Part 1:
Democracy Now! speaks with the celebrated labor organizer and writer Jane McAlevey about the historic victory for Volkswagen employees at a Chattanooga, Tennessee, factory who voted overwhelmingly to join the United Auto Workers union. The plant will become the first foreign-owned car factory in the South to unionize. “This win wasn’t just a win — it was what we would call a beatdown,” says McAlevey, who says the UAW’s recent success is a result of direct democracy and smart, strategic organizing that could lead to the unionizing of Mercedes workers in Alabama. “It’ll be a massive change in the U.S. South.” We also speak with McAlevey about her terminal cancer diagnosis and why she’s “going to fight until the last dying minute, because that’s what American workers deserve.”
Part 2:
Part 2 of our interview with labor organizer and scholar Jane McAlevey about recent United Auto Workers union victories, organizing in the South, threats to unions from the U.S. Supreme Court and how she hopes they respond by taking more risks. She talks in detail about strategies she has used to help workers win across the United States and worldwide, her time as student organizer in the campaign to divest from apartheid South Africa, and her health as she faces terminal cancer.