Work Stoppage

UNLOCKED! We're very excited to be launching a new, wide ranging series on the history of allegations levied against unions of corruption and relations with organized crime. Ever since the formation of the first labor unions, the capitalists and their media have been denouncing organized labor as corrupt, violent, led by racketeers, and in bed with the mob. This allegation remains common today, an...

Surprisingly we settled on nearly all good news stories this week, so if you're looking for some positivity, this one's for you. After an update on the ongoing national strike movement, we discuss the school strike in LA. 60,000 workers shutting down the second largest city in the country's schools and making big wins that will help the whole community. Also this week, two more Trader Joe's locati...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. Graduate student workers have been organizing in droves across the country, fighting back against abysmal wages and impossible working conditions. Recently, the workers at Temple University won a hard fought strike that lasted over a month.  While we have covered many graduate w...

HL Worker Support Fund -  https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/sued-for-union-organizing News just refuses to stay confined to one week periods, so this episode of Work Stoppage is mostly follow ups. We bracket the episode with good news, starting out congratulating the grad student workers of the University of Chicago on their landslide union win. Next we discuss the flagrant retaliation 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. The rail systems of the western world seem to be collapsing all at once. As the railroad workers have been telling us here in the US for years, capitalist ownership of the railroads has hollowed out the safety of the networks and left them in a dangerous condition. We saw this i...

After some discussion of how refreshing seeing union leaders refuse to take shit from politicians is, this week's episode of Work Stoppage starts by continuing our look into the expansion of child labor in the US, this time in Arkansas. Next we discuss the mass strike in France to fight against the attack on workers by the neoliberal Macron regime. We also do very quick follow ups on the status of...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. Now, at first glance you may be wondering why your favorite communist labor podcast is doing an episode on two animated kids movies. But that's why we encourage you to take another look at these two classic examples of Marxist cinema. With wholesome messages of working class uni...

Labor never stops, and neither do we, it's another episode of Work Stoppage. We start off with a quick congratulations to the workers at REI in Cleveland who won their union election last week.  We then discuss the results of the UAW election runoff, where the presidential vote remains too close to call. We check in on the situation in Sri Lanka, where the government is trying to sell out the coun...

This week we were honored to be joined by Luna Oi to educate us on how the trade union system works in Vietnam. We've talked about union struggles all over the world, from the US and UK to South Africa, to South Korea and many countries in Latin America. But this is the first time we have been able to speak with someone who has experienced the labor movement in a socialist country. We discuss the...

A quick update on the Temple grad workers strike, which continues after they voted down the administration's last contract offer, gets us started this week. We also discuss the awful history of worker treatment and the way companies like Rich Products use drug tests to keep working from reporting injuries. A restaurant owner in Ohio was recently caught more or less enslaving his workforce. Mental...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. As a coda to our recent series on allegations of corruption and mob involvement in the Teamsters, with a special focus on the career of Jimmy Hoffa, we decided that we couldn't skip out on some of the media portrayals of Hoffa's story. First we check out Danny Devito's 1992 biop...

Support the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Workers: https://cwa-union.org/support-striking-pittsburgh-post-gazette-workers  We start this week's episode checking in with the strike at Temple University, which may end this week as workers are voting on a potential agreement. We got big news that the country's longest strike at Warrior Met coal appears to be heading for an end as the union proposed returni...

In celebration of the massive wave of organizing in academia, we are unlocking our recent interview with worker organizers from Teachers and Researchers United (TRU) at Johns Hopkins University, so that their example can help others organizing across the education sector. Original Description: We're so excited to be joined this week by Andrew and Jasmine, two organizers from Teachers and Researche...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. In the final episode of the Teamsters portion of our examination of the history of allegations of union corruption and mafia collusion, we close out the story of Jimmy Hoffa. We discuss the changing of the guard from Hoffa to Frank Fitzsimmons, Hoffa's relationship with Richard...

VU Mexico Workers Strike Fund: https://www.atcf.org/solidarity_fund  We are forced into discussing major current events this week as the mainstream media is more worried about weather balloons than a major train derailment and chemical spill. We follow that up with an update on the victory of the striking DHL workers in Pawtucket, RI. Also this week, HarperCollins workers reached a tentative agree...

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 so excited to be joined this week by Andrew and Jasmine, two organizers from Teachers and Researchers United (TRU), the union for graduate student workers at Johns Hopkins University. Workers won an incredibly victory last week, with a near unanimous 97% of workers support...

It's a (nearly) all public worker episode of Work Stoppage this week. We start with a quick discussion of the excellent short job action by REI workers in Cleveland and a review of some recent stories in wage theft. Then we discuss last week's three day strike by city workers in Portland, where workers were falsely accused of violence on the picket line by Mayor Ted Wheeler. We discuss the ongoing...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. In the fifth episode of our new series examining historical allegations of union corruption and relations with organized crime, we discuss Jimmy Hoffa's tenure as president of the Teamsters. We discuss how while on the one hand, Hoffa negotiated some of the best contracts Teamst...

We start this week following up with workers at Proletariat Studios who have been forced to withdraw their union petition after emotional manipulation from the CEO. Thankfully, the union voted went better for workers at Trader Joe's in Louisville who are now the third union store at the chain. Next we discuss the long struggle by transit workers in Washington DC to beat back exploitative private c...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. In the fourth episode of our new series examining historical allegations of union corruption and relations with organized crime, we discuss the McClellan Committee investigations into the power of organized labor. We talk about the differences between how the committee's investi...

Labor struggles don't take the week off, and this was another packed one. First, we check in on two long strikes in Iowa which ended within 24 hours this past weekend. We discuss the end of the strikes at Case New Holland and Ingredion and what little information we have so far about the new contracts workers won. Next we discuss the continuing UK strike wave and the upcoming mass strike on Februa...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. In the third episode of our new series examining historical allegations of union corruption and relations with organized crime, we discuss the changing of the guard at the top of the Teamsters, from the long era of Daniel Tobin's presidency, to the rise of Dave Beck and Jimmy Ho...

We start this week's episode of Work Stoppage discussing last week's big strike victory by nurses in New York City. Next we discuss the looming Supreme Court case that will reshape the ability of workers to strike. Also this week, the NLRB finally officially certified the ALU's victory at JFK8, 9 months after their election. The wave of organizing in academia continues to grow as grad student work...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. In the second episode of our new series examining historical allegations of union corruption and relations with organized crime, we discuss the Daniel Tobin era of the Teamsters from the first decade of the 20th century to the end of WW2. In this period, massive technological ch...

2023 is showing no signs of being any less militant of a year for workers than 2022 was, so we've got another packed episode of Work Stoppage this week. After a couple brief check ins, we discuss the recent rejection of Case New Holland's "Last, Best, and Final" Offer by UAW workers.  Also this week, Microsoft surprisingly held up their end of the neutrality agreement and voluntarily recognized th...