Work Stoppage

VU Mexico Workers Strike Fund: https://www.atcf.org/solidarity_fund  We are forced into discussing major current events this week as the mainstream media is more worried about weather balloons than a major train derailment and chemical spill. We follow that up with an update on the victory of the striking DHL workers in Pawtucket, RI. Also this week, HarperCollins workers reached a tentative agree...

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 so excited to be joined this week by Andrew and Jasmine, two organizers from Teachers and Researchers United (TRU), the union for graduate student workers at Johns Hopkins University. Workers won an incredibly victory last week, with a near unanimous 97% of workers support...

It's a (nearly) all public worker episode of Work Stoppage this week. We start with a quick discussion of the excellent short job action by REI workers in Cleveland and a review of some recent stories in wage theft. Then we discuss last week's three day strike by city workers in Portland, where workers were falsely accused of violence on the picket line by Mayor Ted Wheeler. We discuss the ongoing...

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 fifth episode of our new series examining historical allegations of union corruption and relations with organized crime, we discuss Jimmy Hoffa's tenure as president of the Teamsters. We discuss how while on the one hand, Hoffa negotiated some of the best contracts Teamst...

We start this week following up with workers at Proletariat Studios who have been forced to withdraw their union petition after emotional manipulation from the CEO. Thankfully, the union voted went better for workers at Trader Joe's in Louisville who are now the third union store at the chain. Next we discuss the long struggle by transit workers in Washington DC to beat back exploitative private c...

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 fourth episode of our new series examining historical allegations of union corruption and relations with organized crime, we discuss the McClellan Committee investigations into the power of organized labor. We talk about the differences between how the committee's investi...

Labor struggles don't take the week off, and this was another packed one. First, we check in on two long strikes in Iowa which ended within 24 hours this past weekend. We discuss the end of the strikes at Case New Holland and Ingredion and what little information we have so far about the new contracts workers won. Next we discuss the continuing UK strike wave and the upcoming mass strike on Februa...

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 third episode of our new series examining historical allegations of union corruption and relations with organized crime, we discuss the changing of the guard at the top of the Teamsters, from the long era of Daniel Tobin's presidency, to the rise of Dave Beck and Jimmy Ho...

We start this week's episode of Work Stoppage discussing last week's big strike victory by nurses in New York City. Next we discuss the looming Supreme Court case that will reshape the ability of workers to strike. Also this week, the NLRB finally officially certified the ALU's victory at JFK8, 9 months after their election. The wave of organizing in academia continues to grow as grad student work...

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 second episode of our new series examining historical allegations of union corruption and relations with organized crime, we discuss the Daniel Tobin era of the Teamsters from the first decade of the 20th century to the end of WW2. In this period, massive technological ch...

2023 is showing no signs of being any less militant of a year for workers than 2022 was, so we've got another packed episode of Work Stoppage this week. After a couple brief check ins, we discuss the recent rejection of Case New Holland's "Last, Best, and Final" Offer by UAW workers.  Also this week, Microsoft surprisingly held up their end of the neutrality agreement and voluntarily recognized th...

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 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...

Happy New Year to all our listeners, hopefully 2023 will be another year of worker upsurge. We start our first show of the year discussing the debacle at Southwest Airlines where capitalists have once again proven they can't be trusted to manage vital infrastructure. Next we discuss the third union drive at Activision Blizzard, this time at the ironically named Proletariat Studios. California nurs...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. It's the last show of the year, and what better way to finish out 2022 than by reviewing some of the biggest stories in labor over the course of the year. We go back through the year's worth of stories to highlight some of the biggest trends, from the explosive growth of the Sta...

Happy Holidays to all, especially workers fighting for a better world! We start this week's episode discussing the recent end of the largest strike of the year at UC as workers have ratified a new contract. Next we discuss a recent Reuters investigation that uncovered rampant use of child labor in auto manufacturing in Alabama. The lockout of workers at the WestRock paper mill (also in Alabama) ha...

UAW Local 807 Strike Fund: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-the-striking-uaw-local-807-cnh-workers  This week's episode of Work Stoppage starts by checking in on the strike at Case New Holland, where over a thousand workers have been on strike for over 8 months. Next we update everyone on the status of the UC strike, where the bargaining team has signed a tentative agreement and some in the rank an...

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 going back to the movies this week with two films focused on the power of women workers.  First we discuss 2010's Made in Dagenham, which chronicles the 1968 strike by women sewing machinists at Ford's largest auto plant in Europe. Standing up against not only the bosses,...

We start this week's episode with some sad news, as the South Korean truckers have been forced to end their strike after weeks of vicious government repression. Also this week the NLRB ruled that Apple has been breaking the law with its Starbucks-inspired union busting campaigns at its retail stores. Minnesota nurses have called off their potential strike after tentatively agreeing to a new contra...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. This year has seen a huge surge in organizing at academic institutions across the country. Academic workers have formed the five largest new bargaining units of the year AND led the country's largest strike, the ongoing 48,000 worker strike at the University of California. So we...

We've got a monster episode as last week was full of monumental news in the labor movement. First of course we have an extended breakdown of the move by President Biden and both capitalist parties last week to use the Railway Labor Act to make a rail strike illegal and force a contract the workers democratically rejected down their throats. We discuss how we got here, what this means for the immed...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. For the final part of our series on rank and file movements of the 1970s, we cover the movements formed by rank and file women workers to fight not only for better wages and conditions, but also to stop the entrenched culture of discrimination on the job. As millions of public s...

After a bit of complaining about workers being forced to come in during the holidays, we start this week's episode with a check-in on the longest running strike in the US at Warrior Met Coal in Alabama. The strike wave in the UK continues to grow as academic workers held the UK's largest ever academic strike and the RMT announced new rail shutdowns. The largest strike in the US continued into its...

To start this week's episode of Work Stoppage, we check in on the fight for a better contract for school staff in Ontario as CUPE appears to have been backed into a corner following the decision not to launch a province wide general strike. Posties in the UK have voted to extend their strike to multiple dates in December, including Christmas Eve. Our huge news follow up this week is that workers i...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. For the second part of our series on rank and file movements of the 1970s, we cover the militant workers of the UAW and the CWA. Both these unions faced similar trends of class collaborationist leadership more focused on enforcing existing contracts than resolving problems faced...

California Academic Workers' Strike Fund: https://givebutter.com/uc-uaw We start this week's episode with a quick update on where things stand with CUPE in Ontario, as negotiations are once again moving slowly. This week workers won their election at a second Medieval Times castle, making their unit of the AGVA bicoastal. Unfortunately we've got another story of awful child labor, this time a comp...