MCTV Network's Community Voices
Sep 4, 2026 · 28 min · 11 segments
US Common Ground is produced by Dr. Ziggy Kozicki through the facilities of the MCTV Network. In this episode Ziggy talks to Tom Knaub, a union representative about labor unions.
Tom KnaubGuestyeah, you know, it's interesting that you bring this up because I can think way back to a time when a single factory worker could buy a car, buy a house, put their kids through school, and leave work with a lifetime pension, a derived pension that guaranteed... that they would be paid 80% whatever of their salary when they retired for the rest of their life, medical benefits, and in some cases even educational benefits and so forth.
What I'm finding is that they're just not willing to step up and take over the reins and actually fight for equality, for fairness.
Yeah, you know, one of my observations, and I'm not sure that we could prove this out, though, is that You know, something significant happened that made labor so necessary.
One was, of course, the Great Depression and the fact that just about all of America was in shock after the oligarchs had pilfered the banks and the stock market and everybody was poor except them, and the country went into a very deep depression.
And then World War II, which took people from all over the country, put them together, and showed them what they could do as an organized group.
And I think when they came back, a lot of them said, you know what? Let's organize and let's look out for ourselves.
And I think labor unions and movements were very strong in part because people had been pulled into a shared kind of common ground, which was being in the military or after the recession, actually working in those areas.
Artists were even commissioned to do paintings and so forth that are historical about the United States.
There was a lot of work that got done by people who were pulled into some camps common group and the common ground was established that working together, you could make a community work.
yeah, you know, it's interesting that you bring this up because I can think way back to a time when a single factory worker could buy a car, buy a house, put their kids through school, and leave work with a lifetime pension, a derived pension that guaranteed... that they would be paid 80% whatever of their salary when they retired for the rest of their life, medical benefits, and in some cases even educational benefits and so forth.
What I'm finding is that they're just not willing to step up and take over the reins and actually fight for equality, for fairness.
Yeah, you know, one of my observations, and I'm not sure that we could prove this out, though, is that You know, something significant happened that made labor so necessary.
One was, of course, the Great Depression and the fact that just about all of America was in shock after the oligarchs had pilfered the banks and the stock market and everybody was poor except them, and the country went into a very deep depression.
And then World War II, which took people from all over the country, put them together, and showed them what they could do as an organized group.
And I think when they came back, a lot of them said, you know what? Let's organize and let's look out for ourselves.
And I think labor unions and movements were very strong in part because people had been pulled into a shared kind of common ground, which was being in the military or after the recession, actually working in those areas.
Artists were even commissioned to do paintings and so forth that are historical about the United States.
There was a lot of work that got done by people who were pulled into some camps common group and the common ground was established that working together, you could make a community work.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
