Welcome to 1869, the Cornell University Press Podcast. I'm Jonathan Hall. In this special episode on APSA and the 2023 hotel workers strike in Los Angeles, we speak with Joan Tronto, winner of this year's Benjamin E. Lippincott Award and author of the paradigm setting book, Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. Joan Tronto is Professor Emerita of Political Science at Hunter College and the Graduate School City University of New York, and Professor Emerita of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Toronto received the Brown Democracy Medal in 2015, from Penn State University for her book Who cares? How to Reshape a Democratic Politics published by Cornell University Press, Joan Toronto's works have been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, German, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Polish and Portuguese. We spoke to Joan about why it is important for academics to stand in solidarity with the striking hotel workers, why she will not attend this year's meeting of the American Political Science Association, nor take part in any lecture or ceremony for the Lippincott Award, and why she recommends fellow colleagues not cross the picket line to attend the annual meeting. Hello, Joan, welcome to the podcast.
My pleasure to be here. Thanks, Jonathan.
Well, I'm honored to be speaking with you. You have won many awards. In 2015, you were the winner of the Brown Democracy medal. And in coordination with that you wrote a book Who Cares? How to Reshape a Democratic Politics, a fantastic book, highly recommend it. And then this year, you've been awarded the prestigious Lippincott Award in recognition of your 1993 book, Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. And you were going to be presented this award at the upcoming American Political Science Association meeting APSA, this Labor Day weekend. However, you are not going. Tell us why.
Well, the most important reason I'm not going to the meeting is because there is a Labor Action organized by UNITE HERE Local 11 in Los Angeles, that has been organizing now for some months, trying to get the hotels in the greater Los Angeles area to come to the bargaining table and sign a contract which would provide a living wage to their workers. So the American Political Science Association many years ago, decided that it would be sensitive to the concerns of labor in places where it was holding its annual meeting. And this year's, I am sad to say I don't think they've done that very well. And as a result, I'm myself. I'm a member of the retired chapter. Now, when I was a member of a union while I worked at the City University of New York, the Professional Staff Congress is our union. My father was a union guy, I will never cross a picket line. And it's clear to me that there will be picket lines all throughout the Los Angeles area over Labor Day weekend. They're having rolling strikes, but if you were planning a Labor Action, obviously, Labor Day weekend would be a key time to bring the attention of labor and the problems of organized labor to the fore. And I just couldn't see us all kind of walking around pretending to go about our business as usual in the face of this massive labor action.
Yeah, for those who don't know particularly what is happening. Joan started off mentioning the local union UNITE HERE Local 11. They represent over 32,000 workers employed in hotels, restaurants, airports, sports arenas, and convention centers throughout Southern California and Arizona. And over 40 hotels in the Los Angeles area do not have a contract with UNITE HERE and UNITE could strike at any moment. And so they particularly asked APSA to not attend or at the very least not be in Los Angeles and make the conference virtual and to this day, and things are changing every day. But as of this time of recording, they have not changed their stance. They have moved out of the Marriott to the convention center, but they still haven't made the conference online or virtual. Cornell University Press doesn't want to cross the picket lines either. So we are not going and in solidarity other university presses Columbia University Press, University Press of Kansas, and McGill Queens as well as Temple have all said that they also are not going to attend. So you had written a letter That's that has circulated on Twitter, do you want to tell us a little bit about your response to APSA?
So in the letter I mentioned three problems. The first is that although it may be an inconvenience to scholars, and especially perhaps to younger scholars, international scholars, look, missing one professional meeting is not going to end a scholar's life. But trying to work in a city where the average two bedroom apartment costs more than $3,200 and getting paid $15 an hour, you're not going to be able to either have a house, or feed your kids or live. The stories in the new in the LA Times, which anybody could have been reading, make it clear that workers sleep in their cars between shifts, because it's too far to go home, or they drive 200 miles a day to and from work. It's crazy the way of course, people have been pushed out of the housing market everywhere in Los Angeles, it's true in most big cities at this point. And while it's true that the conference would have a financial impact on the Association, it's also the case that the Association probably has greater resilience than those women who are working as hotel maids, who are not earning enough money to feed their families, pay their bills, and live somewhere. So I just think the first issue standing with labor is really important. Second, the APSA did a very poor job of communicating what they were doing, how they were making these decisions. It's not clear to me how they decided what to do, except, you know, organizations have this tendency to just kind of go forward with what they've decided. But if you know, to be a little critical of them, the first signs that there was going to be labor unrest this month, began to appear last April. And while it may be that by July was too late to make changes by April, it may not have been, and they could have made begun to plan ahead, do you think they would have done that they don't seem to have and as a result, they kind of sent out some announcements just at the end of July, you know, at the end of July was when I kind of became really aware that this was going to be a problem. But they and while it's true that they have moved out of the hotel, they haven't cancelled the block of less than normal priced rooms at the Marriott and some members will stay at the Marriott. So Marriott is going to do okay out of this. But I guess the real thing that annoys me about this is that the APSA is a professional organization, it's an association. It's an institution that exists in the world and conducts business in the world. And to... for them to conduct business as usual, and then let people whose convictions oppose crossing a picket line decide not to attend the meeting. Some of the junior people who have won awards who are not going to attend the meeting, are kind of sad that they're not going to get to win their work, frankly, you know, it sad to me, but it's not the worst thing that's ever going to happen in my long life. And I you know, I'll get over it. But the truth of the matter is, is that pushing responsibility down onto individual members and onto individuals to make the right decision or not, or go follow your conscience. It increasingly is happening in all organizations. Organizations don't take responsibility any longer for their place in the world. And it's a really horrifying thing that's happening in institutions, in public institutions and private institutions everywhere in our current world. And the end result of this, of course, is to create unintended consequences down the line, which are really serious, you know, when a hospital budget guy decides, hey, you know, if we stop paying there, we have so many nurses that sometimes we sometimes have nurses extra, well, let's just cut out all those extra nurses. And now we have a crisis, where there aren't enough nurses. And furthermore, the nurses who are still there, don't want to stay. Because the work is so hard because there aren't enough nurses. So this idea that you can cut the budget, you can make a saving here, you can do this here, and let the consequences fall somewhere else. Because that way of thinking is so reprehensible. If you want to take a moral standpoint, or think about things politically, that it's really harmful, it's always about me, only me. There is no sense of conflict or no sense of owing obligations or responsibilities beyond the individual. And you know, the other thing is, moral boundaries. is a political argument for an ethic of care. And what the ethic of care is about essentially, is the way in which care is a central part of human life, but which is ignored and played down in our society. Well, what is more played down than the wages of somebody who cleans rooms in a hotel, those workers are care workers who are taken for granted, who are essential in a way, but you'd never know it from the way we treat them. And whose position in society is really harmed by those who think they have other more important life work to do. And it would really betray the book and the whole argument have spent my life making to say, well care work...it's only care workers. So what, you know, we're political scientists, we're important, we should get to do what we want, because it's important. No, that's not the way it should be. So I'm not going to the conference. And I'm not going to attend virtually either, because attending virtually kind of, if the whole thing had moved online, I would have been happy to participate. But during this, okay, if you're one of those silly people who's like a vegetarian, and we're going to let you just eat what you want, then we will, I don't mean to say vegetarian, so I still am saying someone might have that attitude, then, you know, we're just not going to take that position seriously. But, or you can take it seriously, we don't have to. So to participate, virtually, it feels to me like you're saying, Oh, it's okay, you're doing this, as long as I don't have to cross a picket line. No, it's not okay. If anybody crosses a picket line? I mean, that's the position I'm taking.
Makes sense. Makes sense. Yeah, the organization..., I think you hit the nail on the head, with organizations are not taking responsibility. They're putting it in the hands of the members saying, they basically are saying, we don't necessarily care. But if you want to care, you can take action. And if you don't, you can, you know, you do what do what you want to do. It's your choice. But that's a political act.
Yes, it is.
You you have this great line in your book, I'll read this one section, which I thought was fantastic. In Who Cares? You say, "Care is already everywhere. And we all are not only givers of care, we are also each and every one of us receivers of care. This is true of all humans when they are young, old or infirm. But it is also true of you and me every day. Each day we arrange to feed, clothe and surround ourselves so that we may live in the world as well as possible. We care for others and for ourselves and others care for us. We stop at the grocery store and buy prepared food for dinner and expect the trash to be picked up. All of this caring activity is constantly going on around us. It is so ever-present that we rarely think about it. But now that we have begun to think about it here, let's notice something else about it. Care is always infused with power. And this makes care deeply political."
Yeah, yeah. It there's always power and care relations. And there is always power in the way that care has been configured. Right? There's a reason why some people get well cared for and other people not. It has to do with the amount of power that people have to exercise in society, often monetary power, but also other kinds of power.
So what would you recommend to someone who has signed up for the conference and is on the fence?
To someone's on the fence, I would say still don't go. If you feel you have to participate for some professional reason it's a do or die situation, it's your last year before tenure, you need some people to see you. Participate virtually. But if you have an option, don't go to Los Angeles. Or if you do get ready to pick up a sign and join the picket.
What would you recommend APSA do? Can APSA turn this around?
That, you know, I've been thinking about this: APSA is going to have to really rethink the way it sites conventions insofar as it needs a stronger...but we don't you know, we don't know the details of us have contracts that were signed with the hotels. But we need to be able to much more efficiently pivot away from labor unrest. We need to be able to what we would ideally do is we would only sign up with institutions or that already have demonstrated a commitment to the values of the Association which we think include supporting labour. There are so many things that the organization has to think differently about. You know, this is the thing that again, this is a tip of the iceberg for me because the crisis in academic life is very real about the selfishness with which academics are pursuing their own life goals. Everybody wants to publish a book, nobody wants to write a book review. At the moment, APSA does not have somebody in charge of commissioning book reviews for Perspectives on Politics. Now, you know, to somebody at the elite institutions who only read each other books anyway, or who are, you know, looking around or having an assistant to kind of help them find things that are interesting to read, it doesn't much matter. But to the vast majority of members, the book reviews are a really important part of what the publications of the APSR have traditionally been. And now there isn't even anyone who wants to edit them. And no one wants to do the editing because you call, you know, a dozen people and everyone says no, no one wants to write a book review, that doesn't count enough for people to write book reviews. Peer review is in crisis in many places, because everybody wants to write an article, but nobody wants to read them. And indeed, and APSA, the panel's now typically have five papers on them. Well, and how many people are in the audience? Well, there isn't that many people in the audience. Because all the papers have become so short, that there's really not much point going to hear somebody speak for 12 minutes. But everyone wants to present, no one wants to listen. And so this ongoing process of kind of this, you make your own choices, which boils down to be as selfish, as you'd like, just keeps increasing. And it's not just a crisis over here. It's a crisis throughout the discipline. And it's crisis throughout the professions and throughout the universities.
Wow. Well, yeah, that's there's a much larger crisis is that this is the tip of the iceberg. But I am proud that we have you as an author that you've taken a principled stand not only for this, but that your work in and of itself as a principled stand about issues that we need to face issues that that we may not see. And you're pointing out to the Hey, as you said, in the book, we've got things backwards now, you know, we don't really need to relook at our institutions, we look at the way we think we look at this whole winner takes all and it's just about me, versus the community, and what is it? What would be best for everyone? I think that's a crisis not only in academia, but in the society at large
in the world at large. And we are running out of time. Yeah. Yeah,
that's for sure of climate change, and other major catastrophes that, that require a group effort rather than just an individual effort.
That's really the case. Yeah.
So I want to thank you for presenting your ideas, your insights, your knowledge, your wisdom to us for sharing your ideas over over the many years of publications, from Who Cares? to your, your classic Moral Boundaries You've had a wealth of scholarship. And what I like hearing from you is that you're, you're walking the talk. And it's encouraging to see that here's something that you strongly believe in, and you're taking action because of those beliefs. So that's, that's something to be commended. So I want to thank you.
Well, it's my pleasure, my pleasure to speak with you.
It was great talking with you.
Thanks a lot, Jonathan. Bye.
That was Joan Tronto, winner of this year's Benjamin E. Lippincott award. If you'd like to learn more about why the hotel workers are striking in Los Angeles, and how you can support them, visit the union's website at unitehere11.org. Thank you for listening to 1869 the Cornell University Press podcast
