This week we’re talking about the power of unions in dealing with debt! Ian Rhodewalt, Eleni Schirmer & Jason Wozniak of the Debt Collective speak to host Shanna about bargaining for the collective good.

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[00:00:05] Shanna Bennett: Hi, I’m Shanna Bennett and I’m with some of my dearest friends from the Debt Collective Jason Wozniak, Ian Rhodewalt and Eleni Schirmer. And you’re listening to Matter of Life and Debt.

[00:00:22] Welcome to the podcast. Hey everyone!

[00:00:24] Ian Rhodewalt: Hi! Thanks for having us.

[00:00:25] Eleni Schirmer: Hey, y’all great to be here.

[00:00:27] Shanna Bennett:Thanks for stopping by. So today’s conversation is gonna be a little different than some of the conversations we’ve had with the Debt Collective. We’re gonna be talking about union involvement with the student debt movement. I’m really excited to talk about this because it’s not something that I am very familiar with.

[00:00:46] I don’t think a lot of us are familiar with this kind of level of union organizing, outside of some of the national headlines we’ve seen this summer, everything from Amazon becoming unionized to Starbucks becoming more unionized. So I’m really excited to have this conversation. Thanks for stopping by.

[00:01:03] Let’s dive right in. So let’s start with what you individually do for the Debt Collective Eleni. And we can start with you if you’d like.

[00:01:09] Eleni Schirmer: Sure. Yeah, so I’m a researcher and organizer with the Debt Collective and I work mostly on higher ed. And I have been working closely with Jason and Ian on pushing to sort of draw out this issue as labor unions. I came into the Debt Collective actually from labor unions, and have started to realize as long as workers still have hundreds of dollars of debt that they have to pay every month, whether it’s student loans or medical debt or housing debt, unions are not actually working for working class folks. So that’s kind of how I found my way into the Debt Collective and have been lucky to get to work with lots of folks here and do different organizing and research projects.

[00:01:49] Shanna Bennett: Okay, thank you. And Ian, what about you?

[00:01:52] Ian Rhodewalt: So I am just a recent member of the Debt Collective. I think January was when I began, I had just finished my master’s in Labor Studies at UMass Amherst. And I’m a delegate with the Western Massachusetts Area Labor Federation. So using some of the Debt Collective’s resources I wrote, and we passed a resolution at our January meeting calling for student debt cancellation.

[00:02:15] I think of how my both labor organizing and relationship with debt are connected to my past as a teacher. I’m a former teacher of 10 years. A majority of that was as a preschool teacher. I started trying to organize the preschool that I was working at, and realized I needed some more organizing skills.

[00:02:33] So I went back to school for a Labor Studies degree. but the connection there being that preschool teachers being some of the most underfunded teachers and it being sort of a parallel with student debt. The high majority of preschool teachers being women, 98% or so, and a significant plurality of them being women of color.

[00:02:52] Ian Rhodewalt: So there’s that connection there between preschool teachers and preschool teachers not being represented very widely by unions and student debt. So it’s a convergence of interests.

[00:03:02] Shanna Bennett: I could see that. And since you’re kind of already on this path in discussing your personal experience, can you touch on your experience with debt, in particular student debt?

[00:03:13] Ian Rhodewalt: Yeah. So I have student debt from my most recent degree, the Labor Studies degree. I have about $17,500 in debt. My wife has about $115,000 in student debt and together we have over $130,000, so that’s what we’re dealing with as a family.

[00:03:37] One of the main reasons why I am very passionate about the cancellation of student debt.

[00:03:42] Shanna Bennett: I have a similar amount. I’m around the $130,000 mark as well. So I can understand that. Jason, what about you? What’s your personal relationship with student debt?

Jason Wozniak: This goes all the way back for me from childhood up into the present. And, what I mean by that is that, my parents were both lower middle class working folks. My father was a teacher. My mother was a secretary. And the way that they got by, and providing a lot of the necessities in life are a way that a lot of Americans are forced to do.

[00:04:08] So, which is by going into massive debt, right.?Using credit cards to pay for gas or bills that you can’t afford cause your wages suck and you’re forced to take on debt in order to make a living in this country or make a life in this country. So from a very early age, I was initiated into a type of like, you might say like debt pedagogy, where I learned what it was to live with debt through my parents. And it wasn’t fun because they were always working. And about the ways that debt robs our time. And that’s one of the reasons why it’s a labor issue.

[00:04:35] But so from day one, it was my brother and sister and I, we were born into indebted relations and what it was like to live with debt. And so that in a sense is like you’re a student of debt from the moment you’re born. Unless you’re wealthy. Fast forward, I remember this specific conversation about when I was gonna go to undergrad university and I didn’t get good grades or anything like that.

[00:04:53] So my choices were limited and I definitely wasn’t getting scholarships. And we, which I think a lot of middle class families are in this situation where you’re not poor enough to get Pell grants or other types of funding. You’re not rich enough to pay for your school. So you have to take on debt. Okay. So. I started taking on all this debt for undergrad. I end up going to get a master’s degree in education to be a teacher. I take on debt for my master’s degree. And then I eventually came back. And even though I get funding to study at a PhD program in order to live while I’m studying, I have to take on funding to pay for housing and food and other things.

[00:05:25] So that’s one of the things I think happens to a lot of PhD students actually is that you might get funding to pay for your classes but you don’t have enough money to basically live and study at the same time. So at the end of all this, I came out and I think it now, I stopped keeping track on purpose.

[00:05:39] I think we have to practice purposeful forgetting if we’re gonna live a decent life, when it comes to debt. But I think I’m somewhere around like $260,000 in student debt right now.

[00:05:49] Shanna Bennett: Thank you for highlighting that point of sometimes when you are pursuing an advanced degree in particular, you end up having to account for living expenses that aren’t included otherwise. And it’s something we say often, but there are some programs that would prefer that you actually not work while participating in these programs.

[00:06:07] So you’re kinda left in a tough spot. So thank you for highlighting. And Eleni, what’s your personal relationship with student debt?.

[00:06:13] Eleni Schirmer: I don’t have any student debt. I borrowed a bunch of money to go to college. My sisters have a lot of student debt. Family members have student debt. I graduated with, I don’t know, undergrad with $50,000 or $60,000 in debt. I graduated in 2008 with a fucking expensive liberal arts degree in American studies.

[00:06:34] I obviously got a job as a waitress, as a result and was making some loan payments and my debt story is basically I chose to, I didn’t have health insurance and I had student loan payments. And the way I could resolve both of those issues was by going back to school. And at that time there was kind of a provision where if I could take classes as a special student, I could get some kind of insurance deal and also put my loans into deferment.

[00:07:00] And so I started doing this. I took a bunch of classes and found my way into a grad program. I really wasn’t intending to go to grad school but it did solve this loan deferment problem and a health insurance problem. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that as the reason to get a PhD, but I do have a PhD now.

[00:07:18] Eleni Schirmer: And I basically won a lottery. Some very, very distant, distant, distant family friend of my grandmother, who I met once in my life, got into a huge fight with her family and decided to leave some money to me and my sisters. So I was able to use that to pay off the debt.

[00:07:35] So it’s a fucking wild one in a million stories. It made a big difference to me to fucking not have that debt. The choice that debt had kind of driven me to grad school, I was able to really kind of settle into and take time to kind of really enjoy.

[00:07:48] Learning without tons of debt pressure on the other end. And that’s part of why I’m here doing this work is that I’ve had student debt and I’ve not had it and it’s fucking better without it. None of us should have that. So that’s me.

[00:07:59] Shanna Bennett: That is quite the story. It’s interesting. In speaking with different borrowers, who’ve experienced not having the debt, usually somewhere in there, the person’s like and I want everyone to experience this feeling we should all be able to feel this way. It’s great.

[00:08:13] So while we’re on you, Eleni, I’m gonna ask you a juicy question, right? Which is, let’s talk about the value of union involvement in this movement. That’s really what I’m after and that’s what I’m really not familiar with. Let’s start there.

[00:08:26] Eleni Schirmer: There’s a lot of ways. I mean, I think really there’s the sort of the most straightforward one, which is that unions in their most basic kind of bare bones conception, help working people get more money in their pocket. That’s kind of like if you were to strip down unions, labor unions, to their most brutal, simplistic definition, that’s probably what most folks would say.

[00:08:47] They help workers get more money. Well, that whole purpose is basically undermined with the project of debt. So as long as people are having to take on debt to basically survive in this world, we have a debt finance welfare state. You can live. You can get housing and higher ed and healthcare is according to how much debt you want to take out.

[00:09:07] It doesn’t work. Unions are basically being hamstrung by debt. And so I think that’s one of the first key issues. The second one is then how does it relate to the different debt types? Well, with education, it’s a particular kind of debt because people are told that to get better jobs.

[00:09:22] Which is kind of a labor union project. You have to go to school. So it’s kind of like people take on debt to escape the worst rungs of the labor movement. So I think it becomes this sort of second reason why it’s really vital for labor unions, why this is a key issue for unions is because people are taking on debt impartially because of some of the weaknesses of the labor movement that we have jobs where you can make $6 an hour.

[00:09:48] People don’t want those jobs. The labor movement that we need higher education to get a so-called, middle class life is partially a function. I think of a labor union that has been really destroyed, a labor movement. Excuse me.

[00:10:01] So, I could go on, but maybe I’ll let Ian take a stab at that. And then we can double back .

[00:10:05] Shanna Bennett: Ian, what do you think? What is the value?

[00:10:07] Ian Rhodewalt: I’m thinking about what Eleni just said about the decline of the labor movement, the organized labor movement over the past 50 years. And there’s a direct connection between the creation of student debt as a punitive measure of social control and the calculated destruction of organized labor. That is embodied by Ronald Reagan, when he was the governor of California, started instituting tuition in the UC system to clamp down on protests on campus.

[00:10:38] And then Reagan, when he was president, fired all the PATCO strikes via the air traffic controllers. So Reagan was sort of one of the biggest union busters in history. I feel like that is a through line: the increase of student debt and the decrease of organized labor’s power.

[00:10:56] Then I also think there is this bipartisan talking point amongst sort of millionaire pundits commentators about the resentment of the working class, towards student debt cancellation so I’m thinking of Bill Maher and Paul Bagga on the Centrist side and then, JD Vance, Donald Trump Jr.

[00:11:14] A speech writer of Reagan and George H W Bush is- trying to remember his name, I think Douglas McKinnon. So on the right they’re saying, why should truckers have to pay for affluent people to go to college? And then on the left, on the Bill Maher show, they’re joking about how the democratic party has gone from representing the factory floor to becoming the faculty lounge, or something on this issue. And I think that’s just a blatant attack on teacher unions. There’s no other way to read that. I come out of the UAW, and we have a proud history of representing both. Factory floor workers and higher education workers. So I think, when we as unions come out and say student debt cancellation will drastically improve the material quality of our workers’ lives and not just members of our union, but the working class in general.

[00:12:02] It’s an issue of solidarity across unions and across work sectors.

[00:12:06] Shanna Bennett: It makes sense.

[00:12:07] Does it have to be a specific union? Have you found that at all? Or is it, come one, come all, all unions should join?

[00:12:15] Ian Rhodewalt: Well, I’ll jump in with where we started, with the Western Massachusetts Area Labor Federation. We’re a coalition of more than 60 public sector and private sector unions, representing over 30,000 workers and in all different sectors. We unanimously and enthusiastically endorsed this in January, this call for cancellation of all student debt.

[00:12:35] So I don’t think it does. The national AFL CIO has come out for broad based student debt cancellation, Teamsters, UAW International, and recently the Amazon Workers Union and Starbucks are all on board. I think it’s, you’re a worker, this benefits everyone across communities.

[00:12:56] Shanna Bennett: Any barriers in getting union participation at all? Do all members, for example, have to be on board?

[00:13:04] Eleni Schirmer: That’s a great question. I think unions are not necessarily the most forward looking institutions in our country. And there can be a tendency, I think, for union members or unions to think this doesn’t affect us, why should we talk about debt? We’re here to talk about raises and wages and maybe healthcare, but not debt.

[00:13:25] That’s getting too far out of our lane. I think it’s taken some work for that, even though Jason, Ian and I were working on these questions a year ago. I don’t think we could have had this conversation.

[00:13:35] Eleni Schirmer: Then I think it’s taken some time for a union to be kind of seen as in the interests of unions to address these bigger questions that may be slightly broader in nature than just, the wages and benefits for a bargaining unit.

[00:13:52] Shanna Bennett: Yeah. You got what I was trying to ask. It is sometimes difficult to bring workers, especially people in debt, together, and essentially the unions offer that way of connecting to these folks and then having that broader conversation about debt.

[00:14:06] And it’s clicking for me now. I’m getting it. I know Ian had something to add to that as well.

[00:14:10] Ian Rhodewalt: Yeah, this is at the anecdotal level. So my sister-in-law and brother-in-law work for the county back home in Southwestern Pennsylvania. And they are facing a staffing crisis in the department of CYS, Child and Youth services. Adequately staffed would be 36 employees. They currently have 13 employees, and three of those are in training. The reason this is a student debt issue is that the job requires a bachelor’s degree. I think the starting pay is around $22,000 a year, or about $10 an hour. So I think one of the things the county has said is that they were brainstorming ideas of having a fund for student debt cancellation to help entice workers, who have bachelor’s degrees to come work for the county, But, if Biden were to just pass this executive order and cancel all student debt, then the funds that the county would be putting into that pool could just go to their wages, and raise everyone, both the workers for the county raised their wages and material benefits. But also, their clients who they serve, it’s sort of a ripple effect outwards into the community.

[00:15:15] Shanna Bennett: No, that’s an excellent point. Seeing the rise of employers offering that as a benefit, come work for us will help pay off your student debt, has been interesting. I think it’s unfortunate that kind of benefit would need to even exist. But, I’ve seen that used more routinely now. Back to the point that I appreciated was how debt can make us focus on ourselves. It can isolate us a bit. and unions are still able to pull people together. And so it’s a nice way to access people.

[00:15:41] It was a really good point. I think both, debt is an isolating effect, but also the way we view education in this country is very highly individualized. As opposed to the benefit it brings to the community. And so when we work collectively in unions, that’s when we’re sharing our love for one another in the form of solidarity.

[00:15:59] Ian Rhodewalt: I’m thinking of a quote that I heard recently, by Stacy Davis Gates, the Chicago Teacher Union President on a panel from the Labor Notes Conference, a few weeks ago. And she talks about a recognition of what we need at this moment. And when she says, I love you, I’m gonna ask, are you okay?

[00:16:14]I’m gonna ask, are you hungry? I’m gonna ask, do you have shelter? I’m gonna ask you, are your basic needs met because love is going to encourage that inquiry. So I think it’s down at the union hall, they might think of love as sort of this mushy thing, but the act of solidarity is the strongest, most radical form of love in action, I think.

[00:16:29]Shanna Bennett: I love that.

[00:16:30] Eleni Schirmer: Boom.

[00:16:30] Shanna Bennett: Yeah. yeah.

[00:16:32] There’s something about that common good point that I think a lot of folks that are anti-student debt or wide-scale student debt cancellation are missing. We see how education benefits our communities. And on the flip side, we also see how canceling vast amounts of student debt could also impact our communities.

[00:16:48] It just makes sense. And so when people take the stance of, why would I pay off your debt and how does that affect all of us? Let’s talk about the value of union involvement in resolutions, you were able to have unions to sign off on that?

[00:17:02] Could you speak a little bit more about that?

[00:17:03] Ian Rhodewalt: Sure. In terms of the resolutions?

[00:17:05] Shanna Bennett: Yeah, how do they come to be?

[00:17:06] Ian Rhodewalt: I think I mentioned earlier, I really followed the Debt Collective’s resources on municipal resolutions in terms of writing those. And then bringing those to the monthly meeting of the delegate body of the Area Labor Federation.

[00:17:21] One of the things specifically with our Area Labor Federation is a little bit different than other central labor councils, is that it’s a bit more non-hierarchical in terms of how resolutions can be brought forward. So sort of lucky in that way, we didn’t have to come forward with it, already sponsored by a specific union.

[00:17:40] I mean, I was coming to it as a member of UAW local 2322, but I’d written it as an individual, and wanted to share it with the rest of the ALF, and then from there, spreading the word to other area labor federations, and central labor councils, and other union locals.

[00:17:55] Eleni, maybe we should touch on bargaining for a common good. The principle of bargaining for a common good is in some ways, very deeply related to the principle of democracy, which is basically this idea that people should have some way to speak about and have a say over matters of their life.

[00:18:12] Eleni Schirmer: One of the closest to home democratic institutions that we have in the US. Far too weak, far too few are labor unions, a chance where people get to have a say over what happens and a place where they spend 40 to 80 hours a week on the job. The whole spirit of bargaining for a common good is that workers and community members can speak up about things like housing costs or transportation or debt. These issues that are really of vital importance to people’s everyday lives that are oftentimes, the levers that we have for democratic action in this society are voting.

[00:18:51] And you can do it once every four years and then forget about it. But the principle of a union brings that into more of a daily or a more regular kind of practice that people can engage in. So I think what is at stake here is that we don’t really have a lot of options to talk about these conditions of the whole issue of wealth, inequality, and student loans and a debt finance welfare state is quite undemocratic.

[00:19:15] Jason Wozniak: The formal structures of our capital D democracy don’t really allow folks to act or speak in those ways. That’s why we have labor unions. That’s why we have debtors’ unions. I think when we started to ask Ian, you’re really groundbreaking in this with your crew. And then Eleni and I did work with the Chicago Teachers’ Union and Los Angeles Teachers’ Union, and then it kind of spread to many different groups and maybe one of you has the number of resolutions we were finally able to get from unions.

[00:19:40] Cause that would be cool to share with people. But, I think part of the idea behind the resolution push was to say it was a manifestation of the bargaining for the common good type, practicing where we were trying to get unions to sign onto this idea that, yes, debt abolition, full debt abolition will benefit not only our union members, but also other groups that we are deeply concerned with. In other words, the common good, the common folks, right? So if you’re a teacher union, that’s gonna help your parents, it’s gonna help other students. It’s gonna help different people in your community to fight for debt abolition.

[00:20:10] And it’s one of those reasons why bargaining for the common good and the resolution becomes really interesting tools because they can create more public awareness of this issue, that there is a union that’s fighting for this larger social issue.

[00:20:25] And it’s a way to increase popularity for the union as well to know that. If you’re a union in a city and let’s say your school union or otherwise. And that union’s fighting for you and you’re not even in that union, that’s gonna be hell yeah, I’m gonna support those workers cause they’re fighting for me too.

[00:20:40] So I think it’s a really important tactic that we’ve been trying to put forth and use. And we try to show Biden that one of the myths that Ian already brought up, which is that student debt isn’t a working class issue is total BS. Cause it was a way where the workers spoke directly to Biden and other people to say, yes, this does impact us all. It impacts us in particular ways and to cancel it would make enormous improvements in our lives and the lives of others.

[00:21:04] Shanna Bennett: I think that answers that question of what have you been able to accomplish? Essentially it’s getting more attention on the movement of student debt cancellation, but then also in terms of unionizing and getting that thinking out. So, what would you say to someone who is in a union right now? And this union is not actively engaged in this national conversation of student debt cancellation, or just any kind of debt cancellation at all.

[00:21:31] How would they go about getting their union involved?

[00:21:34] Jason Wozniak: I think both unions that follow the bargaining for the common good model and unions that follow, just strictly, quote, unquote bread and butter issues of wages and workplace safety issues would benefit from student debt cancellation, as you’re pointing out. Also to your point of, how unions fighting for student debt cancellation would build the popularity of the unions amongst sort of a wider audience. The current age demographic of workers that are most unionized is the 45 to 54, age group. And so, as they get to retirement age, and as more and more younger workers, younger millennials and generation Z workers, see this moment of a labor resurgence of Amazon organizing or Starbucks organizing and today and tomorrow Trader Joe’s, just down the road from me is having a union election.

[00:22:27] When younger workers see that unions are engaging actively in this fight for student debt cancellation, which, to be fair, affects people of all ages as those of us on here know. But, the fight for student debt cancellation is sort of a gift that keeps on giving. And if only Biden could realize that.

[00:22:46] Shanna Bennett: I’ve learned so much from this conversation. Some of it seems like it is common sense, you know what I mean? But, initially when we started talking about having this conversation, I was really curious to see how these two things fit together, unions and the student debt movement. And you’ve made that very clear to me.

[00:23:03] Anything else to add?

[00:23:04] Eleni Schirmer: So, part of the project here is obviously to cancel debt, but also part of the project is to organize people. And so organizing always starts with a conversation. So I think the way to start is by asking people, hey, do you have student debt? Do your kids have student debt? What’s that like for you? How do you feel about that? What do you think should happen with that and start those conversations? I think that’s kind of where it almost always starts. In the Debt Collective, we are big fans of a tactic called the Debtor’s Assembly.

[00:23:39] And that’s kind of, where people can come forward and share their debt stories, or their loved ones’ debt stories. That in some ways is exactly what happens in unions. It’s like, what’s your debt story? And it can happen in a one-on-one capacity and then more and more public. The resolution is kind of a nice sort of flag in the ground. I think to get those conversations started, maybe if people are intimidated to start with their own personal story, it can be a way to kind of invite those conversations that need to happen. I could see a lot of worlds in which the resolution happens as the fifth step, not the first step.

[00:24:14] And maybe another context. The resolution is the first, way to start those conversations.

[00:24:19] Shanna Bennett: And I love the motto. You’re not alone. So you’re clearly more than the sum of the debt that you have, but you’re also not alone. And I think unions help to kind of bring that point home as well. There’s power in numbers. We’re all in it together.

[00:24:30] Eleni Schirmer: I will just add that something I’ve been saying since we first passed our resolution in January is that President Biden has touted himself as the most union-friendly or the most labor friendly president. I just wanna keep making the point that, okay?

[00:24:44] Unions have demands of him. Unions supported him in getting him into office and now we’re demanding that he canceled student debt.

Shanna Bennett: Agreed. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for this conversation. Stop by anytime we’ll always chat.

[00:24:56] Eleni Schirmer: Thank you. You guys are great. I love the podcast. You have such good energy and smart questions.

[00:25:02] Shanna Bennett: Gosh, thank you.

[00:25:04] Ian Rhodewalt: Oh, and I didn’t get to say earlier, longtime listener, first time caller.

[00:25:07] Shanna: Oh my gosh. Thank you!

[00:25:09] It’s just, wild. Cause we are such fans of what you do. It’s wild that you’re telling us thank you, because thank YOU for all that you guys have done and continue to do.

[00:25:17] Thank you so much. That means so much coming from you.

[00:25:19] Shanna Bennett: If you liked this episode of Matter of Life and Debt, subscribe and share it with a friend. It really helps people discover us. Matter of Life and Debt is hosted by me, Shanna. It is produced by Shanna Bennett, Emma Klauber, and Nikki Nolan.

It is edited by Nikki Nolan and Talia Molé, and transcripts and writing is done by Emma Klauber. Efe Akerman created the theme music.

Visit our website www.matteroflifeanddebt.com, where you can listen to more episodes, access transcripts, and get additional context for the subjects you just heard about. Absolutely for free the website again, www.matteroflifeanddebt.com.

Thanks again for listening.

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