Work Stoppage

The whole gang's back together and what a week in labor it has been! After a few quick headlines we dive right into the biggest story of the week breaking down the nationwide writer's strike.  Writers across the country have hit the picket lines to defend the very existence of their profession as a career. A story in Labor Notes details the ways fishery workers in Massachusetts have had immigratio...

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 very excited this week to be starting our long awaited series discussing the history of the field of cybernetics and how it intersects with the labor movement. In this first part, John explains the life and work of polymath and founder of the study of cybernetics, Norber...

After a whirlwind trip through some quick headlines, we discuss the Teamsters unionizing a delivery contractor for Amazon and the precedent that could set.  This week marked the UFCW's national convention and reformers have been fighting to make the union more democratic. The independent union movement in Mexico continues to grow despite some recent blatant illegal interference by the company unio...

Unfortunately due to some major life events and schedule misalignments among the hosts, we weren't able to get everyone together to record a second show this week. So we're doing the opposite and unlocking the first episode in last year's series Why Rank and File? With Shawn Fain and the UAWD taking the helm of the UAW, Sean O'Brien and the TDU having just recently won leadership in the Teamsters,...

We start this week's episode following up with the RISD workers who have signed a new contract after winning their key demands. Next we check in with the striking graduate workers at the University of Michigan where both the courts and the cops have ramped up repression.  Trader Joe's United split two elections this week, one win out west and a heartbreaking loss in NYC. The Writer's Guild of Amer...

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 continue our dive into the history of general strikes in US history this week with the San Francisco general strike of 1934. As with the 1919 Seattle general strike, this one started on the docks but quickly spread to the entire city. Unlike Seattle, which was entirely peacef...

We're down to just two of us this week as John's on the mend, but we've still got a ton of news to cover in labor this week. First we discuss the suspension of the strike at Rutgers as the bargaining team reached a framework for a tentative agreement over the weekend. Next we follow up with the 2 month long strike at the Buena Park Medieval Times, where both workers, both human and equine, have fa...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. Whenever we've talked about general strikes on our show, it has most often been to explain why you can't just declare one on Twitter. In this two part series, we dig into US labor history to find out what it takes to launch a real general strike, and what lessons we can learn fr...

Dan's back this week and so that means an avalanche of new labor news stories. We begin by discussing the new massive strike at Rutgers, with over 9000 faculty, post docs, and grad student workers fighting for fair wages and job security. Next we discuss Florida's latest attempt to destroy public unions. In Syracuse yet another massive union landslide this past week as grad workers voted overwhelm...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. Pamphlet Link: https://ladyizdihar.com/blogs/izdihars-soviet-archive-2/report-of-the-cio-delegation-to-the-soviet-union-1945 We talk a lot about labor history on our Overtime episodes, looking back at past struggles by workers to see what lessons we can draw out for our own stru...

This week we are joined by Johnny and Pat from Subversive History while Dan is out. We follow-up with stories about how Chipotle was forced to compensate workers for closing the Augusta store, an expansion in the Buena Park Medieval Times Union to sound and lighting workers, and the forced resignation of Temple University's president. We also talk about REI workers in Chicago filing for a union el...

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...