Working People

We'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...

This 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...

On 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 fr...

Right 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...

Just 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 union...

Holy cow, this is Working People's 200th episode! Thank you to everyone who has listened to and supported us over the past five seasons—and, of course, thank you to every guest who has ever come on the show to share their story. To commemorate our 200th regular-season episode, we have a special installment of our series of conversations with teachers, organizers, scholars, and activists in Wiscons...

The Southern Poverty Law Center is a historic civil rights organization that, for 50 years, has been advancing social justice through legal, educational, and advocacy efforts primarily in the Deep South. However, after overwhelmingly voting to unionize in 2019, staff at SPLC say the organization has been stalling negotiations over their first union contract and unfairly treating its lowest-paid an...

We are diving right back into 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. In this episode, recorded at the Racine Labor Center in Racine, Wisconsin...

Since full-time lecturers at Howard University originally voted to unionize, they have spent nearly four years bargaining with the university administration to get their first contract. Unless a deal is reached at the 11th hour, lecturers are set to go on strike on Wednesday, March 23, joining nearly 200 adjunct professors who are also fighting for their second contract with the university. Even i...

We continue our series on the struggles of teachers and public sector unions in the state of Wisconsin today. As part of a special collaboration between The Real News Network and In These Times magazine for " The Wisconsin Idea ," Max, Cameron Granadino (TRNN), and Hannah Faris ( In These Times ) traveled to Wisconsin in the summer of 2021. From Madison to Appleton, they spoke to a range of educat...

We're back, baby! We're kicking off Season 5 of Working People with a multi-part series on teachers and public sector unions in the state of Wisconsin. As part of a special collaboration between The Real News Network and In These Times magazine for " The Wisconsin Idea ," Max, Cameron Granadino (TRNN), and Hannah Faris ( In These Times ) traveled to Wisconsin in the summer of 2021 to investigate t...

With permission from The Real News Network, we're publishing the audio of Max's most recent TRNN interview with Jana Murphy of the Justice for Evan coalition. In September 2021, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez spoke with the family of Evan Seyfried about a lawsuit they filed against grocery giant Kroger, which alleges that Evan was bullied, harassed, and sabotaged by store managers Shanno...

With Laborers Local 79 leading the charge, union demolition workers, construction workers, carpenters, bricklayers, and more have rallied multiple times in the past month outside the Chelsea Terminal Warehouse in New York City to protest the mishandling of workers' pensions and the exploitation, union busting, wage theft, and hazardous conditions workers have experienced at the job site. As Dean M...

Late last year, Max had the honor of getting to speak to a class at Tulane University called "Introduction to Podcasting and Social Justice" taught by Dr. Billy Saas, cohost and producer of the podcast Money on the Left, as well as the cofounder and codirector of the Money on the Left Editorial Collective. The students in the class talked to Max about how and why he started Working People , how th...

We're gearing up for Season 5 of the show and will be back very soon! In the meantime, if you're looking for more important coverage of worker struggles from Max, go check out the interviews he's doing for The Real News Network. With permission from TRNN, we're publishing the audio of his most recent interview with retired railroad worker and union officer Jeff Kurtz.    A crucial labor battle is...

Here we are again... With the Omicron variant spreading like wildfire, COVID-19 cases around the country have shattered previous highs. The federal government has essentially given up on trying to fight the virus and a familiar ghoulish chorus of media pundits and wealthy business executives are berating working people to suck it up and put themselves in harm's way for the sake of the economy. Wha...

Due to COVID awfulness, we're counting our 6-hour livestream fundraiser for striking Kellogg's workers as the official finale of Season Four of Working People (woo!). Thank you all for listening to and supporting our work over the past year.  We're getting some much-needed rest and gearing up for Season Five. In the meantime, we're ringing in the new year by unlocking this special bonus episode—en...

After nearly 3 months, the strike at cereal giant Kellogg's, which involved 1,400 workers at four different plants, has come to an end. On Tuesday, December 21, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers' International Union (BCTGM) announced that its members at Kellogg's had voted to ratify the latest contract offer. We want to send all our love and solidarity to everyone who he...

After nearly 3 months, the strike at cereal giant Kellogg's, which involved 1,400 workers at four different plants, has come to an end. On Tuesday, December 21, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers' International Union (BCTGM) announced that its members at Kellogg's had voted to ratify the latest contract offer. We want to send all our love and solidarity to everyone who he...

Hospitality workers around the country have faced some of the worst layoffs in any industry during the COVID-19 pandemic. UNITE HERE , a labor union representing over 300,000 workers, most of whom are in the hospitality, food service, and restaurant industries, reported that 98% of its members were out of work last year. At the five hotel properties in Virginia's historic Colonial Williamsburg, ho...

Election season is coming up, so you know what that means... we're re-launching our series "Working-Class Politics"! In this ongoing series, we talk to working-class people running for elected office at all levels—in their unions, in local, state, and national government, etc.—as well as candidates fighting with and for the working class. In the latest installment, we talk to Paul Prescod (aka "La...

Ending 26 years of "labor peace," Major League Baseball is in the midst of a lockout. With league owners failing to address the core contract issues raised by the Major League Baseball Players Association, the previous collective bargaining agreement expired at the beginning of this month. In an open letter to baseball fans, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred stated, "Despite the league's best efforts t...

Starbucks is the world's largest coffeehouse chain and one of the most recognizable consumer brands in existence. In the US alone, Starbucks has nearly 9,000 corporate-owned stores, and not a single one of them is unionized ... but that may be about to change. After leading an organizing campaign during the COVID-19 pandemic and facing tireless efforts by the company to delay, deflate, and defeat...

Back in the spring, we spoke with three graduate student workers at Columbia University who were on strike with other members of the Student Workers of Columbia union, UAW Local 2110. After rank-and-file members rejected the tentative agreement between the university and the bargaining committee, negotiations continued, but Columbia has still failed to meet key demands, including better wages, den...

What role does fiction have to play in the class struggle? Should the left be making a stronger case for the political importance of reading literature? In this special Working People  episode, which has been months in the making, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez talks with writer and editor Sarah Lazare about her novel  Testimony , which she co-authored with her late father, Peter Lazare....