Episode 147: Temp Work Is All The Rage; Coal Miners & The Green New Deal
Episode 147: Once upon a time, if you got a job that lasted a long time, you’d be a permanent worker, maybe after a short probationary period. Not so much anymore with the plague forcing people to take “temp” jobs—the kind of job that is increasing in the past few years, outpacing full-time permanent work, and also spreading a lot more to so-called “blue collar” jobs. I explore this with Laura Padin, senior staff attorney with the National Employment Law Project and author of a new important report called “Lasting Solutions for America’s Temporary Workers”. My regular listeners may recall that whenever the topic of a Green New Deal comes up, I gripe about the way in which environmentalists and politicians so easily promise to take care of workers. Don’t worry, people say, there will be a “Just Transition” for workers in the fossil fuel industries, which would mean income support and job retraining. But when you dig down into these plans and promises, virtually all of them are done on the cheap—meaning giving those workers income that won’t last for more than a few years and training them for jobs that will pay a lot less. That is especially true when workers move from a good union job to an industry that is non-union, and most of the climate change-related industries are non-union. So, today, you will hear from Cecil Roberts, the president of the United Mine Workers of America, about the future his members are looking at as the country, and the globe, debate climate change. -- Jonathan Tasini Follow me on Twitter @jonathantasini Sign up for The Working Life Podcast at: www.workinglife.org Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.tasini.3
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