The 51st State; 332; American Labor: Is America Working?
- Transcript
And I'm Leonard Harris. You know after learning somebody whose name a question often asked is What do you do. Well in some countries that might be considered rude but in America we've always been interested in what people do in their work. What you do generally separates you into a class. Statistically a little more than 45 percent of our population is working 60 percent of those of us who are working either have blue collar or lower paying white collar jobs and the working class. It's also interesting to note that about one out of four working people is in a union and that the working class unemployment rate is 13 percent. Tonight we put all of those facts together and look at people some of the people who are affected you know three part report about where working people think they should be going in the future and where they are coming from to get there. And we'll have a comment from political correspondent Robert Leonard and I will return to tell you about the future of this program. The first state
to do what you. I'm going to have a drain on my car insurance. Anybody.
I mean take take me live to the point where I think the thing that hurts me I have to get up every morning and I really have no way to go. Nowhere to go. A lot of people feel that way these days and a lot more afraid they're going to feel that way soon.
A few weeks ago about 50000 people decided they had somewhere to go down to Washington D.C. and Kennedy stadium for a rally to demand jobs they said to the government look give us Public Works spend money on housing take away tax loopholes for rich people and break up the oil and food monopolies as you're going to see in our film this rally broke up soon after it started but the working people's message came through loud and clear. No thanks to George Meany the head of the AFL CIO. He says I've never walked a picket line in my life I'd rather see the workers stay home and let our big union lobbyist lean on Congress down here. It was a rank and file union members though that wanted this rally especially from the New York Civil Service Union District Council 37 and local 11 ninety nine of the drug and hospital workers but no rank and file people were invited to speak at this rally. It was taken over by the industrial union Department of the AF of L and these days working people have an awful lot to say in our film. They say it
and into our film we have woven some moments from a very moving document on labor history done for the Amalgamated clothing workers of America by Harold Mayer narrated by Robert Ryan. It's called the inheritance. And as the film's writer Millard lam Pell put it today is born out of yesterday and there's no birth without pain. And. We don't want giveaways we want to work. Nothing more nothing less. We demand that the 8 million unemployed be given jobs from
everybody. White house prices the recession. They came from the west. We were immigrants from Austria and immigrants from Reagan on the Baltic Sea Irishman from Limerick free Ramos.
I'm doing things that I've done for the employer based in construction. I know that I have to work that much harder because my money was supplementing the money is the complete thing. It makes him feel like he's not a man and makes him feel very little when he's being supported by his wife and your family. Think about it. I just paid money that my husband even made in one week. I also think it's just a very insecure feeling that I can't get
to go. I think it would be very depressing. I think it takes away and I don't want to work. $72 on the issue of NATO money. Oh man oh man. And too good for him. I had to take here and I'm not going to steal it. I've been working ever since I was eight years old and I've been here for 37 years I've been the same and I didn't feel it. I've been working since I've been here. Unfortunately some other economic signs are improving the employment picture remains bleak.
I want to help those who want to get back to work in productive jobs. This can best be done by temporary tax incentives to charge up our free enterprise system not by government handouts and make work programs that go on forever. What I'm what I'm coming to. Just try to make this wake up and understand that people are not going to take it. This is a peaceful demonstration. What happens next here. These people decide it's no longer a peaceful demonstration hauling out my flag of my country. I never believed I was thinking but I know it's something that has to be done. You know it's like a baby crying out and one maybe never gets that baby right. Well working out
reading they're going to make you know when you get home then everything changes your whole perspective changes when you hit home. That's the that's the key word is when you get to go. This is what they are responsible for and we should stop worrying about other countries taking out the people in the old country I worked in even before my children were born democracy. Before God I swear my children will not live as I have lived. We
got to find you. Now. Yeah yeah yeah. You can now. OK. Uh oh. We'll open it. Now I am here now. Yeah I
am. I am new here. Real men Larry. Come on. Yeah yeah. You
know we don't have neighborhood training. We can't ban me we can ban it and get it from the conversation that we get from the west at least we are desperate and. Can we say that these teachers
can't wait a minute. WE WE WE WE WE WANT THAT WE CAN DO THIS. That industry is looking for people 25 years old with 15 years experience.
Can you tell me something from your own experience something that happened to you. Well with me I lost my employment because the company I worked for went bankrupt and they're still in business but they they cut everybody's wages. What about getting a new job in the industry no I mean there's not that many companies in the city would have to relocate. I tried all of them and everybody's looking for some. They wouldn't come out and say it. But in his much they saying it to all. I'm only forty two. That's for certain right. He's a bridge over troubled water. They want one thousand years old so they can use an A B C and they do abuse and this will take the problem to think where do you go from here. I have to go back to what I have to do now is go from supervision down to store manager in 10 years maybe I will be able to be a still in my job I think. Another thing to receiving Clark. It's a study backwards. You can't go forward anymore.
Gold in America half dream in half. So. You can see. I
was and was spokesman for the mine owners I assure you the rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for not by the labor agitator but by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom is given control of the property interests of this country. I'm as I said Thomas called United Auto Workers and we're not a right energy has to question whether we're right or not now but they did as laid off four to five maybe six hundred people that you know they're still producing a car near violate the contract. We want those people back because what they're trying to do is make a steady job of a player laid off by harassment by be little enough by be right now some Badger and I said we don't like it and we want something done about it. And the people that are laid off are running out of money some of you know some of the tradesmen up here in Bergen County back in New Jersey are out of work for 60 70 weeks unless somebody does something you can probably save bloodshed write your history to Washington.
They say in Pittsburgh in Gary Indiana it was a 12 hour day. Take it or leave it. You better take it to be you know what's good for you. Tell me why did you. Brother and Sister amalgamated contribution went on to the relief of the steel striker. We know that this is only the beginning of one of the greatest attacks ever directed against American labor. It
was God that was God that every person can't work. I'm going to get one day with us.
The Eastern and thirty three children in the back. Widespread unemployment seriously endangered the social order because it is apt to produce
helpless victims feelings of just contempt and bitterness towards a society which in spite of its wealth seems unable or unwilling to utilize their services. The nation has a laundry list of unmet public needs. We need mass transit system. I am
enchanted and are at the Grammys. I am here and was here an open carry a and we can we can move. I am sure I am. Thank you thank you.
Here are three. I am I am I am I am I am I. These people.
I wonder. You sure as hell isn't working for the people that drive President Ford get asked for money to kill people to send money to vent man. But he can ask money for public works and we need public works in this gathering of a lot of public works to go on this country that money should go to provide jobs for our people not to kill someone inventing them when you know his economists say that that's indeed a certain level of unemployment to keep inflation down. How do you feel about that how do your employed friends feel about that when they hear that unemployment is necessary. They feel that's very stupid on the president and his economist. Anyone have to be laid off to create a sound economy. Just plain stupid from the rank and file get them
from back then everybody will know. And brothers and sisters yes. Are you satisfied with me today. Yes I think what happened to the people that work
anymore and the people that are up on the podium and they're not going to spout off platitudes about unemployment because they've been saying the same thing for years and nothing happens. And people have finally decided that it's time for something. Tired of being hungry. 20000 boys went to Washington to demand the cases of the Capitol. Let me tell you Mr.. It's going to be some changes made. I belong to charge me $10 to come down the road up here on the bus we march go in there to listen to a lot of shit. And you're not going to get a damn thing from it. And that's that's where it stands up. And if the leadership don't come out
the people vote their leadership that we got out with this. We don't want to know what is bullshit. And the unions are selling out the top leadership saying watch and I belong to 371 I'm a delegate. My name is Bob White. And that can be any We want jobs we want products overseas we want to back I want to last week may be made here and people give us jobs. We had him before. Why do you think they do that. The business profits are private homeowners have car plants in the South for years because labor right. So they make more profit. So tying the workers against the divide and rule. Right. If I Can't Get You don't get the Salton work and then I'll make the Northern
worker work the same reason for the discrimination of black people and women. If you can make a woman work for less than a white person more or less you can make a man work for less than a woman work for less. So what I make about a hundred and a hundred and fifty billion dollars more a year profit through discrimination of black people and discrimination of women that we like. We have found love letters about this country and we join what John was. We'll get it you're not getting the job as you want. Wow you come down here to the stage where you get progress did you make it. If you can't get what you want back come and get me. God 6 days and six nights to get his universe right now take out a loan. Where can I wait. And well I was wrong. Now
that was now. The first thing I think workers can change the economic system daily Aronowitz.
Once a factory worker now a college teacher talking about the film we've just seen with other workers Joe Maiello once a cop now a Farman and a student at Staten Island Community College. Velma James a telephone information operator whose rank and file caucus is trying to prevent layoffs by joining a lawsuit against the phone company as a monopoly. Jerry Ruth an office worker in New York City's Youth Services Agency and choice Jackson a Vietnam veteran and now a therapy aide at a state psychiatric center. What hit you about the film. I had like one lady in there she was mad when one was cryin that she didn't like we didn't accomplish anything. She said We did a concert and look at them. She was cool Suze. She still didn't know where to place the blame and other people said knowledge nobody wants to hear that more. You get tired of people telling you making promises.
Definitely I feel that it has to be the system. I mean I'm a firm believer in the democratic system but I am not a believer and he longer and a capitalist system. You know coming from and you know ultra conservative middle income white family neighborhood background etc. I think the point has to be bored out where you could see now the hard hat they get very pissed off that they're out of work did not support their family. But under the free enterprise system there's also the promise that anybody in this country could possibly become rich. Yeah that's the American dream. I came to New York with 38 dollars in my pocket term and to make a living right. So I landed a job with a New York Telephone Company and I thought it was the best thing I have ever happened to me but it was God. And I began to work their ass off. Certain things happen and I began to realize that things weren't going quite right
and so I started talking to some. As you know and what we saw was that we had a very weak union and I was an independent thing. So we decided we'd try and organize our way in a group of people who were talking out all the time the heart had. Middle income was never talking until his balloon broke but now we find our choice that you know this is where it's at. You know I'm not there anymore. You know I can look down on the same boy you know I'm better than you and it's not there anymore. Yes you know I mean I you know not a problem you know you can hear him say well you know my problem is my job be in jeopardy with a black man you know because right now when I'm out there Martin you out there was because you're just you're doing rather well so now you know what's happening. So now I gotta look somewhere else for the blame and that's what's happening now like we're looking you know to find out where the blame is you know I was really surprised people were not blaming the corporations the General
Motors Corporation for the fact that they laid off this saying what will they do or what can we do. The only thing we know what to do which is in the 1930s. Look people learn. We want unemployment insurance social security we want public works. Now I mean what what could be done about these corporations What do you think of it that you work for a very large corporation. We happen to know that there is at least six or seven billion in assets. Now why are we being forced to go off for days at four days pay. Why not four days or five days because they've got big stockholders and those big stockholders. I've got to be paid otherwise they're not going to invest their money and they're going to say to you and I don't know how you can answer it. Well if we give you the money and don't give it to the stockholders we're going to have to stop expanding if we stop expanding we're going to have to stop giving people jobs. So you've got to take a little a little beating for a short period of time so we can in the long run make everybody secure How do you feel about that. And the film that I just saw I for parents and those people really fought hard to unions to get where we were at before the economic crisis
and something happened you know we must have become relaxed our our our we must a lost sight on what we were doing. And. Through this we've lost out a lot of what they really have worked hard to gain for us. But a lot of people again began to believe after awhile that what was good for General Motors and AT&T was good for the country. Right you thought when you first came into AT&T that the sun rose and said. Right I do you know I don't have any idea. And now you're saying those people can't be trusted. Now and we were just in the middle. This is crazy to me how hard a big man must maintain his profit you know. And as a little man they couldn't pay and if you do give you more pay they raise the price of the ticket may take from you. But what would you do about it. Well I do about it. First of all I think I mean look the capital system has been in for a long time to me to get rid of it. I mean they don't want to get rid of it. Be
sensible instead of everybody trying to get more profit like you know and wages going up. Let's balance things off. Let him cut his profits for a change. But the free enterprise system I know say get rid of it I say you have to put a safety valve on it because I feel that with you know 90 plus begin going towards defense you finalists money into New York and urban Reno you go into an area you go into South Bronx you're going to Brownsville. I mean these look like somebody dropped a big goddamn bomb on it if there's nothing there. You take these you have years and and you turn around and you start building up these areas if you build up these you know. Well that's fine but why don't they do it. Well if I know why I would have 12 Ph.D.s does anybody you know limited my saying but we have to have the will it's not going to be the
Democrats the Republicans are going to address themselves to that kind of question we have to have the will now if we're not ready to take over the corporations one thing we could do is take over lion's share their profits appropriate them for public use. That is what is called a heavy corporate tax now because everybody's afraid of corporate taxes because what they're afraid of is if the corporations are taxed heavily they're going to go out on strike. So the goal of Italy and I go over to Korea and I go over to Taiwan and I go over to Latin America. Well at the point at which they go out on strike. The people in United States could do what Harry Truman did 946 to the railroads take over the corporations. Yet a lot of people who are unemployed and a lot of people with threatened in the film blame the unions. It seems to me that the problem that we face is that we have unions that are not rank and file controlled. I think the industrial union Department sabotaged that rally. I think in this case the District Council 37 and the hospital workers were very active and very much behind it. But I was shocked that they gave it away to the
industrial union the pub in Washington the speeches were mealy mouthed well week. There was no mobilization of a real mass march when the unions were first put in the plate was there for the people the union was thought of by the workers because the people being exploited right now the unions only controlled by the big business the people the unions aren't the people anymore. What's happening is that working people are beginning to say as I said in the film they sold us down the river. We've got to take control of our own destiny. If this is happening then do you think this will produce any real economic changes in this. Not in the system. No I don't think that changing union leadership in any locals I don't care what they're the most conservative or feudal or others that you would call militant or whatever you want to call them is going to change anything economically. Seems to me however that if there was a different type of workers organization there were different kinds of unionism which said Yes look we're not just here our wages hours and benefits
but we're here to change society you've got a chance now what Thelma did I think is fantastic because that was a group of workers who said listen they're going to lay us off and we're going to take we're going to take them on which begin to raises the whole question of who should control the society. And if the rank and file begins to have a generalized belief that it is their business to take over a business or to limit the power of business that's when you get social and economic change. Suppose the recession ended tomorrow and everybody in this country got a job when everything be all right and the lives of the workers would be you going to get more than you could change to look out for the future. Got to fix it so that this doesn't happen again. Why should I become to OK tomorrow everybody got a job everybody's happy. What could happen 10 years from now. There's a real issue about the quality of work in the society. Many people work in jobs people like Joe that are patently dangerous. There are people who work
every day in the most obnoxious and very often polluting conditions that give them as well it gives them heart disease that give them cancer. These kinds of conditions are not going to be changed by simply getting a job. These are the things I have to change. Really everything is dignity and self-respect and security and decent living conditions once you get off the job. A piece of mine being a woman not a child that all that goes with a job right to live not to exist. Caring for him makes his living by advising people who have money on economic and financial matters. He was President Nixon's top economic spokesman the seventy two campaign Presidents
Kennedy and Johnson used his analysis too. Now he's president of run for a Boston Associates Incorporated here in New York with clients and business industry and finance. Now when workers in the film are asked why they think it's necessary to have an unemployment a certain level of unemployment in order to cut down on inflation they're outraged by the whole concept. Boy I would agree I think that if I were the unemployed and I was told that I should be the sacrificial lamb for the economic system I'd be outraged too. But we have one major problem in economics. No country no economist no politician knows how to run a full employment economy. Jobs for everybody. Without wild inflation. You would condemn union leadership that advises its membership to sign labor contracts at a rate behind the rate of inflation. Well that would seem to contribute to more runaway inflation.
The whole concept of the establishment of a free enterprise system which started in 1776 came out of one simple philosophy. Each person and this is in the famous book by Adam Smith. Each person in pursuing his own interest pursues the interest of the common good. Now you may say wait a minute that sounds wacky because that's the rule of the jungle. I make one point for 200 years. The American economic system with all of its troubles and all of its blemishes and all the terrible things that have happened in 200 years nevertheless has had the highest standard of living of any country and today still is at the peak in the standard of living per capita of any country in the world. Free enterprise has not been too bad to us. But one people feel harassed on the job in a recession or not in a recession. They don't sit back and compare themselves with people in Singapore that does I really think about what it ought to be here. I'm I guess you know I am what you would call a capitalist let me say that I feel harassed on my job
too. I run my own business. I've got approximately 40 people who work for me. The government pounds me the state pounds me the city pounds me my clients pound me my employees buy me. I'm harassed too. How would you suggest that if the private sector is to carry the freight in this country that capital be formed and industry be expanded so that there can be jobs we have ignored what the private sector has contributed. And again I want to repeat I'm not talking capitalism because to me the private sector is just as much the man on the street on the street corners got a candy store and I am serious. It's the individual proprietor. Let me give you an example. The one man who owns a candy store is pending Jack same tax rate as a large corporation. The government is taking away all his tax benefits. Now you say we want taxes cut you know raise them the corporations cut on individuals. But no one ever thinks about that guy. How important is it. Approximately 90 percent of all the private
sector is in individual proprietors. We are the living the highest on the hog in the world. We are forming the least capital and the least new plant the Quitman. You come down to one thing production creates wealth and wealth goes to the people that produce it. The high standard living came out of production. It came out of wealth and more and more. We are hitting the producers and holding back and they're running and hiding because they're getting hit too hard. We need merely to understand the function of the private sector and give it some relief. And let's give them reasons to do things and hope they'll react and create for employment. When you talk about giving corporations incentive to survive expand their industry and so forth. Yeah but let me remind you I also talking about individual proprietors the small people too. But
that's what I'm saying about the job that's a business run business and especially about giant corporations. In theory that that would that would be a wonderful thing but these are the same corporations. And we're talking now from the perspective of workers who have no particular power as clerk and they read that these corporations don't operate by theory but operate practically by fostering the undermine or undermining of a regime in a South American country by paying off politicians in Korea by paying off federal government politicians and officeholders so that they can make more profit on milk. A worker has a right to be skeptical about appeals to business to do the right thing for the country. Let me let me answer you in a very simple way. There are no saints in an economic world. There are centers there are foods and there are knaves.
They exist as much in organized labor as they do in organized management. The worker on a production line who lets a little thing and puts it in his pocket who won't work is ripping off as much as anybody else. It is it is unfair in my judgment to talk about the rip off of corporate industry without talking about the rip off of labor. The rip off of the farmers the rip off of the politicians. If you say to me do we sin as an economic system. Oh yes. Every sector or every sector in this country is guilty of rip off techniques. Do you have a remedy for it. Yes of course you do you gotta have accountability and accountability for the actions of business government and labor are a main concern of a man who listen to Dr. Renfroe with us. He's Professor Stanley Aronowitz the former factory worker you met earlier who is now teaching at Staten Island Community College.
Well the first thing that's clear about Dr Renne phrase point of view is that he regards this is the best of all possible worlds. It reminds me of Leonard Bernstein candied in that in its seeking after perfection he regards the small candy store a grocery store owner as of equal status is that of the large corporations Well everyone knows in the last 75 or 80 years in this country the large corporations have dominated the economy. The Fortune 500 large industrial corporations the banks the large insurance companies the large utilities really have a lock on the social political and I would also say the economic lifeblood of our country. Dr. Rand Frey takes virtually no account of that fact. You said the doctor on Friday described his own best of all possible worlds. But you have your own best of all possible worlds too in which the public for the social good takes over the means of production etc.. What makes you so sure that it's going wrong right.
I'm not sure. I am not sure at all. One thing I do know is that it's running wrong. One thing we can say with certainty right now that the price that the that the pursuit of the self-interest of the banks the insurance companies the large production corporations has withdrawn jobs from this country has produced the most the worst runaway inflation since the end of the second world war has produced the largest rate of unemployment by Dr. run for his own estimate since 1937. And I think the American people the people of our city should be thinking about serious alternatives not the kind of system that exists in the so-called socialist countries necessarily but a system in which there is real social control a system in which we produce not by sharing the wealth in a in a simple minded way but produce for our social needs and begin to do away with profitability in and in people's ordinary desires your sanity signs that make you hopeful that there are some changes in the direction you think is right. Well I think the more I think a large number of working people and others who are not working people are beginning
to think seriously about socialism. I don't think that we have to take our examples or our inspiration from Russia or China I certainly don't we don't have to take our inspirations even from the mistakes of the past within our own country. But we do know that that the so-called private ownership. Does not mean what Adam Smith meant which was a series of small investors small producers pursue pursuing their own self-interest. Private ownership means large monopolistic control of American resources. They still don't we is now being produced not by small farmers but by large corporations. And it seems to me that until we come to grips with the fact that they are not pursuing our general interest but that we have to pursue our own We're going to have a worse economic situation. We're going to have a we're going to have a deterioration of public facilities. We're going to have really what John Kenneth Galbraith has called private affluence and public squalor and. Henry
Luce said there was no working class only a great middle class and a small lower class doing its damndest to become part of the middle class. If none of this fits Marx's dog it's probably because Karl Marx never met George Meany. I had a chance to visit queens in March had he would have known that the American worker far from being on the cutting edge of social change is far more likely to be the one to blunt it. It is no accident that when hippies marched against Vietnam hardhats came out to beat them. Or the George Meany feels far more comfortable with Nelson Rockefeller than he ever did with George McGovern or the Walter Ruther that pillar of American liberalism took money from the CIA. Given the chance the oppressed will always imitate their oppressors. Hard times are supposed to embitter workers what the recession did and what this recession seems to be doing is make labor a part of the system as never before. It is easy to be down on labor to see the working man is not the person who is going to save America
but drive it to the poorhouse. And in New York that seems to have happened already. Rhetoric aside it is the unions more than the banks which have put the city in its current financial mess. It is not so easy to understand why this is happened and what if anything can or should be done about it. The sociologist will come forward with a lot of explanations about capitalism but that does not explain socialist England where thanks to Labor. London is if that is possible even a worse shape than New York. There are those who would romanticize Labor who would paint the world in blue collar chic while they wait on truck drivers for the latest pearls of Socratic wisdom. It is interesting but hardly surprising. But those who find the blue collar trade so fascinating are those who don't have to do them. Somewhere between the CIO bulls of ballet harbor and the ascetic great pictures of the land is the real labor that fictional working man who is trotted out every election time to be praised for Ondo recorded and when the election is over
just as quickly forgotten who he really is what he really wants is something of a mystery. But I guess it is but an explanation for the working man and why he does the things that he does has less to do with Marx and more to do with Freud and human nature. Altruism has never been a strong suit among human beings. Self-interest is organized labor is no better or worse only bigger. That is the fact and that is the pity. The. This is the last edition of the fifty first state for this season. But this is not the last of the fifty first state. Beginning on Thursday nights at 8 o'clock in July letter Harris and I will alternate throughout the summer to bring you the best of the fifty first state. We have a lineup of nearly 40 of the series best and most memorable films.
Investigative Reports human interest stories films on the arts theater how we eat use of love and hate profiles interviews politics and of course a film about the place you have always promised yourself and your loved ones you visit at some crack of dawn the Fulton Fish Market. Oh really really. And as the song goes. In the mean time in between time you should have fun and of course do something that's good for you or avoided that which may not be good for you. This is the end of the season. It's the first in 13 years in which I was not a workaday critic. The first time I haven't had to go to plays and movies and other cultural events. But but once in a while I went anyway. Euro for observations. The new Lehman wing at the Metropolitan Museum the main space is splendid and I suggest you go there when the afternoon sunlight is streaming in the rooms. Those replicas of the Lehman townhouse are another story
hanging places for ego rather than paintings. But does the matte have to keep those rooms intact. My understanding is it is required to do so for 35 years. Will the matte tear them down some day in the future and open up that space. Don't ask me to Grand Central Terminal go and savor it. The building lost its landmark designation which puts it in danger of being buried under another pad styled tower at the rally to save it. Who should appear but Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. I have watched her throw away the prestige she could have done some good with the way Eleanor Roosevelt did the way Lady Bird Johnson does now Jackie has also joined the board of the Municipal Art Society to use some of her celebrity where it can help. Is it too late for Grand Central for Jackie. Don't ask me. 3 Just as the season was coming to an end we finally got a musical chorus line a job perhaps a public theater. It proves that subsidised theatre
can and must help commercial titter you know PAP is also taking over a Schubert house. The booth for the season ahead will nothing stop that man. Last show a pitiful movie about people Hollywood swingers. You know friends told me I had to see it because that's what Hollywood is really like. So what. Suppose someone made a movie about manure and defended it because that's what manure is really like. A film like any other art form should do more than just show the manure that I can see at a stable myself. Now with the money that you say in the meantime there's Channel 13 for marathon auction beginning next Friday June 6 and for nine nights thereafter the nighttime schedule will be filled with the sound of following gavels and money. We hope both Leonard and I will be doing stance on auction week and we hope you can be with us. I think my night is Friday the 13th.
Well aren't you lucky I'm stuck with a Monday. Until then and until the best of the fifty first state begins Thursday nights at 8 p.m. beginning in July there's nothing more for me to say but on behalf of the staff of the fifty first day I'm Beth Fallon and I'm Leonard Harris. Thank you for watching tonight and throughout the season.
- Series
- The 51st State
- Episode Number
- 332
- Producing Organization
- Thirteen WNET
- Contributing Organization
- Thirteen WNET (New York, New York)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/75-84zgn1s8
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/75-84zgn1s8).
- Description
- Description
- Abstract:Anchors Beth Fallon and Leonard Harris introduce a three-part report on American labor and the working class. Documentary features include "Is American Working?" by Rosanne Allessandro, Gary Gilson, and Richard Kotuk with clips from "The Inheritance" courtesy of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, and "Where do we go from Here?" with Rosanne Allesandro. The first film, "Is America Working?", focuses on the "Rally for Jobs, Now" that took place in Washington D.C. on April 26, 1975 to demand more employment opportunities. Workers traveling to the rally from New York share their reasons for demonstrating, personal experiences, and air their grievances over lack of federal support over issues such as encouraging public works. Multiple perspectives of participants are included. "Where do we go from Here?" features workers speaking about the job crisis in New York City. The episode concludes with an update about The 51st State as its season comes to a close; Beth Fallon reports that "best of" docu
- Broadcast Date
- 2004-11-17
- Broadcast Date
- 1975-06-01
- Asset type
- Episode
- Genres
- News
- News Report
- Topics
- News
- News
- Employment
- Rights
- E.B.C. copyright 1975
- Media type
- Moving Image
- Duration
- 01:00:45
- Credits
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Executive Producer: Willis, Jack (Film producer)
Producing Organization: Thirteen WNET
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
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Thirteen - New York Public Media (WNET)
Identifier: wnet_aacip_1655 (WNET Archive)
Format: Betacam: SP
Generation: Master
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- Citations
- Chicago: “The 51st State; 332; American Labor: Is America Working?,” 2004-11-17, Thirteen WNET, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed November 23, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-75-84zgn1s8.
- MLA: “The 51st State; 332; American Labor: Is America Working?.” 2004-11-17. Thirteen WNET, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. November 23, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-75-84zgn1s8>.
- APA: The 51st State; 332; American Labor: Is America Working?. Boston, MA: Thirteen WNET, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-75-84zgn1s8