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Season 5, Episode 205

Blogger offers new organizing approach to attract union members

Picture of awfblog awfblog October 14, 2024

America's Work Force Union Podcast AWF Noah Smith

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Guest Name:

Noah Smith

Guest Website:

Noahpinion

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Noah Smith, who writes the Noahpinion Substack blog, joined the America’s Work Force Union Podcast to discuss his article, “Let us pause to appreciate the remarkable U.S. economy.”

Smith has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan, where he studied behavioral finance, an economic theory that attempts to explain irrational financial behavior. He was a professor of finance at Stonybrook University before growing weary of academia. Eventually, he got into blog writing and his Substack blog has taken off. 

When it comes to labor unions, Smith believes they need to change how they organize. Instead of the current shop-to-shop approach, which remains a legacy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, he believes a transition should be made to Australia's sectoral unionization. This broad system operates at the sector level and the whole city. He believes if this was implemented in the U.S., it would would usher in a big wave of unionization.

Smith also spoke about the need to upgrade infrastructure at U.S. ports to bring railcars onto the docks. He compared the inefficiency of U.S. ports to ports in other countries.

On the topic of the economy, Smith discussed how raising interest rates caused two major recessions in the early 1980s. Now, he said the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, inflation decreased and the employment rate is holding. Inflation, he added, has been over for at least one year, if not two years.

Outside of the unsustainable U.S. debt, which he believes can only be solved by making spending cuts and raising taxes, he sees no other cracks in the U.S. economy.

To hear more about Smith’s Noahpionion blog, listen to the episode above.

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.

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