and she passed in 2022 on labor day as it were correct yeah Anne, talk about your, where did you make contact with Barbara's work and what role has it played in your intellectual development?

Yeah, it would be really hard to think of somebody who had more of an influence on me as a thinker and writer than Barbara Ehrenreich.

I never had the privilege of meeting her, but I read Nickel and Dimed, the book that's celebrating its 25th year, this year when I was in graduate school and I was teaching and I taught it to my students.

And, you know, it had such an impact on me because if you think about that historical moment, you know, 25 years ago, it was really, you know, a time when people called it the end of history.

The rhetoric was that capitalism had won out over all the alternatives and everybody got what they deserved.

And if you work hard and play by the rules, you're going to succeed.

And Nickel and Dime really burst out.

And your response to that idea of the working class, I mean, it sounds like from how you recounted your bio and experience, you've sort of moved in and out of a couple of these different, to the extent they are categories, that you've sort of, it's been a permeable idea in your upbringing.

So that would be some part of my answer to your question.

I mentioned earlier, you know, this idea of the end of history and the meritocracy had won out and, and everything was as, you know, we were in the best of all possible worlds, and how Nickeled and Dimed sort of punctured that myth.

I, I do think also one of the things that I remember from that period is this kind of...

Looking back, it seems like, you know, we were all living in, in this myth, in this kind of dream world, and, and our feet weren't really on the ground in a way.

Um, you know, I really thought, uh, I was going to get a job in academia and be a professor.

[laughs] I mean, I think about that now given my, my background and the fact that I, I went to CUNY and I studied English, and that was never going to happen.

That was always a failed, uh, venture.

Okay, boomer.

What does Solidarity look like at a grocery store? Specifically like f- for, for us customers being in solidarity with, with folks who work there.

When I think of what solidarity looks like at the supermarket, I think obviously of being kind, being understanding, being polite.

Grocery work can feel very invisible.

It's very low paid.

It's widely regarded falsely as unskilled labor, when in fact, the people who work at your local supermarket have a lot of skills, um, from technical skills to communication skills to the ability to work on your feet eight hours a day.

And so understanding from customers, kindness, politeness, those are all needed, uh, and appreciated.

I think more broadly, shoppers need to support grocery workers' demands for unions.

But I want, I want you to just, uh, any, any parting words that you have as someone who has, who's worked on the inside, who's been on the outside, that, that you wanna tell us as we are, um, you know, making our way down aisle five?

What are they?

So the supermarket I describe in my book is kind of a split screen.

On the one side, the supermarket is a really wonderful place.

If you think about your neighborhood grocery store, it's hard to imagine living without it.

Um, it's a pillar of the community.

It's almost always open.

You can go in any time and find, you know, thousands of products on sale, uh, day or night.

Yes

What are they?

So the supermarket I describe in my book is kind of a split screen.

On the one side, the supermarket is a really wonderful place.

If you think about your neighborhood grocery store, it's hard to imagine living without it.

Um, it's a pillar of the community.

It's almost always open.

You can go in anytime and find n- you know, thousands of products on sale, uh, day or night.

Yes

Right

... professors that you mentioned, uh, in the last segment.

[laughs] Um, and I was also working in an organization called The Debt Collective that you mentioned, that I co-founded.

But I was always kind of precarious, those jobs, and I ended up, uh, unemployed and entering, uh, middle age at a time, um, when the pandemic was just getting started.

So it was poor timing on my part.

Um, and I needed something to just get me through the crisis, uh, till I figured out, you know, what to do next and, and my next line of work.

And so I, I moved back to...

But I want somehow everybody else to understand what the implications for the whole society are, that this is the way one of the largest job categories, as you put it, that we have, what kind of life this means for the millions of people that are involved doing this work.

Ann?

Well, first of all, everyone, I want to know how many of you have received a complaint or a request in the last year with possible AI use.

We asked this polling question today at Workplace Strategies, and 84% of the room said yes, 16% said no.

So everyone, welcome to a brave new world, the world of the AI adopter.

HR is receiving more and more internal complaints and demands that are well-written, polished, and cite more legal authority than a first-year law exam.

The AI adopter has discovered ChatGBT, Copilot, and Claude.

These AI tools produce lengthy demands and complaints that appear to have been drafted by a lawyer.

Document, document, document.