Work Stoppage

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...

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 first part of a new Overtime series we dive into the history of rank and file movements that arose during the crises of the 1970s. The 70s were the beginning of the long decline of unionism in the US, but this decline did not happen without worker opposition. In every maj...

We start this week’s jam packed episode with some sad news, as the vote for NLRB recognition of a union at Home Depot in Philly came up short. We then check in on Chipotle workers, as the NLRB has ruled that the company illegally closed its store in Augusta, ME in retaliation for their union drive. Also this week, 400 workers at Maximus call centers helping people navigate the bureaucratic nightma...

In order to let as many folks as possible hear directly from the workers about the conditions Royal Mail workers are fighting to change, we've decided to unlock our full interview from last week! We hope you enjoy the interview, and if you like the show please support us at patreon.com/workstoppage. Original Description: We are so excited to be joined this week by Gary Banks, a worker for the Brit...

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 back at the movies again this week, this time covering films from Italy and India. First we discuss 1963's The Organizer, a working class drama about the early days of labor organizing in northern Italy in the late 1800s. The film covers the extreme exploitation of 19th ce...

We start our episode this week checking in with the movement to unionize Trader Joe’s, which hit a setback this week after fierce union busting defeated a union election in Brooklyn. This week we got one step closer to a national rail strike, as the Brotherhood of Railway Signalmen voted down their tentative agreement. A sad story this week of a worker who lost her life at UPS highlights the incre...

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 are so excited to be joined this week by Gary Banks, a worker for the British Royal Mail and local union representative for the Communication Workers Union. We discuss the conditions that led to over 100,000 Royal Mail workers to hit the picket lines over the last few months,...

We start this week’s episode on a sad note, as workers at Amazon’s ALB1 facility outside Albany have voted against joining the ALU following Amazon’s intense union busting campaign. Striking Teamsters in Boston ended their strike against Sysco, signing a new deal with better wages and healthcare. California mental health workers ended their 10 week long strike at Kaiser Permanente this week as wel...

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 part of our series on Peter Winn's book Weavers of Revolution, we discuss the moves made by the workers at the Yarur Mill in Chile following their successful union election. Faced with sabotage by the mill owners, workers found themselves forced to take control of...

We start this week’s episode with an update on the Sysco strike, where Teamsters in Syracuse have won their demands, but workers in Boston continue to face repression. In Philadelphia, workers have won their strike at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and won major gains in their new contract. We also check in with the Medieval Times workers who are now being sued for trademark infringement because t...

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 this new two-part Overtime series we will be discussing Peter Winn’s fantastic labor history book, Weavers of Revolution: The Yarur Workers and Chile’s Road to Socialism. The story of the workers at the Yarur cotton mill and their movement for worker control of the factory is...

Right as we were sitting down to record this week some big news regarding the potential nationwide rail strike dropped, so we start discussing that. Then we follow up with the unionized workers at Raven Software, where the NLRB has ruled that Activision illegally withheld benefits from workers. We have a whole block of Amazon stories this week: first, Amazon suspended nearly 100 workers for demand...