Mechele Dickerson

Well, one thing is to focus on what I just said.

Why do we continue to allow businesses to treat their employees as independent contractors?

Because if you say they don't have to treat them as employees, then that means they're not guaranteed 40 hours a week.

They don't get benefits.

They don't have the right to unionize.

So we need to start asking, why is it that we allow companies to outsource whole swaths of their employment, of their employees, and then hire them back as an independent contractor?

We have to ask, why is it in the 1960s and 1970s, people that worked had a defined benefit pension plan?

That's what my parents have.

And I talk about them in the book.

My parents get two, I won't say checks because it's not checks anymore, two deposits into their checking account every month because they worked their entire lives and they have guaranteed retirement income.

I am terrified.

to think what we're going to see in about 10 years, when people start retiring, they don't have pensions and they have not much saved in a defined contribution 401k, 403b plan.

It's like alphabet soup.

Yeah.

They shifted the risk of retirement security from employers to employees.

And they did it in ways that was designed for us to end up exactly where we are.

I remember the first time I had my first job, it was at a law firm, I think.

And I went there and I had to actually look at the retirement offerings.

I mean, I was a bankruptcy lawyer and I'd graduated from law school.

It so terrified me.