Work Stoppage

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. We've got a quick break from our series on the intersection of the study of Cybernetics and the Labor Movement for an interview! This week we were very excited to speak with AshlyRuth and Diana, two worker organizers with the Union of Southern Service Workers. The South has long...

On this week's episode of Work Stoppage, Trader Joe's continues to drag out the process of certification at its Louisville store. Negotiations between the Teamsters and UPS have moved to discussions of economic issues, with only a month to go before a strike. Nearly 2000 nurses struck for a week in Oregon and are now demanding their employer be investigated for hiring professional scabs. Over 1000...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. Our series on Cybernetics and Labor continues this week as we dive into the beginning of Project Cybersyn and Stafford Beer's arrival in Chile. We discuss Beer's invitation from the government of Salvador Allende, his work with prominent government officials, and the incredible...

We're back from our break for Lina's wedding, which was wonderful and we all had an amazing time, but now it's time to catch up on two weeks of labor news! We start the show with a quick trip through as many short labor stories as we can, covering developments at Starbucks, Amazon, REI, Barnes & Noble, AT&T, Colectivo, Paizo, UPS, and more. Then we follow up with the workers at the Wharf InterCont...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. We're back from our week off for Lina's wedding and in the latest episode of our series on the history of Cybernetics and its relationship to labor, we've finally arrived at the work of Stafford Beer. Beer's work on complex systems revolutionized the way management operations ar...

This week was a exciting but busy one with all of us getting together to celebrate Lina's wedding, which unfortunately made it impossible to put together the regular episode. So we've decided to unlock the first episode in our new series on the history of the field of cybernetics and how the labor movement has interacted with it. It's been a super fascinating topic learning about figures like Norb...

We're back with another weekly roundup of the labor news. This week was a big one, and after a few quick headlines we discuss developments in the ongoing strike by grad students at the University of Michigan, now facing police harassment at home. Next we get into the biggest story of the week, the Supreme Court's ruling weakening the right to strike in the Glacier Northwest case. We discuss immedi...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. We know this week's episode is a little late folks, but we think it's well worth the wait. We've been fans of the Working People podcast ever since we started the show, so it was a big honor this week to sit down and have a conversation with Maximillian Alvarez. While it isn't t...

We start this week with congratulations for workers at REI, Barnes and Noble, and the Chicago Nature Museum who all won union elections last week. Our first full story covers an ongoing strike by San Diego bus drivers over being forced to work split shifts that take up 13 hours of their day. In DC, workers with UNITE HERE are protesting the move to close one of the most popular and acclaimed new r...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. On the fourth episode of our series on the history of the discipline of Cybernetics and its relationship to the labor movement, we continue our discussions on the work of W Ross Ashby with his creation of the first fully self regulating machine, the Homeostat. This machine and i...

Turns out the CIA has trained gremlins and is trying to disrupt our podcast by breaking John's audio setup, but we soldiered on with a tin can on some string. After a few quick congratulations, we discuss the University of Michigan's choice to sacrifice its academic integrity to try and break a strike. We also follow up with developments in the fight back by the South Korean working class against...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. On the third part of our deep dive into the history of the discipline of Cybernetics and its relations to the labor movement, we discuss the life and theories of W. Ross Ashby. His work on measurement of the complexity of a system with the concept of "Variety", helps us understa...

Our first story this week is on the approaching possibility of a strike by 25,000 pilots at Southwest and American Airlines. Next we discuss the possibility of workers in Coventry, England becoming the first officially recognized Amazon warehouse in the UK. We have two tragic stories of deaths of labor organizers after facing an onslaught of harassment from far right regimes in South Korea and the...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. For our second episode on the history of the discipline of Cybernetics and its relationship to the labor movement, we dive a little deeper into what Cybernetics actually is. We discuss the way Cybernetics seeks to bridge varying disciplines and systems and examine their interrel...

The whole gang's back together and what a week in labor it has been! After a few quick headlines we dive right into the biggest story of the week breaking down the nationwide writer's strike.  Writers across the country have hit the picket lines to defend the very existence of their profession as a career. A story in Labor Notes details the ways fishery workers in Massachusetts have had immigratio...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month.   We're very excited this week to be starting our long awaited series discussing the history of the field of cybernetics and how it intersects with the labor movement. In this first part, John explains the life and work of polymath and founder of the study of cybernetics, Norber...

After a whirlwind trip through some quick headlines, we discuss the Teamsters unionizing a delivery contractor for Amazon and the precedent that could set.  This week marked the UFCW's national convention and reformers have been fighting to make the union more democratic. The independent union movement in Mexico continues to grow despite some recent blatant illegal interference by the company unio...

Unfortunately due to some major life events and schedule misalignments among the hosts, we weren't able to get everyone together to record a second show this week. So we're doing the opposite and unlocking the first episode in last year's series Why Rank and File? With Shawn Fain and the UAWD taking the helm of the UAW, Sean O'Brien and the TDU having just recently won leadership in the Teamsters,...

We start this week's episode following up with the RISD workers who have signed a new contract after winning their key demands. Next we check in with the striking graduate workers at the University of Michigan where both the courts and the cops have ramped up repression.  Trader Joe's United split two elections this week, one win out west and a heartbreaking loss in NYC. The Writer's Guild of Amer...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. We continue our dive into the history of general strikes in US history this week with the San Francisco general strike of 1934. As with the 1919 Seattle general strike, this one started on the docks but quickly spread to the entire city. Unlike Seattle, which was entirely peacef...

We're down to just two of us this week as John's on the mend, but we've still got a ton of news to cover in labor this week. First we discuss the suspension of the strike at Rutgers as the bargaining team reached a framework for a tentative agreement over the weekend. Next we follow up with the 2 month long strike at the Buena Park Medieval Times, where both workers, both human and equine, have fa...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. Whenever we've talked about general strikes on our show, it has most often been to explain why you can't just declare one on Twitter. In this two part series, we dig into US labor history to find out what it takes to launch a real general strike, and what lessons we can learn fr...

Dan's back this week and so that means an avalanche of new labor news stories. We begin by discussing the new massive strike at Rutgers, with over 9000 faculty, post docs, and grad student workers fighting for fair wages and job security. Next we discuss Florida's latest attempt to destroy public unions. In Syracuse yet another massive union landslide this past week as grad workers voted overwhelm...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. Pamphlet Link: https://ladyizdihar.com/blogs/izdihars-soviet-archive-2/report-of-the-cio-delegation-to-the-soviet-union-1945 We talk a lot about labor history on our Overtime episodes, looking back at past struggles by workers to see what lessons we can draw out for our own stru...

This week we are joined by Johnny and Pat from Subversive History while Dan is out. We follow-up with stories about how Chipotle was forced to compensate workers for closing the Augusta store, an expansion in the Buena Park Medieval Times Union to sound and lighting workers, and the forced resignation of Temple University's president. We also talk about REI workers in Chicago filing for a union el...