The Union Bug

This week, we’ve got a national call to boycott the REI Co-Op Annual Sale in support of union workers. As bargaining has dragged on and REI has dragged its feet at the table, workers are looking to leverage an upcoming moneymaker of a sale at the Co-Op to force them back to bargaining with serious proposals. To that end, REI workers have asked that folks join a boycott from May 15th to 25th during...

Last year, news broke that two of the largest Class One Rail Carriers, Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern, announced their intention of a massive merger. The 85 billion dollar megadeal would create the nation’s first transcontinentall railroad owned by a single company, spanning 50,000 miles of track and nearly half of the nation’s rail freight traffic. As I reported on this last September, no one...

Fresh off the latest national victory against Amazon’s failed Unpaid Time Off retaliation , I was keen to check in with Amazon Teamsters about how things were going with their campaigns. I caught up with Juan Mereles, Teamsters union member and docks department worker at KSBD, and Amazon Air Hub in San Bernardino, California.  On this episode of the Union Bug, we’re talking about the working condi...

As you may have noticed, it’s been awhile since my last episode, and I am very stoked to be back behind the mic bringing you more conversations from the labor movement and beyond.  On the show this week is Daniel Gross to talk about his forthcoming book, Unions of Our Own: 8 Building Blocks to Change Work and the World. The book provides a “radical, step-by-step framework for workers who want to f...

Much of the conversations we see cropping up in today’s online labor discourse center around the labor movement’s need to create a more militant organizing framework within the established unions in the United States. In the last decade, unions have experienced a resurgence in the popular conversation, particularly since 2021, but have struggled to increase membership and create new inroads toward...

The Labor Radio Podcast Network is a collaborative working group of dozens of labor-focused podcasts and radio shows. According to the LRPN website, the network exists as a way to gather together resources for listeners who may be on the hunt for better worker-focused media, saying in part,  “While labor columnists at daily newspapers have become a dying breed and union news has largely been sidel...