Saturday, February 2, 2019
Sherrod Brown was running late to his Sunday afternoon roundtable in Clinton, Iowa, and the organizer of the event, a local labor leader, had just finished introducing the panel of area activists set to discuss the “dignity of work” in eastern Iowa with the senator. The crowd of about 60 people, most over the age 45, were packed into a tiny auditorium at Pangaea International Academy for a “broad-based discussion on the overall degradation of workers’ rights at the state level.”
The organizer ticked off a few of the issues they’d be touching on, including minimum wage adjustments, workers’ comp laws, and OSHA regulations. “There’s a lot to talk about today,” he said, shooting an anxious glance at the door, “and I wanted to get those introductions out of the way so that we can introduce the senator when he arrives.”
There was a teetering in the room, then full-on laughter. “He’s here!” a few people called out from the crowd. The organizer, confused, looked around the room, finally spotting the three-term senator from Ohio seated right there at the table, among the activists. Brown had slipped through the door undetected and slid into an empty chair mid-way through the intros.
“What just happened there,” the organizer said as the laughter died down, “demonstrates his every man persona.”
And that’s the book on Brown, who was on the final stop of a three-day, seven-city “listening tour” centered around the slogan “Dignity of Work.” Sitting at the table with the labor activists, Brown really did blend in with his burnt orange sweater, rumpled khakis, and what looked to be black no-slip shoes from the discount bin of a recently shuttered Payless. A Yale educated everyman, Brown has been talking jobs and trade in union halls ever since entering public service at the age of 22. What Bernie Sanders is to the issue of income inequality, that’s Sherrod Brown and worker’s rights.
At the time I was in Clinton, Brown had yet to declare his candidacy for president, or even formed the obligatory exploratory committee, and there was a lot of speculation that he had no real desire to run for the office; the “Dignity of Work Tour,” it was reasoned, was as much about making sure the rest of the field prioritized blue-collar workers as it was about truly testing out the waters.
That’s the kind of sway Brown holds in the party after winning reelection in 2018, pulling a higher share of the vote in Ohio than Trump did two years prior. And that’s why he was in Clinton, a mid-sized manufacturing city on the eastern edge of the state. Clinton County had gone Obama +23 in 2012, but flipped to Trump +5 in 2016, a 28-point swing in just four-years.
“If we don’t figure out how to better talk to workers,” Brown said, his voice gravelly and grave as ever, “Democrats may win the popular vote for president in 2020 and lose the electoral college because we lose Ohio and Iowa and a couple states in between.” He mentioned the erosion of the union vote. “We’re just getting emasculated in smaller communities, even if those communities have labor union members. We’re just not talking to workers enough.”
Brown then sat there for the next 40 minutes and listened. The discussion was wide-ranging, hitting on all the various issues the organizer had touched on, but the commonality was the overwhelming sense of frustration shared across the panel. One worker, I didn’t catch his affiliation, talked about how the younger generation just didn’t want to spend an entire career in the factory or the trades, and how that had led to a labor shortage of qualified people.
“The American Dream is to go to college, get married, have a house, 2.4 kids, dog, Toyota’s in the driveway, whatever,” he said. “But you know, I’ve found you kind of have to settle — and it’s not settling — but being a plumber or a pipe-fitter or a maintenance man.” Those are good jobs, he said, careers that offer insurance and a 401(k). What does college offer other than loads of debt?
Watching Brown listen, hand under his chin, eyes affixed to the speaker, head nodding along when appropriate, it was impossible not to fall in love with the idea of him running a cabinet meeting. At one point, after a woman from the University of Iowa Labor Center talked about the fight to keep the center from being defunded by the school, Brown tapped her on the arm and gave her an indiscreet little thumbs-up, a genuine boost of encouragement.
As refreshing as it was to watch a politician behave like someone who gives a shit about real people’s problems, it was the words of a woman from Teamsters Local 238 that stuck with me afterwards.
“I think all of us know people who get disrespected on a daily basis,” she said, as heads nodded around the room. “And the one thing that we had, that gave us a little bit of dignity, were our unions, a voice in the job.” Without that voice, she said, “you’re not a human being, you’re just a data point.” It all amounted to one definitive conclusion for her: “There is no dignity of work right now in the country.”
Immediately following the roundtable, I participated in my first press gaggle. Or rather, I stood there like a virgin at an orgy, watching in fascination and horror at what was transpiring. At one point I stuck my hand into the middle of it, just for a second, but that was as close as I came to being a participant.
Senator Brown had made his way out into the hall surrounded by people, shaking hands and smiling, clearly enjoying himself. He was then directed to the small grouping of media. The cameras came on, Brown’s smile evaporated, and he began by giving an opening statement, transforming from the warm and friendly person he’d been all afternoon into a terse and serious politician.
“This shows the kind of support there is for the labor movement in this country,” Brown croaked, mentioning a poll showing half the workers in the United States would join a union if they had the opportunity.
The reporters had been grouped loosely in a half-circle around the senator, but when Brown wrapped up and the first question was lobbed — the local print reporter, in apparent tradition, was given first dibs — the group spontaneously tensed and latched together, conjoining itself into a single entity that then began to slowly close in around Brown, like a boa constrictor about to enjoy a late lunch.
I was unprepared, poorly positioned and blocked out from the beginning. I tried holding my arm in the air, up over the heads of the reporters in front of me, but I knew I wasn’t picking anything up. A print guy shouted out a softball. An NBC News dude had a two-parter. Brown was being evasive, doing a subtle drop step, his back turning, but the Gaggle shuffled with him, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing.
Seeing no other option, I shoved my hand in between someone’s armpit just in time to catch a question from The Washington Post’s Jenna Johnson asking about the “Dignity of Work” slogan. She mentioned that it had both a deep history in Catholic teachings, as well as in politics. Republicans, she said, have used it often over the years.
“Republicans talk about civil rights, too, but they don’t mean it,” Brown gruffed, interrupting.
“So why do you use it? Talk about the significance to you.”
“My whole career has been about the dignity of work,” he said. “I see this phony populism from Donald Trump, but populism is never racist; populism is not anti-Semitic; populism does not divide people; populism doesn’t give tax cuts to rich people. So if Republicans talk about dignity of work, it’s as phony as their populism.”
And with that a staffer stepped in and broke it up. Immediately, as soon as the camera lights went off, Brown became the good-natured, easy-going guy he’d been before they came on. He joked around with a few of the national reporters that he knew, talked enthusiastically about meeting people on these stops, how if he runs he’ll be a “happy warrior” on the trail. His wife Connie Shultz— the Pulitzer-prize winning reporter and Trump-slaying syndicated columnist — had been chatting with a reporter nearby, and she eventually cut in.
“Okay, quit harassing them,” she said to her husband, trying to get him out the door. Brown nodded in acknowledgment and started to move in that direction. “Did you wear your coat?” Shultz asked. Brown paused and patted his chest. He flashed a sheepish grin; he wasn’t sure if he’d brought it in. Shultz shook her head and clucked, jokingly: “This is how we lose things.”
Five minutes later, after a brief discussion about whether Brown had time to use the restroom first, they finally made it outside to where a white Escalade was waiting. Brown walked to the back door of the vehicle and opened it for his wife. She climbed in and as he stood there holding open the door, squinting into the late afternoon’s fading sun, a frizzy tuft of hair sticking up in the back, I felt two contradictory feelings.
The first was easy enough to identify — I liked Sherrod Brown. The guy was humble and genuine, and seemed to truly believe that being a politician meant serving the people who elected you. He was a rare and noble figure. The other feeling, however, was more elusive, and not nearly as sanguine. More like an oncoming bout of poison ivy that I couldn’t yet put a finger on.
A few minutes after I’d been there, a woman in her early 30s came bustling behind the bar, tying on her apron and pulling up her blonde hair. She apologized profusely to her manager for being late: A pipe in her house had frozen and burst, she said, water was everywhere. Her and the girls couldn’t stay there, obviously, so they’d gotten a hotel room which thank God was discounted, but she’d forgotten to bring clean work pants and so she’d had to use the washing machines at the hotel, and, and…
The manager rubbed his temples, nodded, and gave her an update in the clipped, annoyed manner of underpaid mid-level managers everywhere. After he took off, The Bartender came over and profusely apologized to me, like I was some sort of quick-tempered mob boss, and she’d just ruined my kid’s birthday party. She then cheerfully walked me through the various options included in the sampler platter.
The bar scene started to pick up after that: an old man slowly eating a salad; a couple sharing an appetizer and staring at their phones; an escaped dad looking for an extra tall beer.
Not long before my platter arrived, The Bartender’s two daughters, the older around 12, the younger who looked to be about 5 or 6, wandered into the restaurant and scooted into a booth across from the bar area. The Bartender was happy to see her girls, and she squealed a little when they came in, preparing them both Shirley Temples. But it became quickly obvious that the situation was not ideal.
The girls called out their orders from the booth, broke into giggles, went back-and-forth to the bathroom. At one point the younger one, disregarding her older sister’s orders, climbed onto a stool at the bar and began calling her mom’s name as she tried to help a customer. A different manager, this one in a suit and tie, had come out to the front of the house to observe the situation, and he gently scolded the little girl and sent her back to the table. He didn’t appear to be the type of belligerent, belittling boss so commonly found in the service industry, but there was little doubt, by the way he was hovering over her work station, that they would be having a chat in his office later that night.
Not long afterwards, The Bartender, visibly frazzled but still smiling, sent her daughters back up to the hotel room with their food in boxes.
It wasn’t until I was settling up my $25 tab, contemplating how big a tip I could afford to leave and still have enough money to get home, that it finally struck me. I knew what that other feeling was, the one I couldn’t quite place as I watched Brown holding the door open for his wife in the fading sunlight: It was sadness, drenched in nostalgia. Like watching a childhood sports hero in the last year of his career, knowing he doesn’t have it anymore. And I’m not talking about Brown himself — it was that damn slogan, and what it represented.
The “dignity of work.” Give me a break. What a sweet, antiquated idea, the perfect encapsulation of just how clueless a lot of Baby Boomers are about what it’s like out there on the bottom rungs of today’s job market. To be fair, it’s not their fault — they grew up in a time when unions were at peak power, the corporate tax rate was north of 50%, and Milton Friedman hadn’t yet created a generation of fiscal sociopaths by declaring: “There is only one social responsibility of business — to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase profits.”
They grew up in an era when companies like Templeton Rye were the rule and not some quaint exception.
The woman from the Teamsters hit it right on the head: “There is no dignity of work right now in the country.” She wasn’t trying to contradict Sen. Brown or point out that he might be off-base with his message. But she did. What she was saying, the way I interpreted it, anyway, was that dignity, much like chivalry, is dead. Splayed out on the sidewalk somewhere in Lower Manhattan’s Financial District. There’s nothing left to restore, in other words, not with incremental, small-scale measures. It’s too late for all that. We’re far past fucked.
I looked up at The Bartender as she refilled the solitary man’s water. How much would she make tonight? I did the math in my head: At $4.35 an hour, a seriously gaudy minimum wage in the service industry (it’s $2.13 in Indiana), she was pulling in a base pay of about $26 per six-hour shift. Tip-wise, on a night like this — I glanced over at Escaped Dad, slightly red-faced and fingering his credit card, about to head back to his room after a $5 beer — it might be as high as $75. So $100, max, she’s taking home at the end of the night.
That’s not bad, until you start subtracting. The hotel bill; the quarters for the washing machine; dinner for the girls. That $100, when she wakes up in the morning, is actually more like a twenty-dollar bill. And that’s not even mentioning the BUSTED PIPE AND FLOODED HOUSE.
I empathized with her situation. I was about 18 months removed from the front lines of the service industry myself, and roughly one major home repair away from being back behind the bar. There is no more crippling, soul-sucking work than groveling for tips on days like the one The Bartender was experiencing. I wasn’t surprised, then, when I overheard a recently arrived co-worker whisper, out the corner of her mouth: “Good thing I brought that, huh?” To which The Bartender, sighing deeply, replied: “You have no idea.”
Anything to forget the shame of putting on a smile and performing in front of strangers for a few grubby dollars.
Here’s the question I’d like to ask Brown if I had a second-go at the gaggle. Which happens first: The dignity of work returning to The Bartender’s job, or it being automated away?
In other words, will the service industry unionize, the Supreme Court stop siding with corporations, and the owner of this crappy chain restaurant guarantee every employee health benefits, paid time off, and a livable wage before, say, an Estonian robotics company builds the first autonomous, AI-powered robot bartender? Oh wait, that already happened.
See, it’s a lovely sentiment, “dignity of work,” and I’m sure it tests off the charts with older, moderate Americans, the same sort who get misty-eyed when the national anthem’s played at a sporting event (there’s a reason that most of the major candidates would later, after Brown opted not to enter the race, adopt his messaging and language).
For anyone coming up in today’s economy, however, the “Dignity of Work” as a relatable slogan is Willie Mays in a Mets uniform; Johnny Unitas in a Chargers jersey. Time has passed that sentiment by — it no longer has any relevance to the younger generation. For most people under the age of 35, “Dignity” and “Work” belong in the same sentence the way “Self-Confidence” and “Pornography” go together — ironically, with a wince.
My brother-in-law, a former bartender/barista/landscaper (and a current stay-at-home dad/stand-up comedian), had recently given me The Chapo Guide to Revolution, a left-wing manifesto written by the hosts of the popular politics podcast, Chapo Trap House. The final chapter, titled “WORK”, hits on this generational disconnect in a Joe Biden quote from the 2012 Democratic National Convention:
“Dad never failed to remind us that a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity. It’s about respect. It’s about your place in the community. It’s about being able to look your child in the eye and say, ‘Honey, it’s going to be okay,’ and mean it, and know it’s true.”
The argument that the Chapo authors make, and it’s the same one that can be made against Brown’s “Dignity of Work” slogan, is that Biden’s message, as heartwarming and aisle-spanning as it might be, is bullshit.
“Grit, patience, determination, ingenuity, focus, self-discipline, and empathy are all good things that make for self-confident and healthy individuals. But now ask yourself: Does your job bring out these traits in you, your colleagues, or your boss? Or is it much more likely to bring out things like anxiety, impatience, petulance, authoritarianism, and a pent-up sense of homicidal rage? The contradiction is easy to unpack: The idea that work ‘builds character’ makes sense only outside the context of wage labor, the reality of most people’s employment.”
This isn’t the opinion of some fringe voice on the outer edges of the party, either. The Chapo Guide to the Revolution was a New York Times best-seller. The under-35 crowd, the Millennials, are about to supplant the Boomers as the largest living adult generation. So when Chapo writes: “Jobs destroy character, day after miserable day,” they are speaking for a lot of people. And the Joe Biden’s and Sherrod Brown’s of the world, no matter how well-meaning and good-intentioned, don’t seem to understand that.
And that, I think, is what the 2020 Democratic nomination will ultimately boil down to. The battle is not ideological — it’s generational. Do Democrats move forward by trying to regain a standard of normalcy that hasn’t existed for decades, or do we call things for what they are and stare directly into the future, no matter how dark and troubling it might be? Do we cling to the ideas of the past in the hope it will make people comfortable, or do we attempt something never seen before in the pursuit of actual change?
Are we more Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang, or Sherrod Brown and Joe Biden?
After spending some 48 hours on the trail, it’s a question I was in no way prepared to answer. I had a year to figure that out. The one thing I did know, as I scribbled in a $7 tip, was that any promise to bring back the “dignity of work” that doesn’t include wholesale change to what is so very obviously a broken-down, off-the-rails economic system, is as big a con as promising to Make America Great Again.