Working People

Last week, The Real News Network published a bombshell  interview with two federal whistleblowers working in the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Max spoke with Paul Osadebe and Palmer Heenan, two attorneys in HUD's Office of Fair Housing, about the "chaos" that has upended HUD under the new Trump administration, and the vulnerable Americans who are being systematically abandoned...

Federal whistleblowers are going public with an emergency message from within the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). According to their formal complaint, under President Trump's administration, "HUD leadership has already violated the law" and taken actions that "will result in legal violations, gross mismanagement, gross waste of funds, and present a specific danger to public heal...

Current and former tech workers with the No Azure for Apartheid coalition continue to disrupt business as usual at Microsoft's global headquarters in solidarity with Palestinians facing a genocide, and in protest of Microsoft's contracts with the Israeli military to provide tech that Israel uses to surveil, kill, and retroactively justify the killing of Palestinians. In this episode of  Working Pe...

Tech workers at the heart of Microsoft are waging one of the most significant and under-covered labor battles in the US right now. For the last two weeks, members of the No Azure for Apartheid coalition, including current and former tech workers at Microsoft and community allies, have been taking bold, continuing, and escalating actions to disrupt business as usual in solidarity with Palestinians...

Right now, Israel's military is invading and obliterating what remains of Gaza City. After 700 days of genocidal bombing, shooting, forced starvation, and the systematic destruction of schools, hospitals, farms, refugee camps, roads, houses, and the entire infrastructure of civilian life, the Palestinians clinging to life in Gaza City are being exterminated, while others run or limp for their live...

Every single one of us who considers ourselves part of the labor movement has some real deep, serious, and urgent soul searching to do this Labor Day. After already falling to historically low levels of union density, public and private-sector unions are facing an extinction-level event under the new Trump administration. That is not hyperbole; that is a fact. So the real question is: What the hel...

Railroad workers are sounding the alarm about the potentially catastrophic consequences of the proposed mega-merger of two of the nation's Class 1 freight rail companies. "Union Pacific said it would buy smaller rival Norfolk Southern in an $85-billion deal to create the country's first coast-to-coast freight rail operator," Reuters  reported in July. "If approved, the deal would be the largest-ev...

After seeing friends and neighbors in their community of Pasadena, CA, being terrorized, assaulted, and abducted by masked federal agents, Daniela Navin and Jeannette De la Riva joined together with other neighbors in their area to form Grupo Auto Defensa and fight back. From chasing ICE cars out of town with bullhorns to setting up security brigades so terrified residents can walk outside and go...

The Real News Network is honored to be one of the 2025 recipients of the prestigious Izzy Award  for our on-the-ground documentary report, " Trainwreck in 'Trump Country': Partisan politics hasn't helped East Palestine, OH ." "While corporate media covered the catastrophe in East Palestine, Ohio, with aerial views of ruined train cars and plumes of smoke likening the horrific crash to a disaster f...

On Sunday, July 20, 2025, Working People host and TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez delivered the keynote speech at the national convention of the National Organization of Legal Services Workers (NOLSW), UAW Local 2320. "I am here to report back to you from the front lines of struggle, without hesitation or hyperbole, that we are at risk of losing everything," Alvarez told the crowd of unio...

After getting a job as a barista at the Elmwood Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, Jaz Brisack became a founding member of Starbucks Workers United and helped organize the first unionized Starbucks in the US in December of 2021. In their new book,  Get on the Job and Organize , Brisack details the hardwon lessons they and their coworkers have learned from building one of the most significant and para...

Dozens of peaceful protesters, including disabled people in wheelchairs, were arrested last Wednesday in Washington, DC, while protesting President Trump's massive spending and tax bill, which will dramatically slash taxes, restructure the student loan and debt system, and make devastating cuts to vital, popular programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). With...

In Los Angeles, CA, armed, masked agents of the state are snatching and disappearing immigrants off the street, peaceful protestors and journalists are being attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets, National Guard troops and active-duty Marines have been deployed to police and intimidate American citizens. Fear and uncertainty have gripped America's second largest city as a barrage of misinforma...

On June 6, thousands of veterans, union members, VA hospital nurses, elected officials, and more gathered on the National Mall in Washington D.C. at the "Unite for Veterans, Unite for America rally" to protest the Trump administration's attacks on veteran jobs, benefits, and healthcare. In this on-the-ground edition of Working People, we report from Friday's rally and speak with veterans and VA nu...

Already burdened by years of funding cuts and understaffing, registered nurses who work at Veterans Health Administration (VA) facilities across the country are facing a crisis as the impact of the Trump administration's cuts to the federal workforce take effect. In this episode of  Working People , Maximillian Alvarez speaks with VA nurses and union representatives for National Nurses United abou...

In the latest episode of Working People , we go back to the picket line to get a critical update on the longest ongoing strike in the United States. In October 2022, over 100 workers represented by five labor unions—including production, distribution, advertising, and accounts receivable staff—walked off the job on an unfair labor practice strike at the  Pittsburgh Post-Gazette  (PPG). The strike...

At this very moment, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who have managed to survive Israel's scorched-earth siege and bombing are being deliberately starved to death as a result of Israel's 11-week blockade preventing food and aid from entering Gaza. As Jem Bartholemew writes at  The Guardian , "The UN's humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, told the BBC [Tuesday] morning that 14,000 babies could die in G...

While state officials and legislators have positioned Texas to be "the bitcoin mining capital of the world," in small towns like Granbury, working-class residents living next to giant, loud, environmentally destructive data centers are the ones paying the price for Texas's crypto boom. "None of us are sleeping," Cheryl Shadden, a Granbury resident who lives across the street from a 300-megawatt bi...

The Trump administration continues to escalate its authoritarian assault on higher education, free speech, and political dissent—and university administrators and state government officials are willingly aiding that assault. On the morning of April 23, at the direction of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, law enforcement officers, including FBI agents, raided the homes of multiple student org...

I would like to see Texas become the center of the universe for bitcoin and crypto," US Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas)  said  in 2021. In 2024, Republican Governor Greg Abbott  said  Texas "wears the crown as the bitcoin mining capital of the world." But in small towns like Granbury, TX, about an hour southwest of Fort Worth, residents are the ones paying the price for Texas' crypto boom. Granbury's 3...

One year ago, Columbia University became ground zero for the student-led Gaza solidarity encampment movement that spread to campuses across the country and around the world. Now, Columbia has become ground zero for the Trump administration's authoritarian assault on higher education, academic freedom, and the right to free speech and free assembly—all under the McCarthyist guise of rooting out "an...

International students are being abducted and disappeared by ICE in broad daylight. Life-saving research projects across the academy are being halted or thrown into disarray by seismic cuts to federal grants. Dozens of universities are under federal investigation for their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, their allowance of trans athletes to compete in college sports, and their tolerance...

On Tuesday, April 8, unions, unionized federal workers, and their supporters around the country mobilized for a national "Kill the Cuts" day of action to protest the Trump administration's cuts to life-saving research, healthcare, and education programs. As organizers stated on the Kill The Cuts website,  "By cutting funds to lifesaving research and medical care, the Trump administration is abando...

Last week, President Trump escalated his administration's war on the federal workforce and workers' rights when he signed an executive order to end collective bargaining with federal labor unions across the government. The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 150,000 government employees, has sued the Trump administration over the executive order. In response to these intensifying a...

As we've mentioned many times before on the show, movements today are a part of a legacy of extraordinary actions taken by ordinary people. Tapping into our own labor history provides us with a blueprint for action in today's turbulent world.   On March 25th, 1911, a fire began in the scrap bins under a cutter's table on the 8th floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City. Within min...