Guests on this September 4th edition of Iowa Press are  Jesse Case, secretary treasurer of Teamsters Local 238, the largest labor union in Iowa; and Jennifer Sherer with the Economic Policy Institute and former director of the University of Iowa Labor Center.

Transcript available here.

“I think you can see the last ten years in Iowa what a one-party system has done in terms of collective bargaining rights being lost by 180,000 public sector employees. The two-party system is broken, but a one-party system is worse.” – Jesse Case

“We’re in a period of time that has been difficult for Iowa workers.  I look at the data and think about moving here 30 years ago when Iowa’s union representation density was above the national average. In that time that I’ve lived here, it has fallen to being just below the national average. And that has to do with all kinds of policy choices and all kinds of attacks, some of which we’ve talked about today. But that’s not the end of this history. Workers are still rewriting it today. And this Labor Day and the next election cycle, and everything that comes after will probably write the next chapter.” – Jennifer Sherer