The Labor Notes Podcast

They’re calling it the Be Normal challenge. Sure, an important goal of an organizing conversation with a co-worker is to move them toward action. But there are ways to do that while treating them with respect, and continuing to build a relationship that keeps them connected to the union.  Order your copy of Ellen’s new book for Labor Notes! Keep Going: A Guide to Organizing When It’s Hard

You and your co-workers have worn boo-nion pins. You’ve sent reply-all emails demanding a “Fair Contract Now and For All of Eternity.” But to take your ghoul-idarity to the next level, get ready to march on the boss and read your list of demands off the ritual book.   Three spooky season classics—Beetlejuice (1988), Halloweentown (1998), and The Exorcist (1973)—have bone-chilling yet practical tip...

In honor of The Strokes’ ongoing Reality Awaits tour, which the Labor Notes pod cares about a normal amount, we talk about organizing lessons we’ve pulled from films of the grimy Lower East Side dive bar era of 2006-2013 with our favorite indie rock needledrops: Marie Antoinette (2006), 500 Days of Summer (2009), and The Bling Ring (2013).  If you’re a fan of Secrets of a Successful Organizer and...

Mexican Volkswagen workers who build the Jetta, Tiguan, and Taos at the company’s Puebla plant were getting ready to strike over Volkswagen’s 10 percent raise offer during an annual wage reopener at the plant, as well as its firing of 800 workers in a segment of the plant that produces the Jetta and the Tiguan. On October 2, the bargaining committee of SITIAVW, one of Mexico’s most storied indepen...

Eight hundred workers at a distribution center in Mississauga, Ontario, organized with Unifor Local 252 a couple years ago, and have now won a two-year contract with Walmart, a major first in the North American retail giant. Kari Thompson, who reported on the successful campaign for Labor Notes, joins the episode.  Read the story: Canadian Walmart Workers Make History: A Union Contract

When workers at the parts retailer AutoZone organized to form the company’s first ever union, their boss pulled out the big guns—but they still won their election! Also in this episode: Video Game Workers at Blizzard have won their first contract and 1,400 solar manufacturing workers have joined the Steelworkers. Labor Notes Podcast co-hosts Danielle Smith and Natascha Elena Uhlmann break down the...

If you’re holding bad meetings, caving to management, and trying to do everything yourself, congrats—you’re already well on your way to fumbling your shot!    On the other hand, if you want to actually advance a positive vision for your union that energizes members, you can ground your next union election campaign in tried and true organizing principles.    Also check out:  How to Lose Your Next E...

They lure people into their campaigns, grow phone trees, and machete a path out of fear. It turns out some of our archetypal evil heroines—Amy Dunne of Gone Girl, sisters Sally and Gillian Owens of Practical Magic, and Merricat Blackwood of We Have Always Lived in the Castle—have some positively devilish organizing tactics (disclaimer: not all of which we endorse!) up their dark, trumpet sleeves....

Tyson workers at a meatpacking plant in Joslin, Illinois, arrived at work one day in mid-August to discover that it was suddenly closed and that 2,500 of them would be out of jobs.  These workers—members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1546—are now rallying to demand that the plant reopen, or that they at least be given six months of severance pay rather than the two the company has of...

After five weeks on the picket line, 80 public transit workers in Jackson, Mississippi, members of ATU Local 1208, have won a 5 percent wage increase; beat back a plan for “microtransit,” a private on-call service that would have brought in drivers without a commercial driver’s license at a lower-tier wage; and stopped cuts to Saturday service.    Labor Notes Organizer Paul Prescod joins the pod....

The Labor Notes Podcast is taking a Summer Friday. We’ll be back next week!

The Trump Administration has been surveilling and investigating unions including the Communications Workers (CWA) and Service Employees (SEIU), as part of its targeting of groups resisting immigration raids in Minnesota, according to a report this month in the New York Times. But union members and representatives have since told Labor Notes that they are undeterred. “We are proud of our work and w...

This fall, 200,000 members of the Letter Carriers will get the chance to vote (perhaps fittingly, by mail ballot) for new leadership.  For many postal workers fed up with low pay, forced overtime, dangerous heat, and robberies—conditions they see their opaque, undemocratic leadership failing to address—the upcoming election is a focal point for recent reform currents brewing in the union.   They’l...

You want more members to share the work of your contract action team? Win more grievances? Commit to wearing Hawaiian shirts together to the Jaws screening? You know what we're about to suggest: Think like an organizer. It's a common Labor Notes refrain to many organizing conundrums—but what does it mean? A problem-solving approach that engages and involves more people? More direct asks of our fel...

For over four decades now, workers have seen their steady, reliable pension payouts replaced by more uncertain returns from 401(k) plans—where employees’ payments are invested in retirement accounts that are vulnerable to the stock market. But just this month, power workers in Pennsylvania did something that worked—workers at PECO, the electric company for the Philadelphia region and Pennsylvania’...

More than 2,000 stadium workers in Los Angeles scored a goal that VAR can’t take away: they overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike and built a credible threat to walk off the job during World Cup matches scheduled at the SoFi stadium—and they won the right to strike over ICE.  Their campaign, and others like it this summer—including in Philadelphia where workers at the Sheraton and Warwick hot...

Gig workers are often sold the lie that their job is flexible, customizable, and lets them be their own boss. But that hides the reality that they don’t control a lot of their own basic working conditions, including the rates they’re paid or even if they can continue working with the app, if they’re arbitrarily deactivated.  In May, hundreds of app workers across Mexico held a two-hour work stoppa...

Have you ever been so stumped by an organizing challenge that you wished you could just beam out a help signal to others who’ve dealt with the same thing? Enter special guests Tera Arnold and Dakota Massman, who fielded several organizing questions along with pod co-hosts Danielle Smith and Natascha Elena Uhlmann at our first ever live episode of the Labor Notes Podcast, which took place last mont...

You might be in a battle of wits with a great white shark on a New England beach and needing a bigger boat. Or maybe you're getting into property fights with your goth relatives (or imposters) in the Addams Family. Perhaps you're just a toy, a child's plaything, but developing power analysis in the Toy Story franchise. Wherever your big screen adventures are playing out, we at the Labor Notes Podc...

You guys loved our episode about having bad meetings so much that we’re actually bringing it back. Revisit this old Labor Notes pod banger and evergreen organizing question: “What if Unions Meetings Were Actually Good?”   

It feels like we just saw about 4,700 of you a week ago in Chicago, so we're taking some space this week to give you a chance to miss us a little. (i.e. We're catching up on sleep after the 2026 Labor Notes Conference, and will be back to our programming next week!)     In the meantime, watch the conference livestream:   Friday, June 12 Main Session:  WATCH HERE   Saturday, June 13 The Soul in the...

What do you do when you work at a public school in a “right-to-work state” that also bars public employees from collective bargaining? And what happens, when your school district exploits its leverage over employees to snatch raises owed to workers?  Members of the Durham Association of Educators in North Carolina turned to the tried and tested principles of collective action. They helped channel...

You’ve learned the passes on the campaign mountain , figured out your co-workers’ most widely and deeply felt issues , and polished up your 1-1 skills . It’s time to start bringing in your co-workers—with the humble spreadsheet.  List-building is a foundational organizing function that helps you map your workplace, reach out to members, and assess the strength of the union you’re building together...

It’s natural to feel overwhelmed by the boss’ relentless union busting (it’s why they do it!) and to get discouraged by lapses and disengagement by union leadership. It can also compound the difficulty of organizing—figuring out how to make a meeting worthwhile, how to connect with members when it feels like your shop floor is in disarray, or even getting through concrete tasks like drafting agend...

A.I is a management power grab, disguised as an inevitable technical upgrade. To fight it, workers can use four strategies proven in the past: name the real problem; unionize it; ransom it; and block it. Also read the piece by Labor Notes Organizer Keith Brower Brown: Four Union Strategies to Fight on A.I.