Work Stoppage

After a few headlines touching on a vetoed farm worker bill in Maine, Amazon organizing in Canada, a life changing win by GM sanitation workers, and UFCW rank and file action updates, we begin this week with a massive protest in Argentina to defend the university system. Then we talk about striking Indiana University graduate student workers which leads us directly into talking about the resistanc...

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 strike by textile mill workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts in January of 1912 was one of the biggest labor struggles of the era, and launched Elizabeth Gurley Flynn onto the national stage. Already famous among radical workers for her fiery speaking abilities, her role in org...

This week we are very lucky to be joined by Mel Buer, Staff Reporter for The Real News Network while Dan is away. We begin by talking about WGA workers at Sesame Street who won a TA after threatening to strike, making a conversation with children about working conditions loom over the non-profit Sesame Workshop. We celebrate 1700 performers at Disney Land filing for a union to join 21,000 other un...

We talk about a lot of labor history on our show, and one of the organizations we've come back to again and again is the Industrial Workers of the World. We've talked about the epic struggles in the early 20th century, but where is the IWW today, a century after its peak? We're joined by IWW Organizer and Trainer Maria Cunningham for a discussion of the modern IWW. We talk recent history, some pro...

We've got another episode jam packed full of new labor stories this week. After a run through the headlines, we've got big news from Canada, as workers at two Amazon warehouses in British Columbia have filed for a union election. Trader Joe's workers in Chicago have also filed, fighting a vicious union busting campaign. BU Grad workers have been on strike for weeks, fighting for wages to survive 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. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was already an organizer before she even left High School. Traveling the industrial cities of the northeast to speak for workers, she quickly decided to dedicate her life to the cause of the working class. Her work with the IWW would take her across the wh...

We start our labor news updates this week with a big one from the UAW as 5000 workers at Mercedes Benz in Alabama have filed for a union election. Next we've got an update on Amazon, where illegal union busting continues at sites across the country. Also we discuss updates on union busting campaigns at REI, where even managers are getting fired for being pro union, and Trader Joe's, where managers...

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. Normally our history series tend to focus on mass movements, on structures, on the broad forces at play in the class struggle. But just because the class struggle is the motor of history, doesn't mean that individuals don't play critical roles. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was one of...

After running down some quick headlines (boycott Molson Coors!), we jump into our first story of the week, Amazon paying restitution to migrant workers who faced abuse while working in Amazon's Saudi Arabian warehouses. Next we discuss attacks on labor rights in Finland by the new right wing government, which threaten to roll back decades of labor gains. UAW supporters at Mercedes Benz in Alabama...

Episode 1 - Women Workers in the Industrial Revolution We've covered a ton of different eras and stories of the US labor movement on our show, but unfortunately much of it has been heavily focused on solely male workers, leaving out the historic role women have played in shaping the trade union movement in this country. So in an attempt to help rectify that, we're embarking on the longest series w...

200 episodes and the labor organizing doesn't stop. After checking in on some quick headlines, we discuss the latest major milestone in the UAW organizing drive at nonunion automakers, with workers officially filing for an election at VW. Also this week, a recent in-depth report in The Guardian documents awful, slavery-like conditions in the fishing industry. Similarly exploited workers, migrant a...

Episode 8 - Feminism and Labor 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 last forty years have seen massive changes in the US labor movement. With the rise of neoliberalism, combined attacks from corporations and the state decimated union density across the country. But the fight for women's equality in the workplac...

For our first story this week we were lucky to be joined by labor reporter Claudia Irizarry Aponte from The City to follow up on the story she broke about alleged sweatshop conditions in a Brooklyn tobacco factory. Next we discuss the sad news that the Medieval Times union drive has been forced to disband after two years of vicious, illegal repression by the company. Boston commuter rail workers a...

Episode 7 - 1199 and the UFW 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 years following the McCarthyite purges of the early 1950s, the pace of progress in the labor movement cooled from its heady heights of the CIO and the 1946 strike wave. But new struggles still emerged all over the country, and women workers co...

After several quick headlines, we start this week with the first ever successful union election of a major men's basketball team in the NCAA at Dartmouth. Then we've got a major UAW update covering the last two weeks including major developments at Mercedes in Alabama, Toyota in Missouri, and more. We also discuss the continued existence of sweatshops right here in the US, as tobacco processing wo...

Episode 6 - Women Build the CIO 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 first few decades of the 20th century, the AFL consistently failed to live up to its promises to fight for equal pay for equal work. But in the 1930s, an alternate labor federation, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, broke away and...

It's March! We begin by discussing yet another horrifying story of abuse of child labor, but also a story of how one UFCW local in Minnesota is fighting against the conditions creating it.  In a huge milestone, Starbucks has agreed to a framework to move negotiations forward towards a national contract. Fast food companies are using AI, and of course it's to make their employees lives even worse....

Episode 5 - Communist Women In the Great Depression 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 Great Depression was one of the greatest crises in capitalism's history, throwing millions out of work and pushing them to the brink of starvation. Women workers bore the brunt of this, being the first to be fired in nearly...

A lawsuit filed in Colorado this week to block the Kroger-Albertson's merger reveals anti-union collusion. Starbucks Workers United filed for union elections at 21 stores in one day. The UAW continued making major moves, doubling their organizing budget and launching an international support effort with Mexican autoworkers. IBEW faced mold so toxic whole building a new Ford battery plant they were...

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 talk about a lot of labor history on our show, and one of the organizations we've come back to again and again is the Industrial Workers of the World. We've talked about the epic struggles in the early 20th century, but where is the IWW today, a century after its peak? We're...

After a quick discussion of Amazon joining the corporate lawsuit aimed at destroying the NLRB, we turn to the continuing efforts by workers around the world to fight to end the genocide in Palestine. Next we discuss the latest round of protests by thousands of farmers in India fighting for their livelihoods. Farm owners in this country in NY have sued to stop a law granting labor rights to farm wo...

Episode 4 - Revolutionaries Press The Issue If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. On the eve of WW1, a radical new force shook the US labor movement with its vision of all the workers under one big union, running society instead of the exploiters. The IWW also had a much more advanced vision of women's equality than...

We start this week's episode with a quick rundown of new anti union repression at Starbucks and Amazon. This week workers calling for a ceasefire have reached the top of the US labor movement, with the AFL-CIO itself finally getting on board. The UAW continues its massive and ambitious nationwide union drive, hitting a critical milestone at VW in Chattanooga of a majority of workers signed up. Leg...

Episode 3 - Garment Worker Rebellion If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. On the third episode of our series, we zoom in to a few years at the beginning of the 20th century. From 1909-1913, tens of thousands of women workers in the garment industry in the industrial cities of the northern US organized and went on s...

We're back to our original schedule and have a packed episode. First we follow up with the struggle against libertarian fascism in Argentina and an update on how Return to the Office policies are bullshit.  We also discuss the recent revelation of a major wage theft ring in the pacific northwest and the refusal of the government to do anything to stop the criminals. Our now weekly UAW update discu...