Bargaining for the Common Good network organizer, Alex Han, appears on The Marc Steiner show to talk BCG and worker activism.

“So one thing I’m hopeful of is that we’ve again, leveled up the level of strike activity and [sharper] activity around the boss. But I do think some of it, again, it all goes to… And I say this about our work in Bargaining for the Common Good too. If we’re not leading to organizing for the common good, bargaining for the 9% or 10% of people who are left in unions, and that number may fluctuate. That’s a dead end regardless of how skilled that bargaining is, regardless of how big the fight is. If we don’t have the ability to take those fights and express them into new industries and new organizing, then I’m not sure where it leads us. I would actually, and if you’ll allow me the liberty to go back to 2012 again –

…Which is a really important moment. The one thing that I point to frequently is to say, the Fight for $15, which was launched in Chicago in the summer and fall of 2012, would not have been a campaign without the strike of the Chicago Teachers Union in September of 2012. And I say that to say there were groups of workers across the Magnificent Mile, across downtown, restaurant and retail workers who were meeting in the City of Chicago to launch out an organizing campaign. Most of the workers were 19, 20, 22 years old. They were recent graduates of the Chicago Public Schools, and to see their teachers go on strike, not just for their own pay and benefits but to say, students’ learning conditions or teachers’ working conditions. To say, we need social workers and librarians. That we need supports for students who are facing really challenging conditions in their communities.”

Listen to or read the full conversation at the link below.