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Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of of our lives and those of our children. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. For those of you who may have missed the deadline to sign up for the spring online classes from the Left Education Project, those are now in their second week. You can register for the rest of these courses at any of the tracks at a discounted rate. Each class runs from four to six in the afternoon, Eastern Standard Time. And we know that that's inconvenient for some of you. And so we have decided to make live recordings of the entire class available to anyone who signs up at this point, whether or not you've seen the other classes, you will have the whole course at your disposal. Please go for More information to LeftForum. For Left Education Project. Please also remember to, like, subscribe and share this video and support our work by visiting our website at www.democracyatwork.info and or by signing up to our substack community at democracyatwork Substack. All of these mechanisms broaden our reach. It's a way to partner with us and to build the very large community. We now have approaching 600,000 YouTube subscribers, and we invite you to do so. Okay, today's program is going to be particularly focused on housing. We will have an interview in the second half with Rob Robinson, who's been our guest before, talking to us about the housing crisis. Affordability, which everybody is talking about, has an awful lot to do with the housing costs, the rental payments you make, and so on. And we'll also be talking a little bit about two important union events that teach important lessons. So let's get right to it. I want to begin with some history. We don't do enough of that, as some of you have pointed out. And so I wanted to talk about the history of public housing in the United States. Yeah, there is a history. Government in our country has from time to time entered the housing business when it was a clear need of the American people. Why am I telling you this story? Because it's a clear need. Now, that's another way of talking about the affordability crisis. Housing is not affordable to millions of Americans who either go without a home or are crammed into too little space for the physical and mental health of our population. But first, a little bit of instructive history. In 1918, that's over a century ago, as World War I intensified overseas, causing Americans in large numbers to go over there and fight that war, the US Government embarked on what was then a radical experiment. It quietly became the nation's largest housing developer, designing and constructing more than 88, 080 new communities across 26 states in just two years. These weren't hastily erected barracks or rows of identical homes, not at all. They were thoughtfully designed neighborhoods, complete with parks, schools, shops and sewer Systems. In just two years, this federal program provided housing for 100,000Americans. Few people know this history, which is why I'm bringing it to you. If we want housing to be produced, and we want it quickly for people who shouldn't be homeless, who shouldn't be overcrowded, who shouldn't be moving every two weeks, disrupting their children's education and everything else about their lives, well, the government could do it. The government has done it. And that leaves us all with the question, why in the world isn't that being done now? My second update has to do also with a story that has a history. We covered that history in this program. It was the effort of the United Auto Workers to crack a problem they've had, which is organizing auto workers in allied businesses in the American south, that part of the country that has been the most resistant to labor union organizing. And we focused attention on the Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the UAW tried twice two elections to win the right to represent the workers. If a majority of the workers who vote vote in favor, the the union is thereby established. Well, after two failed efforts in 2024, the union won and became the official union. And finally, a few weeks ago, they got a contract. They voted on it, and it passed by a 96% vote. That's overwhelming support of the members of that union for the contract they got. And I'm now going to tell you about that contract because it's important for you to know what organized workers can get. And this is an important factory in a new part of the country. It's a boost for unionism. And before I go into it, let me tell you about another boost. The US Labor Department announced that in the year 2025, just behind us, 500,000 more Americans were members of unions at the end of last year than at the beginning. That's the first time in 16 years that union membership has gone up. I think union members are facing the reality of our economic decline. They're seeing social movements arise, such as that in Minneapolis against the ICE program. And they're beginning to recognize, as workers have done in the past, that unions can be a very important defense in hard economic times. Well, back to the factory in Chattanooga. Volkswagen, the United Auto Workers. Every worker who voted for this contract, indeed every worker who works there, because the contract covers everybody, will immediately get a bonus because this contract was signed and ratified. How much will each worker get as a bonus immediately? $6,550. Not a minor matter. They will also receive a 20% wage increase over the four years of this contract. It runs from February 2026 to February 2030. 20% over four years. On top of the bonus of 6,500. Some workers, skilled workers, machinists, electricians, will get more than that. But that's just to give you an idea. Health care premiums paid by the workers will go down by 20%, not. Not the coverage, the cost to the worker, even more for some of their plans. And they will not go up again for the life of the contract. So down 20% and at that level for the next four years. Nor can they lay off workers. I could go on, but this is a remarkable contract. A bad inflation will hurt it. But other than that, it gives you an idea of what the struggle for unions can achieve here in the United States. Today. A very different story has to do with the Pittsburgh newspaper, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Many years, a major newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. All right. They've been on strike for three years. The workers there in a dispute on November 24th of last year. They won a hard won victory after three years. The victory came against a company that had kept publishing the paper during the strike by using scabs and by using workers that were not in bargaining units on strike. The strike was caused when universally all kinds of benefits that had been provided to the workers were taken away. That's really what provoked the strike. The union then proceeded to file charges with the National Labor Relations Board, as a union is entitled to do. These charges were supported by the board. That is, the board investigated the charges and found in favor of the union. But the company ignored the National Labor Relations Board. That happens often. The union went to court to enforce the situation and they won in the court. The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, November 10, 2025, confirmed the NLRB's earlier decision and ordered the company to restore all the requested items of the collective bargaining agreement. The union went through all the steps to compel the management to honor the agreement. That was deemed fair and reasonable by the National Labor Relations Board. However, a few weeks after this, on January 7, 2026, all the workers at the Post Gazette were notified that the owners Block Communications would end publishing of the Post Gazette On May 3rd of this year, leaving the city of Pittsburgh with no print newspaper at all. All right. This is extraordinary and deserves a comment. A newspaper is a vital source of what makes any city or indeed any community a really viable community. It's how millions and millions of Americans participate in local affairs, in local governments. It's part of any functioning democracy. It is outrageous that we allow it to be privately owned so that a person who's rich enough to buy a newspaper can then decide what it covers, how it covers it. But here we see the power that we give to individual owners to be taken even further, that a private capitalist owner of a newspaper, unhappy, that won't make as much profit as it might have before because it has to deal fairly with its workers, can simply shut the enterprise down, walk away, take away this important part of the community because it's privately profitable for them to do so. Never has the clash between the profit motive and the profit of private individuals been more obvious with democracy and the needs of a community. That's an important lesson taught by, by the crisis of Pittsburgh that we've just covered. We've come to the end of the first half of today's show. Stay with me. We'll be right back with Rob Robinson and the crisis of housing in the United States today. Before we jump into the second half of today's show, I wanted to thank you for your very generous response to our fundraising efforts this year and in particular in the last couple of months. And in part responding to that, we are extending the availability of our limited edition, linen covered hardcover version of Understanding Capitalism, the book I wrote and that we have been making available now for quite a while. If you are interested, I will be signing copies of that hardcover and they will be available to you as they have been over the last few weeks. Just simply send an email to us@infoomocracyatwork.info and put in the subject line limited edition. We will send you all the information you need to order and receive your copy signed copy of Understanding Capitalism in its hardback. And thank you again for your kind attention to the fundraising dimension of what we do. Welcome back, friends, to the second half of today's economic update. I am very pleased, proud to bring back to our microphones and to our cameras, Rob Robinson. He's been a guest on our program before. Many of you have written to us about his appearances. He is a specialist on issues of land, housing, homelessness, questions that are fundamental to the way we live and fundamental to the problems of this economic system we're living through. So I want an update, basically, Rob, from you Let me begin by thanking you for your time and sharing your wisdom with us. Rob, for those of you who may not remember, is a formerly homeless community organizer and an activist based in New York City. His work focuses on changing people's fundamental relationship to land and housing. He is a senior advisor with a New York City based human rights organization and an adjunct professor of urbanism at the New School University in New York City. And he is also a teacher in the classes that we have organized under the Left Forum as the Left Education Project. Sorry, my brain is running ahead of my mouth. Okay, so, Rob, let's begin with the big one. Is there a housing crisis in the United States as we speak?