Working People

2018: On the Monday after Thanksgiving, General Motors workers in the U.S. and Canada learned of the company's announcement that it would be idling five plants and cutting around 14,000 jobs. In this urgent, multi-episode series, we will be talking to workers at plants in Ohio, Michigan, and Canada. In Part I, we talk to Rochelle Carlisle, Tommy Wolikow, and Nanette Senters, three GM workers from...

In this episode, we talk to Em, an Alaskan native who is now living and working in Jackson, Wyoming. Em is a fellow Millennial, and we talk about some of the funny and awful things that so many people in our generation have in common, like student debt, working multiple crappy jobs at once, and being stressed out from the time we're in elementary school because we're told we have to pile on more c...

In this episode, we round off our special two-week series on sex work by talking to Kai, a sex worker and DJ in Atlanta, Georgia. Kai is a wonderful, funny person and, in our chat, he shares some really important insights about different kinds of sex work, how sex workers take care of themselves and each other, and about the disastrous real-life implications the SESTA-FOSTA bills have for sex work...

In Part II of our bonus episode in this special Working People series on sex work, we chat to the amazing Alex Andrews, an organizer, former sex worker, and co-founder of SWOP Behind Bars, part of the Sex Workers Outreach Project. SWOP Behind Bars "is a national social justice network dedicated to the fundamental human rights of people who face discrimination from the criminal justice system due t...

In Part I of our two-part bonus episode on sex work, we chat to the wonderful Kaytlin Bailey, comedian, writer, activist, sex worker, and host of The Oldest Profession , a fantastic, funny, and unapologetic podcast about the lives of sex workers throughout history. Ever since she was in elementary school, Kaytlin has spoken her mind and questioned the validity of social norms, and we talk about ho...

In this episode, we begin our special two-week series on sex work by talking to the fabulous Ceyenne Doroshow. No description can really do Ceyenne justice, but she is, among other things, a performer, an activist and organizer, a community-based researcher, and a powerful public figure in the trans and sex workers rights' movements. She is the author of the book Cooking in Heels , and the Founder...

In Part I of our special two-part BONUS EPISODE on labor, class, and higher education, we chat to Trevor Griffey, writer, historian, and Labor Studies lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles and California State University, Dominguez Hills. Trevor breaks down the insidious, decades-long effort to devalue academic labor at the administrative, legislative, and cultural level, and we ta...

In this episode, we talk to John Buckley, a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Michigan. John is a member of the lecturer's union at U of M, the Lecturers' Employee Organization (LEO), and was on the bargaining team throughout the effort to negotiate a better contract with the University in 2017/18. We talk about the precarious situation of so many academic workers and what it...

In this episode, which is a little longer than our typical episodes, we talk to Vickie Shannon Allen, a native Texan and a warehouse worker at an Amazon fulfillment center, where she sustained an injury on the job. Vickie's struggle with Amazon to get the medical treatment she deserves is ongoing. As we discuss in the interview, it has been hell for her, and we are asking listeners to help us shar...

In our first BONUS EPISODE of the season, we chat to Rob Larson, writer and professor of economics at Tacoma Community College, and take a deep dive into his new book, Capitalism vs. Freedom: The Toll Road to Serfdom . We also talk about Eugene Debs and the "Real America," Jeff Bezos's twitchy eye, pick-up basketball, and how workers can pull together to fight off and fight back against the depres...

In this episode, we chat with Sara, a DACA recipient and telemarketer in Las Vegas. Sara is not the kind of person you can put labels on—you definitely can't put her in any one box. And that seems to have been written into her life story from the beginning. We talk about what it was like growing up in Southern California, moving between cities with different demographics, different cultures—cities...

In this special Labor Day episode, we talk to LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota, and one of the founders of the resistance camps where the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline (#NoDAPL) took place from the spring of 2016 to the winter of 2017. LaDonna is a Native historian who was thrust by history into the role of an activist—her...

In this episode, we talk to Tom Madden, a native Missourian, a professional plumber, and member of the Plumbers and Pipefitters Union Local 562. We talk about what it was like for Tom and his brothers to grow up in a strict household, and we also talk about some of his wilder days at high school parties. We talk about Tom's father, a professional journalist and labor reporter in St. Louis, and abo...

In this episode, we talk to Angela Prigge, who has been a hospitality worker in Hawaii, on the island of Kauai, for 18 years. Angela has lived in Hawaii her whole life, and we talk about her love for her home and her deep family roots there. We talk about how Angela's grandparents moved to Hawaii from the Philippines, how her father and grandfather worked and lived on sugar plantations. We talk ab...

In this episode, we talk to Lauren Schandevel, a low-income student at the University of Michigan who grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Warren, Michigan. Lauren is a really remarkable person, and in our interview we chat about what it was like to grow up in her part of Macomb County, which always seems to crop up every election cycle whenever news outlets want to figure out what's happeni...

In this episode, we talk to Adrienne, a teacher in Michigan, single mother of three, and a grievance officer in her local union. Adrienne is an incredible person whose devotion to caring for others, and whose ability to juggle multiple full-time jobs at once, is astounding. In our conversation, we talk about many facets of Adrienne's remarkable life, including her time growing up in cooperative ho...

In this episode, I have the great pleasure of talking with Glynndana Shevlin, a Disney Resort worker and member of UNITE HERE Local 11. We talk about her life, her time working at Disney, and the struggles she and her co-workers face to make ends meet. Disney workers' wages, like the wages of workers around the country, have stagnated as inflation and the cost of living have exploded. While the Wa...

In this inaugural episode of Working People, we talk to Jesus Alvarez: a Mexican immigrant who became a US citizen in 1980; a shy kid who met his wife, Regina, while working at a Sizzler; a life-long Republican voter; a family man; a realtor who, like so many of us, lost just about everything during the Great Recession; a sports-lover with a quirky sense of humor; a devoted father; and an amazing...