they leveraged union protections to build a successful workforce for their apparel manufacturing company, American Roots. Ben Waxman previously worked as an organizer with the AFL-CIO, working closely with previous AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. When Ben and Whitney, a former bar manager, decided to start an American-made apparel company, they used ethically sourced material from the U.S. and made it with a union workforce.
Slade talked about how the Waxmans found their workforce after they started their company in 2013. They wanted to ensure their worker-first message became a reality, so they contacted the USW to form a new bargaining unit within Local 366 in Maine. This provided benefits, livable wages and workforce protections to their new employees, many of whom were immigrants forced to flee their original country and become American citizens. The knowledge of the union benefits and job security helped the Waxmans grow their company to as many as 150 local workers.
The pandemic turned out to be a moment of growth for the company. As a company that usually makes branded apparel for unions to use at events and conferences, Slade said the pandemic initially created concerns about the company's future. It was after watching the events at hospitals around the country struggling to find masks for their nurses and doctors that the Waxman’s had the idea to approach their union workers about creating a safe, clean environment to produce Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) like masks. Slade talked about how the Waxman’s used their union ties to source the materials from other union shops in America. The Waxman’s story is a perfect example of how unions can be the basis for building and establishing a manufacturing company in America, and how the rest of the manufacturing industry can learn from their model, Slade said.
Learn more about union-made apparel coming from American Roots by listening to the show above, and then get a copy of Slade’s book here.
America’s Work Force is the only daily labor podcast in the US and has been on the air since 1993, supplying listeners with useful, relevant input into their daily lives through fact-finding features, in-depth interviews, informative news segments and practical consumer reports. America’s Work Force is committed to providing an accessible venue in which America's workers and their families can hear discussion on important, relevant topics such as employment, healthcare, legislative action, labor-management relations, corporate practices, finances, local and national politics, consumer reports and labor issues.
America’s Work Force Union Podcast is brought to you in part by our sponsors: AFL-CIO, American Federation of Government Employees, American Federation of Musicians Local 4, Alliance for American Manufacturing, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes-IBT, Boyd Watterson, Columbus/Central Ohio Building and Construction Trades Council, Communication Workers of America, Mechanical Insulators Labor Management Cooperative Trust, International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators and Allied Workers Local 50, International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Crafts, International Union of Painters and Allied Trades District Council 6, Ironworkers Great Lakes District Council, Melwood, The Labor Citizen newspaper, Laborers International Union of North America, The National Labor Office of Blue Cross and Blue Shield, North Coast Area Labor Federation, Ohio Federation of Teachers, United Labor Agency, United Steelworkers.
