Working People
319 episodes - English - Latest episode: 14 days ago - ★★★★★ - 249 ratingsWorking People: A podcast by, for, and about the working class today (now in partnership with In These Times magazine and The Real News Network).
Working People is a podcast about working-class lives in 21st-century America. In every episode, you'll hear interviews with workers from around the country, from all walks of life. We'll talk about their life stories, their jobs, politics, and families, their joys and hopes and frustrations. Overall, Working People aims to share and celebrate the diverse stories of working-class people, to remind ourselves that our stories matter, and to build a sense of shared struggle and solidarity between workers around the country.
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Episodes
University of Michigan Grads Strike for a Living Wage (w/ Alejo Stark)
March 31, 2023 07:09 - 23 minutes - 54.4 MBGraduate student-workers at the University of Michigan are on strike for the second time in three years, officially hitting the picket line this week. Speaking to The Michigan Daily, Amir Fleischmann, chair of the Graduate Employees Organization (GEO) Contracts Committee, said, "Grad workers are very frustrated. They’re struggling to pay rent. They’re struggling to afford childcare. They lack access to gender-affirming care. And I think we’re saying enough is enough. The University needs to ...
Teaching in Ron DeSantis's Florida (w/ Philip Belcastro & Brennen Pickett)
March 30, 2023 04:37 - 1 hour - 161 MBThings are getting very dark in Florida, and educators at all levels have found themselves on the frontlines of a reactionary political crusade led by Republican governor Ron DeSantis. "As the new semester began," Florida-based journalist Michael Sainato recently reported, "teachers throughout Florida were faced with new state laws strictly limiting curricula—prompting schools to remove droves of books from their classrooms and libraries for fear of being in violation of the draconian but o...
A "Do or Die" Moment for the Academic Labor Movement (w/ Matt Thomas, Kristina Mensik, Bryan Sacks, & Todd Wolfson)
March 24, 2023 07:41 - 1 hour - 221 MBAt colleges and universities across the country, a heated battle is playing out right now over workers' right to organize and have a say over how the institutions they keep afloat with their labor are run. From graduate student-worker unionization efforts and strikes at Temple University, the University of California, Columbia University, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern University, Northeastern University, the University of Chicago, and Indiana University, to faculty strikes (and near-strikes) a...
Steve Mellon
March 17, 2023 04:05 - 1 hour - 169 MBIn October of last year, over 100 workers represented by five labor unions—including production, distribution, advertising, and accounts receivable staff—walked off the job on an unfair labor practice strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The strike began after the newspaper's management, Block Communications, which is owned by the Block family, cut off health insurance for employees on Oct. 1. As Michael Sainato reports at The Guardian, "The strike is unfolding in a US media industry that ...
The Fight to Pass the Workplace Psychological Safety Act (w/ Misty Orlando, Dr. Jennifer Fraser, & Jerry Carbo)
March 13, 2023 01:00 - 26 minutes - 60.9 MBWhile there are some stronger and broader laws in particular states, there is currently no federal standard defining, let alone outlawing, workplace bullying if the case does not involve harassment or discrimination of a member of a “protected status group” based on their race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, or disability. And yet, according to a 2021 survey commissioned by the Workplace Bullying Institute, 30% of adult Americans say they are currently being bullied or have expe...
Live Show: We Need You—Yes, You—to Join the Labor Movement (w/ Chris Smalls, Vince Quiles, Sarah Beth Ryther, Tafadar Sourov, & Riley Fell)
March 09, 2023 05:22 - 1 hour - 220 MBWe hosted another Working People live show on Feb. 22 in New York City, in collaboration with the Action Builder / Action Network team and The People's Forum. In this panel discussion, introduced by Amazon Labor Union president Chris Smalls, Max speaks with worker-organizers from around the country about why they and their coworkers decided not to quit their jobs but to commit to improving their workplaces, what the day-to-day work of organizing looks like, and how you—yes, you—can get invol...
Amazon Workers United4Change (w/ Nannette Plascencia & Ivan Baez)
March 04, 2023 02:50 - 1 hour - 142 MBThe historic union election victory at the JFK8 Amazon warehouse on Staten Island sent shockwaves throughout the US and beyond, but New York is not the only place Amazon workers are organizing. In Moreno Valley, California, workers at the ONT8 warehouse have been doing the painstaking work of organizing for years, and now they are attempting to unionize with the independent Amazon Labor Union, facing the same union-busting playbook from Amazon management that workers in Staten Island, Bessem...
Rail Workers of the World, Unite! (w/ Ross Grooters, Cat Cray, Clayton Clive, & Matthieu Bolle-Reddat)
February 26, 2023 08:20 - 1 hour - 174 MBFrom unions in the United States fighting to save our supply chain from the destruction wrought by corporate tycoons, Wall Street vampires, and bought-off politicians, to the National Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport Workers (RMT) leading the fight against austerity politics and ruling-class union busting in the United Kingdom, to rail workers with the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) in France joining their compatriots in the streets in a general strike against President Emmanuel...
East Palestine, Ohio: A Hell of Wall Street's Making (w/ Matt Weaver)
February 17, 2023 07:10 - 17 minutes - 40.4 MBIt’s been nearly two weeks since the catastrophic derailment of a Norfolk Southern train in northeast Ohio thrust the residents of East Palestine and the surrounding area into a non-stop waking nightmare. It will take weeks, months, if not years to appraise the damage of this train derailment on the population, on the rail workers and first responders, and on the environment, but while corporate spokespeople and many in the media try to paint this tragedy as some freak accident, we know bett...
Happy Birthday, Evan (w/ Amy Chamberlin & Jana Murphy)
February 10, 2023 23:28 - 49 minutes - 112 MBWe kick off Season Six of the show with a very special episode that is dedicated to Evan Seyfried, his family, and his loved ones. As listeners know from our previous conversations with Evan’s family members and their supporters in the Justice for Evan coalition, Evan was a loving son, brother, boyfriend, friend, and a dedicated worker. For 19 years, with a virtually spotless record, Evan worked at a local Kroger grocery store in Milford, Ohio, where he eventually became the dairy department...
Texas Environmental Workers Union (w/ Chloe Torres and Brandon Marks)
February 06, 2023 07:59 - 56 minutes - 130 MBPLEASE SIGN THIS LETTER TO URGE THE TEXAS CAMPAIGN FOR THE ENVIRONMENT TO RECOGNIZE OUR UNION In this urgent and special episode, Jules sits down with Brandon Marks and Chloe Torres for an in-person interview about the struggle Texas Environmental Workers Union members are facing in their workplace. After 5 months of the Texas Campaign for the Environment (TCE) not recognizing their union, members of the Texas Environmental Workers Union unanimously agreed to a one-day strike, happening ...
Live Show: Organize, Fight, Win (w/ Michelle Valentin Nieves & Harry Marino)
January 07, 2023 03:53 - 1 hour - 166 MBEarlier this month Working People hit a new milestone: We recorded our first live episode in front of an audience! Organized by the Action Builder / Action Network team and hosted by Busboys & Poets in Washington, DC, we got to speak with Michelle Valentin Nieves of the Amazon Labor Union and Harry Marino of the Major League Baseball Players Association about the incredible worker organizing victories for Amazon workers and minor league baseball players, and about lessons we have learned fro...
Embodying Degrowth (w/ The Maintainers)
December 14, 2022 03:37 - 1 hour - 234 MBThe planet we share, the only home we’ve ever known, has its limits. Its resources, its ability to sustain all life, are not infinite—and every day we are bearing witness to the disastrous consequences of mortgaging our collective future on the false belief that they are. The path we are on now is untenable, something’s going to give. Whether it comes from us or for us, change is coming nonetheless. As an ecologically and civilizationally sustainable alternative to an unsustainable global ...
What Could a Worker-Focused Just Transition Look Like? (w/ Megan Milliken Biven, James Hiatt, & Clarke)
December 12, 2022 21:32 - 1 hour - 182 MBAs humanity barrels towards climate catastrophe, the need to envision and build more ecologically sustainable societies and economies becomes more pressing with each passing day. However, our collective imagination is often so limited that it becomes impossible to envision societies and economies that aren't organized around the quest for profit and infinite growth. So, what could a "degrowth" economy look like? To some, "degrowth" is a dirty word signaling a future of austerity that would t...
Where Do Railroad Workers Go from Here? (w/ Jay, Marilee Taylor, John Tormey, & Matt Parker)
December 06, 2022 00:57 - 1 hour - 224 MBAfter a 3-year saga of stalled contract negotiations between the country’s freight rail carriers and the 12 unions representing over 100,000 railroad workers, "pro-union" President Biden and Congress last week "averted" a national rail shutdown by overriding the democratic will of rail workers and forcing a contract down their throats. So, what happens now? We convene a special all-railroader panel to break down the events of the last week and to discuss where railroad workers and the labor ...
Holiday Season on the Picket Line (w/ Marcques Derby)
November 23, 2022 04:42 - 39 minutes - 91.2 MBThis time last year, 10,000 workers and UAW members at John Deere waged a massive strike that became a national news story. This year, workers at another industrial manufacturer are spending Thanksgiving carrying on a strike that has lasted for seven months, but has received significantly less national attention. As Mel Buer reports, "CNH Industrial, a multinational corporation, is an agricultural machinery and construction equipment manufacturer with 13 locations across the United States pr...
Fabio Bosco
November 16, 2022 04:10 - 1 hour - 181 MBLast month, the world watched with bated breath as Brazilians voted in two rounds of high-stakes elections that pitted far-right president Jair Bolsonaro against former president, leftist hero, and leader of the Workers Party Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. After being elected president in 2018, Bolsonaro and his far-right movement have unleashed a darkness upon Brazil that has had wide-ranging implications for the country, the hemisphere, and the world. From burning the Amazon and overseeing a d...
Phones Down, Fists Up (w/ Tiffany Murray)
November 07, 2022 21:00 - 34 minutes - 79.9 MBCall center workers employed by Maximus went on strike at four locations—in Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Virginia—this Tuesday, November 1. Maximus is a federal contractor, and during the open enrollment period workers there handle a non-stop stream of high-stakes calls from people trying to navigate the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, and Medicaid systems, but they have been pushed to their limit. As stated in a Twitter thread posted by Call Center Workers United, "We’ve been saying...
In Key Swing States, Union Members Are the Last Line of Defense (w/ Maggie Acosta, Bryan Villarreal-Vasquez, & Sheila Silver)
November 07, 2022 02:24 - 52 minutes - 121 MBThe soul of the labor movement is the fight for democracy in and outside of the workplace—and, from the shop floor to the ballot box, organizers, volunteers, and rank-and-file workers with UNITE HERE are putting everything they have into that fight. Even in the midst of a deadly pandemic that hit the service and hospitality industries especially hard, union members with UNITE HERE hit the pavement in record numbers ahead of the 2020 general elections. As Harold Meyerson notes in The American...
Vince Quiles
October 27, 2022 05:28 - 1 hour - 241 MBThe wave of grassroots worker organizing is spreading to different industries and businesses around the country, including those that have notoriously resisted any and all unionization efforts in the past. The Home Depot, the single largest home improvement retail company in the US, is one of those businesses, and there is a union drive underway as we speak at a store in Philadelphia. As Johan Furman writes at More Perfect Union, "On Monday, September 19, workers filed a petition to organize...
Alabama Paper Mill Workers Want Their Lives Back (w/ Jacob Morrison)
October 20, 2022 12:28 - 1 hour - 152 MB"On the morning of Oct. 1... almost 500 union members from three United Steel Workers (USW) locals at WestRock’s Mahrt Mill paper mill in Cottonton, Alabama, voted to reject a second contract offer from the company," Jacob Morrison recently reported for The Real News Network. "The refusal to ratify WestRock’s 'last, best, and final' offer came as a result of the company insisting on removing contract language pertaining to what the workers there call 'penalties' for long hours. Members resou...
**In the Name of the Father (w/ Aaron Moritz & Shawn Vulliez)** PATREON EXCLUSIVE
October 12, 2022 04:05 - 32 minutes - 74.4 MB***This is a Patreon Exclusive episode*** Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/workingpeople Thank you to all the Patreon subscribers for their love, support, and generosity. <3 Max, Jules & the Working People Team. A great man once said, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the struggle between papa and boy." We chat with our friends Aaron and Shawn from the Srsly Wrong podcast about their new animated series Papa & Boy on Means TV, and about why bosses love ...
Jonnie Lane
October 07, 2022 16:35 - 1 hour - 200 MB“Flight attendants at Delta are currently pushing to form a union at the only major airline in the US where flight attendants are not unionized," journalist and friend of the show Michael Sainato recently wrote in The Guardian. "The aim is to allow the airline’s 23,000 flight attendants to vote on whether to unionize with the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA) and will face fierce opposition from an airline that has fought previous efforts.” Delta has fiercely fought off unioniza...
Leo Lindner
September 28, 2022 03:33 - 1 hour - 158 MBIt’s been 12 years since the catastrophic explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, killing 11 workers and causing the largest marine oil spill in human history. A lot of forgetting can happen in that time. A lot of cultural amnesia and historical distortion has been able to set in over the past 12 years, whether that came in the form of a years-long PR campaign from British Petroleum (BP), the high-budget Hollywood-ification of the disaster in the 2016 movie starring Mark Wahl...
For Evan (w/ Ken Seyfried, Eric Seyfried, Amy Chamberlin, Erica Erskine, Jana Murphy, & Austin LiPuma)
September 23, 2022 03:52 - 53 minutes - 73.8 MB(C/W: bullying, harassment, suicide) This time last year, we introduced listeners to the family of Evan Seyfried, a dedicated Kroger employee in Milford, Ohio, for nearly 20 years, whose beautiful life was tragically cut short after he was targeted and tortured by coworkers and driven to suicide, according to Evan’s family. A lot has happened since we published that episode one year ago, and we wanted to provide Working People listeners with an update on how Evan’s family and loved ones ar...
Countdown to Midnight (w/ Jay & Joe)
September 14, 2022 04:02 - 2 hours - 172 MBOn Friday, September 16, the United States could see its first major rail strike and/or rail lockout since the early '90s. Railroad workers have reached the end of their rope after years of enduring dramatic staff cuts that have piled more work onto fewer workers, along with exhausting schedules and draconian attendance policies that have made it impossible to live and reasonably plan their lives. These cost-cutting, profit-maximizing policies are part of a larger, decades-long trend that wo...
Is the US Headed for a National Rail Strike? (w/ Mel Buer, Jeff Kurtz, & Ron Kaminkow)
September 08, 2022 03:39 - 1 hour - 129 MBThe rail industry is experiencing a self-induced crisis as a result of decades of cost-cutting, profit-maximizing executive decisions that have driven rail workers and the supply chain into the ground. In an attempt to mediate between the major freight rail companies and unions representing around 115,000 railroad workers, President Biden appointed a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) to offer recommendations for resolving the ongoing contract dispute. But an overwhelming number of surveyed ...
**Gen Z for Change (w/ Elise Joshi & Sean Wiggs)** PATREON EXCLUSIVE
September 05, 2022 17:34 - 12 minutes - 27.9 MB***This is a Patreon Exclusive episode*** Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/workingpeople Thank you to all the Patreon subscribers for their love, support, and generosity. <3 Max, Jules & the Working People Team. Gen Z has inherited a world on fire, but they will not accept it, and they are using every tool they have at their disposal to change it. The activists and content creators at Gen Z for Change, for instance, are creatively using their organizing skills, coding ...
Amazon Keeps Firing Union Organizers (w/ Matt Littrell)
August 31, 2022 04:18 - 51 minutes - 70.3 MBMatt Littrell has worked as a picker at the Amazon warehouse in Campbellsville, Kentucky, for the past year and a half. He's also been one of the lead organizers and the public face of a growing push to unionize Amazon facilities in Kentucky. In retaliation for his organizing, Littrell says that Amazon management has been watching him like a hawk and finding reasons to write him up—and last week, the company finally fired him for "performance" issues. In this urgent mini-cast, we speak with ...
"If You Can't Stand the Heat, Keep Working" (w/ Zakk, Gabriela, & Steve)
August 24, 2022 02:57 - 1 hour - 196 MB"As blistering heat waves swept across the United States this summer, breaking temperature records and placing millions under heat advisories and warnings," Livia Albeck-Ripka writes at The New York Times, "workers... have continued to deliver America’s packages for a variety of carriers, often in trucks that have no cooling mechanisms for drivers. Some UPS workers have shared photographs that show thermometer readings of up to 150 degrees in the backs of their trucks." A shocking number of...
(Unlocked) BONUS EPISODE - Mansa Musa
August 16, 2022 22:17 - 50 minutes - 116 MBMansa Musa is a radical freedom fighter who was imprisoned in the US for nearly 50 years. Now, at 70 years old, he is the co-host of Rattling the Bars at The Real News Network, a staunch advocate for the rights of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, and a soldier in the struggle to dismantle the prison-industrial complex. We talk to Mansa about his life and about how the labor movement and the fight for prison abolition are necessarily interconnected. Additional links/info belo...
Jay
August 11, 2022 02:45 - 1 hour - 163 MBAs we speak, the major railroad companies and 13 different unions representing over 115,000 railroad workers have reached an impasse in contract negotiations that have been going on for years, and we are now closer to a national rail shutdown than we’ve been in a generation. President Biden has even appointed an Emergency Presidential Board to try to mediate between the rail unions and the rail carriers, but if that mediation fails we’ll be on the verge of a historic shutdown. So, how did we...
You Gotta Stand Up for What's Right (w/ Lauren Bianchi & Chuck Stark)
August 03, 2022 02:52 - 48 minutes - 66.5 MBLast week, Lauren Bianchi and Chuck Stark, two teachers at George Washington High School on the Southeast Side of Chicago, were on the verge of losing their jobs. In what Chicago Teachers Union officers suspect was an act of retaliation from Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Chicago Public Schools recommended that Bianchi and Stark be fired for their involvement in the student-, teacher-, and community-led effort to stop the relocation of the General Iron metal shredder from the wealthy Northside neighb...
Chipotle United (w/ Brandi McNease)
July 27, 2022 02:28 - 53 minutes - 73.3 MBOn June 22 of this year, workers at a Chipotle location in Augusta, Maine, made history by becoming the first store in the US to file for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board. Then, on Tuesday, July 19, Chipotle announced that it would be permanently closing the Augusta location. While spokespeople for the fast-casual dining giant deny that the closure is related to union organizing activity, workers and their supporters say the drastic move is a clear act of retaliation ...
An Injury to One Is an Injury to All (w/ Gabbi Pierce & Martha Grevatt)
July 20, 2022 01:49 - 57 minutes - 131 MBThings are getting very dark in this country, and it's likely going to get worse before it gets better. At every turn—as collective society breaks down, as the ruling class continues to rob us blind, as humanity barrels towards climate catastrophe—working people are being encouraged to turn on each other and to see certain groups of their fellow workers as the enemy. From the demonization and increasingly violent attacks against LGBTQIA+ people, to an extremist-dominated Supreme Court prepar...
RMT Strike (w/ Mel Mullings, Clayton Clive, Cat Cray, & Gaz Jackson)
July 15, 2022 11:43 - 1 hour - 189 MBLast month, roughly 40,000 UK rail workers with the National Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport Workers (RMT) went on strike for three days, bringing major portions of the British rail system to a halt in a historic show of collective strength. This week, after receiving a contract offer from state-owned Network Rail that union leaders described as "paltry," the RMT announced that workers at Network Rail and the train operating companies will engage in another day of strike action on Wed...
Labor on the Airwaves (w/ Judy Ancel, Sarah Jaffe, Michelle Chen, Jamie Partridge, & Chris Garlock)
July 12, 2022 00:45 - 29 minutes - 27.3 MBThe "Labor On The Airwaves" panel attracted an overflow audience at this year's Labor Notes conference in Chicago. A show of hands revealed that about a third of those in attendance already had shows while another third was interested in finding out how to start their own shows, many of whom stopped by the Labor Radio-Podcast Network's booth after the panel. Working People's Maximillian Alvarez hosted a panel that included BeLabored hosts Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen, Heartland Labor Forum'...
(Unlocked) BONUS EPISODE - Labor Notes Postgame (w/ Tevita 'Uhatafe, McKenna Schueler, & Jacob Morrison)
July 04, 2022 20:03 - 1 hour - 177 MBWe wish everyone could have been in Chicago for the Labor Notes 2022 conference! But for those who couldn't make it, we convened this comradely panel with some fan-favorite guests of the show—Tevita 'Uhatafe, McKenna Schueler, and Jacob Morrison—to share our thoughts and reflections on the gathering, and to talk about the lessons and strategies we're taking from Labor Notes and applying in our daily lives. Additional links/info below... Subscribe and donate to Labor Notes! Tevita's T...
Alicia Johnson
June 29, 2022 03:49 - 1 hour - 86.5 MBThe Amazon Labor Union victory at the JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island was historic, but right now, as we speak, Amazon is currently in court trying to throw out the results of that election, and pro-union worker-organizers keep getting fired. One of those workers is Alicia Johnson, who, as Luigi Morris writes, is "a 56-year-old Black immigrant who lives in the deep Bronx and worked at JFK8 as a Picker Packer. Her commute to work took more than two and a half hours." After Alicia exercised he...
Dr. Frances Gill
June 23, 2022 05:03 - 1 hour - 107 MBWe all know that, even before the horrific, world-changing event of COVID-19, society would fall apart without hospital workers and medical staff. But as we also know, like so many other fields and sectors of work, the medical field is a very stratified one. Even though we as patients may not see it, many of the folks who make hospitals and medical facilities run are overworked, understaffed, under-protected, and paid way less than we’re led to believe. This was made painfully clear last mon...
Dollar Store Workers Deserve Better (w/ Kenya Slaughter & Curtis Williams)
June 19, 2022 01:03 - 57 minutes - 79.6 MBFrom Dollar General and Dollar Tree to Family Dollar, dollar stores are spreading rapidly throughout Louisiana and across the country, but dollar store workers notoriously have to endure low pay, understaffing, and hazardous working conditions. That's why Step Up Louisiana, "a community based organization committed to building power to win education and economic justice for all," is organizing employees, customers, and community members to fight for safer stores and better pay and working co...
Starbucks Sinks to a New Low (w/ Nadia Vitek)
June 09, 2022 03:11 - 31 minutes - 71.3 MBWe've adjusted our episode publishing schedule to bring y'all an urgent episode about Starbucks' escalating retaliation against pro-union workers and Starbucks Workers United. As Rina Torchinsky writes for NPR, "Starbucks is closing a store in Ithaca, NY, in what Starbucks union organizers are calling an illegal move of retaliation after workers at the location voted to unionize. The coffee giant gave the employees at the College Ave. location near Cornell University a one-week notice of the...
The Five-Year Union Election (w/ Maggie Levantovskaya)
June 02, 2022 04:59 - 46 minutes - 105 MBAdjunct faculty and lecturers at Santa Clara University, a private Jesuit university in Silicon Valley, have been working to organize a non-tenure-track faculty union for five years. Along with navigating the particular challenges that come with worker organizing in higher education, theirs is a historic campaign because it is taking place at a religious institution, which the National Labor Relations Board does not exercise jurisdiction over. Nevertheless, after years of organizing and unio...
Caliber Workers Union (w/ Tyler Powles & Erinn Murphy)
May 26, 2022 03:38 - 1 hour - 118 MBCaliber Public Schools, a group of charter schools in Northern California, states on its website that its mission is "to achieve educational equity by shifting the experiences, expectations and outcomes for students in historically underserved communities. Our strengths-based educational program validates, affirms, respects and supports students, families and staff members to reach their full potential." But when teachers and staff who believe in that mission did not feel validated, affirmed...
Tevita 'Uhatafe
May 21, 2022 05:14 - 1 hour - 137 MBIf you were following the strikes and labor actions that were happening last year, then you may have noticed that a certain face kept popping up in photos and reports from picket lines all over the country, from the Kelloggs’, Nabisco, and John Deere strikes, to the Warrior Met Coal miners caravan to New York City. Who was this mysterious member of the Transport Workers Union making his way to states all around the US to show solidarity with workers in their different struggles? Well, it tur...
Starbucks "partners" becoming partners (w/ Arianna Ayala)
May 12, 2022 03:23 - 39 minutes - 54.1 MBWe'll be back with new interviews next week after Jules has settled in and recovered from moving cross country! Until then, with permission from The Real News Network, we are sharing the audio of Max's recent interview with Arianna Ayala, a Starbucks partner in New York City and worker-organizer with Starbucks Workers United. The rank-and-file effort to unionize Starbucks stores around the United States is one of the most head-spinningly historic worker-led movements in our generation. Sin...
50 Years of Class War in Wisconsin (w/ Frank Emspak & Adrienne Pagac)
May 08, 2022 15:24 - 1 hour - 136 MBThis is the final installment in our special series of conversations with teachers, organizers, scholars, and activists in Wisconsin that Max, Cameron Granadino (TRNN), and Hannah Faris (In These Times) recorded in the summer of 2021 as part of a special collaboration between The Real News Network and In These Times magazine. To round out the series, we drive straight into the heart of darkness with an in-depth discussion with veteran educators and organizers Frank Emspak and Adrienne Pagac ...
Amazon Labor Union
April 26, 2022 06:34 - 1 hour - 137 MBOn Sunday, April 24, the independent Amazon Labor Union held a rally outside the JFK8 fulfillment center on Staten Island, New York, where, just one month ago, workers shocked the world by becoming the first Amazon workforce in the US to successfully vote to unionize. With supporters from organized labor and the surrounding community showing up in full force, along with high-profile appearances from Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, worker-organizers with the ALU showed ...
Kenyon Student Workers & Indiana Graduate Workers on Strike (w/ Molly Orr, Nora Weber, & Anne Kavalerchik)
April 21, 2022 04:46 - 43 minutes - 99 MBRight now, a majority of residential advisers at Kenyon College, organized with the Kenyon Student Worker Organizing Committee, are on an indefinite strike over unfair labor practices. At the same time, over 1,750 graduate student workers at Indiana University with the Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition are on strike, demanding that the university administration formally recognize their union, pay graduate workers a livable wage, and eliminate costly student fees. In this extended mini-cast,...
Maricela Aguilar Monroy
April 14, 2022 04:19 - 42 minutes - 97.6 MBJust over ten years ago, the landscape for workers’ rights and organized labor in the state of Wisconsin changed dramatically with the passage of Act 10 under Republican Governor Scott Walker in 2011. Act 10 was a hammer blow to the labor movement that essentially stripped collective bargaining rights from public sector workers, made it much more difficult for workers to organize, and forced unions to take massive concessions on healthcare, retirement benefits, and much more. Soon after, in ...