“Pro-Worker” Mike Rowe Mysteriously Silent as Rail Workers Fight For Sick Leave, Better Pay

Koch Industries pitchman Mike Rowe fetishes those with Dirty Jobs—until they actually demand something from their bosses.

Charles Koch-funded pitchman for Interior Corporate America, Mike Rowe, has built a personal brand off of valorizing, praising, and presuming to speak on behalf of The American Worker. His shows Dirty Jobs and How America Works are said to be love letters to the Working Man and Woman, highlighting, with vivid production and theater, the unassuming, unsexy—but essential—jobs that “keep America running.” 

He is frequently invited onto cable TV and radio shows as an avatar for The American Worker, namely those operating in what he calls “dirty jobs”—employment that deals with one’s hands, is messy, dangerous, unglamorous, and unsung. So when workers doing one of the most prominent and essential Dirty Jobs in the country—rail line labor—ramped up to a potential work stoppage over the past few weeks to fight for baseline workplace protections and benefits, one would assume the most high-profile avatar for these Rough and Tumble workers of The Soil would use his tremendous social media and media presence to fight on their behalf. 

Alas, he did not. 

A survey of Mike Rowe’s social media and TV shows demonstrates that he has not once, since their contract dispute began over three years ago, used his platform to help those with the quintessential Dirty Job of rail workers fight for higher pay or better sick leave. 

Which is odd because Rowe claims, both explicitly and implicitly, to speak in the best interest of the Working Man and Woman. As I documented last year when reviewing his new TV show for Fox Business, “How America Works,” Rowe paints himself as standing up for the American worker to smug, big city media types who take for granted their difficult and important labor. Above all, he tells the worker, I see you.

Rowe’s central ideological project, however, is to heap superficial praise on the American worker while collecting checks and spouting talking points from those who conspire to suppress those workers’ wages, make their workplaces less safe, and slash their jobs. The former opera singer takes patronage from vehemently anti-union Koch industries—posting more Koch praise just a few weeks ago—helping launder their anti-worker policies while doing nothing to defend, support, or promote unions or any collective bargaining that can actually help the workers he claims to speak for.  

When he’s commented on unions, which is extremely rare and only when asked by enough of his fans, Rowe is cagey, spouting a typical anti-union line that is ostensibly non-committal. He wrote in one 2009 blogpost, “The role of unions, and their relevance, has changed over the years. Personally, I’m of the mind that certain industries still justify their existence, while others do not. But one thing is certain—once a union is formed, it will not go gently into that good night. Like any other group, they are loath to disband, ever. I have mixed feelings. As a believer in the individual, I will always support a person’s right to make the best deal he can in his/her industry of choice. If acceptable terms cannot be reached, my first inclination is not to unionize or strike, but to simply seek out another industry.”

Which is to say, Rowe opposes unions. And he does so because his paymasters oppose them and he ultimately does their ideological bidding. Rowe, for years, has promoted the cartoonishly anti-worker SWEAT pledge that reads like it was written by Charles Koch himself—which it probably was.  

As for the current labor struggle, it is not yet clear whether workers will vote to ratify a tentative agreement that was struck this morning between workers and rail bosses, and promoted heavily by the Biden administration. 

Given that Rowe, of late, has pivoted to staple guest on Fox News and Tucker Carlson’s online show, the fact that he’s a full-blown, right-wing hack is probably not a massive revelation to the average reader of this blog. But given the quintessentially Dirty Job constituents being represented by Transportation Communications Union/IAM, Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers et al—that Rowe has built his brand stealing valor from—it seems like a good time, at this moment of urgent and important worker solidarity, to point out that the self-declared venerator of the American Working Man and Woman, at their most important hour, is absolutely nowhere to be found.