because that's what it took. the company asked him to take a 30% pay cut. literally that was an opening bid. the union rallied workers to reject that but then they got a second tier, new workers are hired lower pay permanently forever. and then the plant moved and so

globalization and the ease with which these factories could be moved to places where people work much cheaper that has to ruin leverage of unions who workedse because now there's an alternative. now there's a much cheaper labor force that is hungry and willing to work and not looking for a smoke break and doesn't by the way need any alcohol treatment like you know, it was really tough. and started declining people started losing faith in the unions because not producing, not giving the high wages. and so i call it a death spiral because they are also not able to get politicians elected to within protect them. so you see right to w back to indiana and republican laws that then say you don't have to pay your union dues and

>> yeah. >> host: yeah, a plantd allison which allison transmission which is a very old plant. it had been there a long time and they were hired at the bottom tier. they were earning $14 an hour from 25. it would take them a couple of years to get back up to the top tier. they were union jobs but they were deathly not as well paid. a few people on at eli lilly which is the pharmaceutical manufacture and they started making medicine. they were paid as well. there was once were paid pretty good. they were paid may be as well as they had been paid.

john who i i followed, he's a diehard union man the grandson of a coal miner. his father-in-law had been an auto worker and he was really, really into the union. and he agonized after the factory closed about whether he should become a steelworker again. he actually finally had a chance to get on in a plant that made him a steelworker again. or go work in hospital. he ended up taking a a lower paying job at a hospital because he said this hospital is not going anywhere and have i've a closings. i don't know if that factories going to remain. so people were sort of basically end up saying, i think i devoted my life to doesn't have a future. and so i i better get on at hospital. hospitals and healthcare is like the new factory. that's the new

caller people could actually earn a living wage and make a pretty good job without going back to college or going to get a lot more education. i have to say -- >> host: not to not to sound overly bleak but your book clear point how like deathease it's almost become a commodity or its a product for these communities industry in our 40s and your subjects are in their 40s but everybody around them is dying and is just a very different life. as you point out in your book like kind of elderly i think an elderly relative the past way and one friend from college but it wasn't like my sister, my ex-boyfriend my kid. terrible levels of death. what's that like? with that like to be in a community, and no spoilers but

important people in this book that as well. what does that do to you as a reporter? >> guest: it's a real call. that's the despair that book came out right as i was reporting this and that made, it's making the case. it is saying for the white working class for the first time we are seeing people live their life expectancy is going down and a lot of times it's because of opioid abuse. shannon, every week felt like someone shannon knew pretty well died of an opioidho are very close to them died, and when you see when you look at the data, is that places that experience unemployment shocks, they get opioid deaths. drug abuse goes out.

these are not healthy communities. they are not healthy places to be. people need jobs. they just do. they need jobs and you want to work. and in places where work disappears you see a lot of that. you see a lot of death from drugs. >> host: and also hypertension heart attacks all this other stuff because people are undertreated. death of despair there's also depression right? people who have congenital illnesses, children that i don't know what their prenatal care was like. you see a constellation of the stuff. it's pretty grim. >> guest: well, yeah. let me -- one of my big takeaways was this healthcare piece because when i started researching the book, chuck

jones, the union leader, told me somebody is going tonto the union hall saying like you all will just -- sing to myself you all just get other jobs. i interviewed so mr. khanna sue told me they will get employed again and he might even get better jobs. this is capessentially, what's the big deal? chuck jones the union president had told me, it's life and death. someir truck lose their life, their wife will leave them and eventually they're going to lose their life. that's what he told me. he has been through eight plant closings at that point and i couldn't wrap my head around it. what are you talking about? the end he was out of about 300 workers there were laid off three of them died within a year. one drank himself to death as it appears.

another seem to have, died of liver disease and then the one i followed who i was deeply close to passed away because he had chest pains and didn't go to hospital because he didn't have health insurance. as jobs become more precarious and his idea of staying for life with one company it disappears. westermann ask ourselves as a country should we be time healthcare to employment? it'szy that this worker who i loved and followed closely in the book died because of lack of health insurance. it's crazy that when you lose your job you lose your health insurance. you saw that during the pandemic how insane it was in the middle of a pandemic people did not just lose their jobs, they lost their health insurance. so why are we still in that situation in the year 2021?

>> host: yes. one of the many things we need to start thinking about right decouple health care from jobs. to some extent decouple h.r., things like racism on the job or harassment with some of the subjects in this book to be better checks and balances in place and assistance for people that are outside of jobs. i think you make the case eloquently just by showing these people's lives i was really struck by some of the kind of racist experiences that some of the black workers had at the plant. you want to talk about that a little? >> guest: yeah. it was a real education to me. wally who is a black assembly worker i followed who was so optimistic and so beloved at the

plant, he got into the plant because his uncle had worked there him and his uncle got into the naacp was really pushing for them to start hiring black people. he got hired and ended up as a janitor. he went and into complaint to the unique and why did you make me a janitor? i've been to technical school. i know it operate a machine. the unit was like we know you know how toust that there's only so many jobs in this building. and if you get one of those jobs operating a machine that means our son are our nephew can't have one. that just brought home this idea that jobs are tribal. we get jobs to people in our families to people we love, to people we consider to be like us.

for a long time those good paying union jobs were literally ed down like family heirlooms in that plant. it took the civil rights act for wallabies uncle to be able to operate the machine because of the civil rights act. the day after it passed he went to his boss vincent i i want to operate a machine. because machine operators made twice what a janitor makes. so i do not been for the civil rights action still be a janitor making he would've made half the money over his lifetime then then. then making a machine operator and the guy who spoke to train him refuses to even speak to him. so we has to learn the job watching. >> host: which is part of why you explain later and i get to this later again but a lot of the black workers were willing to train their mexican replacements when the white workers were not come right?

because there was some kind of recognition of first of all the racism of not returning the mexicans but also of the historical precedent right? >> guest: yeah. i mean, i went in there after i start understanding why so many of the white workers wereion and the idea that trump was promising to say that factory jobs, it stopped being a mystery to me why worker for voting for trump. the mystery was why didn't the black workers working alongside them vote for trump? that's when i started wondering why didn't have the same analysis? a lot of those black workers they never expected the company to care about them. they never expected their job to be quite as secure. they heard the races on whistles. they heard racism in this notion

that we shouldn't give those jobs to those people because these jobs are ours, right? it was really, there were some black workers who refuse to train mexicans but the most unapologetic trains, the first people to raise their hand seem to be these black workers who said hey let's do it because they are workers to an somebody trained us them and keep it moving. we are not going to save the plant. might as well ride the wave on ou that's what one of the guys said. their friends were in the union particularly these white diehard union guys who had been in the union and been in the plant for generations were shocked. they couldn't believe it. why are you selling us out? why can't we stand together and fight for our job?

it really showed me in very vivid terms why it was so hard for the workers to speak with one voice and why all reacted differently to trump. >> host: trump is sort of better or worse a character to be. he is defining a lot of the lies that were -- lies that were being told to these workers that the jobs would be saved at the carrier plant as well. and then also a lot of the growing, i guess there's no other word for it, racist tendencies of these white workers that then find new meaning, as trump aficionados. i think it's interesting. it starts out actually the book starts out with trump's election. how did you see that? you track of the characters, the subjects change in attitudes towards trump over the course of

the four years you reported. that was fascinating also. >> guest: yes. i i wanted my book toos ae liknk one moment in time. in reality people change their minds. they vacillate come different things happen and they react to the news. i really saw these people as bellwethers, opinion and in many ways better bellwethers than own social circle. my social circle i don't think interact on a daily basis with anyone who doesn't have a college degree and yet two-thirds of americans don't have a bachelors degree. that was stunning for me to learn in the process of writing this book. but to get give back to your point i think that from the perspective of a lot of the workers especially the white men, they were seeing their earning power go down, their union power go down. they had seen nothing but losses

essentially in their wages over 30 years. they were very pessimistic about the future. because the future, the whole concept of optimism isn't about where you been. it's about where you're going. and so in many ways the black workers were moreeemed the election of a black president. they had seen social progress in certain ways, whereas the white workyhe men they were just seen losses and there were just saying status decline. so not only are the earning less but they are actually being called out for the privilege being called out for bng racist. they are feeling much less secure and so that came through a lot. we had this debate and elite

circles about why the white working class voted for trump. is it economic insecurity or is it racial insecurity? economic anxiety racial anxiety? look when you follow a dying factor up close it's a most impossible to disentangle the two. they are one and the same. i'm angry my moving to mexico. what is that, economic or racial insecurity? if an angry the blue-collar jobs to remain in my town, painting, roofing, carpentry or lawn care, janitorial services, but those are being done by undocumented immigrants for less pay than i would accept, what is that, economic insecurity or racial insecurity? if my cousin can't get a job in the pipefitters union because they are only accepting blacks

in native americans that year, where does that stand? i just came to understand that the scarcity, the zero-sum thinking that a lot of white working-class people have about well there's only so many jobs in this you get one, that means i can have one or my son can have one here it's real. it is actual reality. there is not an infinite number of jobs, of good-paying jobs. >> host: that is an point. >> guest: i came to understand -- >> host: fara, that is inspired here is what you're saying. sorry about that. >> guest: it was a light bulb went off. we intellectuals talk about racial justice dignity. it's something it's something that can yet when working-class people think about it, all it is that

is who gets dibs on the job? who gets first dibs on the job. that's what it's all about. what are you trying to say back is very inspired . i feel like you should be doing political i hope this book "american made" will be future campaigns is a bit of a guide ..

>> and paid off her mortgage, the cat was out of the bag her life that early bank changed. there was that. i wanted to understand her view

of politics without influencing it. shannon was not all that comfortable expressing her views, she didn't think her too important to have an opinion about it. i just think we should support the president howev it is. i tried to take a step back so i could hear her

every fily that broken family and different parents and mixed families, no one had a perfect family they like obama. but in the e is what changed her mind. she ended up getting angry for bullying people for wearing that we by this time her daughter is a nurse. her daughter is telling her that trump is spreading misinformati and trump supporters are spreading it. and shannon was scared to death of c and she really turned on the president at that time it happened in like three months she just turned on a dime in three months. part of it she lost her job she was on another factory doing okay with the country going.

he retreated a 180. >> she h an awakening. >> another character and a lot of subjects had intense love lives and ex-girlfriend and kids were trouble. if youver feel conscripted to give advice, first o that people try to get you across or that you actually had to cross. >> not so much - i felt a lot of time with his family. i went to church with them. i hung out as much as i could. sometimes i can be applied on the wall to say i'm a reporter and speaking of i did tell people that. a lot of people if you were to walk into a room you would've

thougha family friend or a member of the family. i tried not to cross any lines. but you have to be humanly have to care about them as human beings. i should ask the same question because you probably got close to the characters in your book. >> they definitely got checks and parts were published in advance. i end up helping one of the subjects find a better school for her son. that is where i would stop iho help people pay their rent, i offer advice. i feel this a be the capital that he would in the middle class would have another good

school. >> is actively unfair to the caregiver in queens that she would not have access to know which were the best schools for her son. >> we all make our own rules. >> information itself is not equitably distributed. what do you do about that. it is really hard. >> this is why shannon realizes, what she realizes, she is an educated father.

there is a natural. >> her daughter definitely changed after getting a college degree. the other thing that changed her because she was jobless she accepted an institution from a laizer to start protesting trump at the trump rallies. that was an interesting experience. the labor organizers are college-educated and there is a total disconnect between them culturally and the workers are trying to organize there was a moment when she was in the parler going for trump rally in this book was written by a psychic medium named john edward edward. the first books in seventh grade and she's gushing how great it is the labor organizers that i think she's talking about a former presidential candidate and he dropped out because he had a baby with his mistress. he said to shannon i didn't know he wrote a book. they're talking about two totally different people. they don't even know who the other person is. shannon has never heard of a failed presidential candidate. that symbolizes how a lot of trying

to champion and we don't even know the first thing about them. >> it reminds me of thety capi cramer who studied people in rural wisconsin and we thought of it as cultural inequality. again it's the way that race and economic inequality intertwined having certain cultural understanding is often intertwined even kw it mng of a certain class. you understand which is important. >> and really focus on working class which to me don't have a four-year college degree, did not have a ba. >> you're absolutely right the income definition is problematic. because as you say like the

people in my book were adjunct to make $30000 a year end see themselves as middle class. again it's related to the ndat identification. >> there is so much about being working class that is cultural. if you ended up there isn and they might make 100 or $200,000 a year that they culturally believe that the technicale is more important to the four-year degree. they believe they might be gun owners, their eating habits, they all smoke. there was things that shannon and john had in common that i did not share at all. even though i was a had that in common with shannon. i was friends of slaves, i had that in common but they had much

more in common culturally with each other than they did with me. i just had to come to realize that. i tell a funny story i was trying to get them to go to a fancy restaurant in indianapolis and nobody wanted tointerested in it took me a long time to realize they would've hated the restaurant. they thought it would've been super pretentious and they made fun of me by the beers that i would order. i would order craft beers and that. >> a map that somebody had drawn artisanal bs. . >> i'm a fancy pants. >> exactly. entertain that when you interview them and there is certain kinds of language that i really love, i don't i'm allowed to say this but the book called the people who trade the mexican wo suck

ass clause. they were likely to the extreme. when you say that, what did they mean when they say the. >> a sock ass is a buddy who cks up t the boss and does what management wants. the diehard union people thought sock ass. she would give her bosses birthday cards and the company would have milesnes, work anniversaries, if you been there for a certain number of years you could have a steak dinner with your boss. john who was a union guy only a like that. shannon would never miss a dinner like that. there is difference of opinion of how much to be in bed with management. yes the sock ass clause in a

contract if you trained your mexican replacement he would get a small bonus. only a sock ass would do that. they hit a whole vocabulary that i had to learn. if you think about the way professors in college campuses talk there's a whole vocabulary that you have to learn. we are not even talking to each other. they have their own languages. if you donin understand what people are talking about. >> one working-class source that i was interviewing said what's a about misogyny and i thought that was really interesting. some of this is about and some of the training but some is literally vocabulary. >> i thicause now there's an idea

if you don't use the right terms or pron you cannot even be part of the conversation. so how do you working-class people what those terms are. you should have to go to college to win learn them. i don't mean to generate those conversations, i think the really important but if you have to go to college to know how to that. you're cutting yourself off from the majority of people in not only the majority of the people of the country but the people that are least advantaged. we have to find a way to be a littletowards those who have not had the opportunity to learn what those terms are. and a little less rigid how to hear from them. we need to have many more

conversations and a lot more and by forcing people to talk in certain ways that they have even talked to todd. you cut yourself off fro them. those are the exact people from the conveations. one of the workers a white guy named brian got on a eli lilly had a totally different corporate culture. it had a questionnaire he had to sit down and fill out are you man or woman or prefer not to say. the corporate culture was very accepting of trans people. he was very accepting of folks from all c2cntries. of water he did not know how to act in the factory. he's like it's a gre spend my days alone i don't know anyone here.

he said it's not bad by no means but i stepped into their world they did not step into mine. >> that was a good answer. >> he had to rrn everything. >> also they go to the gym outbreaks rather than eating donuts and literally there i smokehouse. i hope i'm getting across to viewers the level i cracker barrel the status of cracker barrel is a chain in the south but that was interesting that is place for things like that. blue state folks might not think, going to the gym at lunch hour, that's a real marker but that was to some of thesefactory workers. >> what i find when it comes to going to another country and be intolerant of another culture and inquisitive abo it, were all about that, i traveled all over the world and be able to

work at another cultural in kenya and pakistan and observe and experience. but in our own country we go to the deep south or in texas or indiana. it. we are ashamed of it maybe were we think i shouldn't exist. i think sometimes we have to say that the different let's ask more questions and understand i'm not saying it's good or bad but to engage with them and understand them you cannot just start from a place of judgment. >> part of your bio you live in michigan as well as cambridge massachusetts a part of your emphasis or the fact that you live there partially what does

that mean to saturate yourself with more the communities and to keep her yourself. >> own family have a ton of family members in detroit. detroit has been in trouble since the auto pla shutdown. a lot of my family came from the deep south and they moved to . they moved to detroit and they had years of great jobs and all of a sudden the plants closedown and people struggled. you can be a black woman in detroit with two masters earning 30000 a year and not be able to make ends meet. it is easy to sit and know that

even though i have members of myown family it just took me a long time to truly understand what economic reality is like. reconnect with the reality of members of my own family. >> huawei is an incredible character he has a huge heart and ex-girlfriend's daughter. stepped into parent like a hollywood stepdaughter. she is difficult and seem to have this amazing person i don't want to give the book away but how are you processing getting to know him and will happen after to him.

>> i'm in touch with his family and i think of him every day. >> i want to get back to the mexican worker retraining. there is something very much hunger games around this. what do you think when the mexican workers started coming and people are retraining people creating their own adolescent like they're gonna be put to pasture when they retrain these people. it's one of the most intense in your book. >> i was lucky to be able to go to mexico and find workers who were trained. i foun trained and some others and i interview them about what it was like.

they were very moved by the whole experience. one of them told me before he went up there that this is capitalism this is the way it works. he thought it would be a good thing to bring the factory to mexico but after leading the people in indiana he was forced to confront an idea that the company was throwing its own workers away and the company would throw him away to. the two workers that i were trained they both left for other jobs within six monthsbout his workers and they did not see a future at that comedy. that was really interesting to hear from them. one said shannon told me, i felt like an executioner i felt like

an assassin. that was a big eye-opener to me. i also realize that those mexican workers had quite a bit of technical training already. they had been trained in high school in some cases to wor in factories. mexico had much better training system than the americans did. those workers were in some ways much more prepared to take over those jobs and you be a part of the global economy. them abraham has traveled all over the world travel to india and traveled working with indians who are building things. it's hard to imagine shannon or john or huawei being sent to india to work with people.

i sort of got a picture of rising skilled manufacturing labor force that is international. our workers are not a part of it. they have been kept out of it. part of it, we do not believe in we jumped in to the pre-trade agreements and globalization without thinking through how to prepare for the future and i hope that has been reversed. i think people are much more willing to talk about industrial policy and apprenticeships and partnerships between unicommunity colleges to train the next generation. for a long time, capitalism and the prohe way it works. >> were gonna have to wrap up

but i love the indictment of nafta and the critique and your book that comes from the characters. it is a gripping story thank you sarah you been a wonderfuljoin