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A weekly labor news podcast covering workers‘ struggles around the world from a revolutionary left perspective.
Episodes
Tuesday Feb 07, 2023
Tuesday Feb 07, 2023
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 strike by graduate student workers at Temple University where the school administrators have declared war on the students for the crime of demanding enough pay to afford food. We also discuss the recent strike by teachers in Woburn, Massachusetts where that city's mayor also viciously attacked striking workers. We finish off discussing last week's huge strike day in the UK when nearly 600k workers were on the picket lines at once, buoyed by the addition of over 300k teachers to the ongoing strike wave.
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Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Friday Feb 03, 2023
Friday Feb 03, 2023
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 Teamster workers had ever had, he also stole an enormous amount of money from the rank and file. We cover the many criminal trials Hoffa faced during the 1960s, especially the two he was eventually convicted in. We also take a quick detour to interrogate the various theories of Hoffa's alleged involvement in the JFK assassination.
In the final episode of this part of the series, we will discuss Hoffa's imprisonment, his ouster from the Teamsters, his fight to regain his old leadership post, and his eventual disappearance. We will close out discussing Hoffa's legacy and impact on the Teamsters today and the labor movement more broadly.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Tuesday Jan 31, 2023
Tuesday Jan 31, 2023
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 contracting firms and win a living wage. In another in a seeming unending of similar cases, cops murdered a worker at a meat processing plant in Iowa and the company, Seaboard Farms, tried to cover it up. Another meat monopoly, Tyson Foods, was forced to backtrack recently when its attempts at union busting prompted a strong outcry from workers. We check in on some recent Amazon stories including a strike at a major warehouse in the UK. Via Labor Notes, workers at a Hooters knockoff in Tennessee have united back and front of house against an abusive manager. Finally, we check in on some recent union wins at Starbucks and other coffee shops around the country.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Friday Jan 27, 2023
Friday Jan 27, 2023
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 investigations were portrayed, as a fight against corruption, and the actions of the committee, which minimized its focus on corruption and instead took aim at worker power. We discuss the downfall of Teamster president Dave Beck and his replacement by Jimmy Hoffa, and the start of the 10 year crusade against Hoffa by Robert Kennedy.
In future episodes, we will discuss the period of Hoffa's presidency of the Teamsters, his corrupt dealings with major mob figures, and his attempts to stay out of jail.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Tuesday Jan 24, 2023
Tuesday Jan 24, 2023
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 February 1. Then we discuss the planned strike at Ubisoft Paris in response to comments from the CEO which aim to foist the company's financial woes onto workers. Also in Paris this week, millions of French workers took to the streets to fight against a proposal to raise the retirement age. Back in the US, faculty went on strike at the University of Illinois for the third time in a decade, a won major wage increases. In a particularly perverse story, a NYT investigation reveals how workers in the restaurant industry have been forced for years to pay fees then used to lobby against raising their wages. South Korea's far right government continues its slide into fascism when the KCIA raided the offices of a major trade union federation. Finally, Nickelodeon took the rare step recently of voluntarily recognizing the organization of 177 animators in their studios.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Friday Jan 20, 2023
Friday Jan 20, 2023
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 Hoffa. We discuss Beck and Hoffa's real talent for organizing and the way their efforts helped the Teamsters experience massive growth in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. But we also discuss their opportunism and openness to corrupt deals with mob figures, which hurt the interests of the entire rank and file. We cover the way both Hoffa and Beck's devotion to their own personal power and wealth influenced their adherence to business unionist style of leadership which created the conditions for the mafia to get a foothold in the union.
In future episodes, we will discuss the confrontation between the Teamsters and the US government, largely personified by the Kennedys, during the McClellan Committee investigations.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Tuesday Jan 17, 2023
Tuesday Jan 17, 2023
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 workers at Northwestern voted overwhelmingly to join the UE this week. The retail organizing wave has also continued with a third REI store filing for a union, this time in Cleveland. Indigenous organizations and trade unions have launched general strikes all over Peru in the weeks since the right wing coup. Incarcerated workers in Texas launched a hunger strike last week to protest policies about solitary confinement that have seen some stuck there for decades. Finally, Starbucks Workers United returns to the show after just one week with a half dozen new union victories!
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Friday Jan 13, 2023
Friday Jan 13, 2023
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 changes revolutionized the work of Teamsters, shifting from driving teams of horses in busy urban streets to interstate motorized trucking. This period also saw the rise of the mafia during the years of Prohibition. With the ruling class desperate for a scapegoat to blame for the collapse of the economy during the Great Depression, the capitalist press seized on the opportunity to attack the unions, and so they immediately made the association between unions and the mob. In this episode, we discuss both real instances of corrupt union officials working with mobsters, but also heroic struggles by union leaders to fight the mob, some even paying with their lives.
In future episodes, we will discuss the rise of Dave Beck as Teamster President, Congress's attempt to go after unions with the McClellan Committee, and the dawn of the Hoffa Era.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Tuesday Jan 10, 2023
Tuesday Jan 10, 2023
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 the new QA union at ZeniMax. Workers at Howard Brown Health in Chicago struck last week after the company fired 15% of their staff just months after workers unionized. Newspaper workers at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram finally have their first union contract after winning a month long strike. A recent horrifying near-deadly injury once again brought the extreme exploitation of NFL players to national attention. The Tory government in the UK is trying to speed run the class war, as this week they have proposed new laws banning strikes in many industries. Finally, we got rare good news from the feds, as the FTC proposed a blanket ban on non-compete agreements.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Friday Jan 06, 2023
Friday Jan 06, 2023
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 labor as corrupt, violent, led by racketeers, and in bed with the mob. This allegation remains common today, and what better way to help fight these ideological attacks on unions than by confronting these allegations head on and examining the historical record. And of course, there's no other place we could start than with the case of Jimmy Hoffa, whose reputation looms large as one of the most notorious figures in US labor history. To rigorously examine his case, we will have to go all the way back to the founding of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and follow allegations of corruption from the early days of the union up through today.
In this episode, we discuss how the ruling class attacked unions for supposedly being corrupt from the very beginning, and used the media to minimize violence by bosses and amplify stories of violence by workers. In future episodes we will go through a century of Teamster history, the rise of Jimmy Hoffa, his presidency of the union and his fight with the Kennedys, his imprisonment, his disappearance, and ultimately his legacy. Along the way we will do our best to separate real instances of corruption from the mountain of insinuations and rumor, and discuss what lessons we can learn for our organizing today.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Tuesday Jan 03, 2023
Tuesday Jan 03, 2023
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 nurses just wrapped up a 10 day strike to stop assaults on their pensions, while as many as 17k nurses in NYC may soon strike over unsafe staffing and low pay as well. We belatedly check in on the strike by BCTGM workers at Ingredion in Cedar Rapids that has now gone on for over 5 months. NYC construction workers finally forced the passage of a law to hold companies liable for worker deaths caused by negligence. Workers at the Tacoma Art Museum are fighting hard for voluntary recognition of their union in order to be able to bring ALL their coworkers under one organization. Finally we check in on Starbucks, who didn't let the holidays slow down their union busting.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Friday Dec 30, 2022
Friday Dec 30, 2022
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 Starbucks Workers United movement and the first unionized Amazon warehouse in the US to the betrayal of the rail workers by President Biden. We discuss the surge in organizing in academia, new unions that emerged in retail, and the strike wave that broke out across the UK in response to the cost of living crisis. We review our predictions from last year, see how we did, and make some new ones for 2023. Finally of course, we cap off 2022 discussing some of our favorite memes of the year.
Happy Holidays to all our listeners! May next year see an even bigger growth in workers organizing to fight back against their exploitation on the job!
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Tuesday Dec 27, 2022
Tuesday Dec 27, 2022
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) has continued for months now with no end in sight, as local politicians have openly sided with the company. Nurses struck again last week across the UK, and were joined by ambulance drivers despite the use of the army as scabs. Trader Joe's workers have filed for a third union election in Louisville and are already facing union busting. NY workers including the ALU have forced the passage of a bill to make Amazon reveal the quotas they use to fire workers. Elon Musk is being sued for illegally firing workers yet again, this time at Tesla for daring to criticize him. Last month a university in Florida decided to stop recognizing their faculty union, and in a twist justified it by quoting the Bible. Finally, we've got a quick check-in with the Starbucks Workers United movement which notched its first win in Nevada this past week.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Tuesday Dec 20, 2022
Tuesday Dec 20, 2022
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 and file push back. The UK strike wave continues to grow as nurses launched their largest strike in the country's history. Rail workers unhappy with the lack of militancy in leadership responded this week as members of BLET surprisingly voted out their union president. NY Farm Workers now have the right to form unions, but we discuss a case that shows winning a first contract may be the harder challenge. We got some big NLRB news this week, as the board ruled that companies can be held liable for more than just back pay for illegally firing organizers. Also this week the Board issued a long overdue ruling that so called "student athletes" are in fact workers and have all the rights associated with being employees. Finally, we discuss the largest strike yet by Starbucks Workers United, as they Doubled Down for a three day strike over last weekend.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Friday Dec 16, 2022
Friday Dec 16, 2022
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, but also chauvinist union leaders and a reformist Labour government, the women workers held their ground to fight not just for better conditions for themselves, but for equal pay for all women workers. Our second film is the 1979 classic, Norma Rae. In one of the most famous union movies ever made, Norma Rae tells the true story of the fight to organize a textile mill in the rural south. Facing a vicious union busting campaign, racism, anti-semitism, and constant attacks by the bosses and the cops, workers led by the tenacious Norma Rae demonstrate what workers can accomplish when we don't let the bosses divide us.
Tuesday Dec 13, 2022
Tuesday Dec 13, 2022
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 contract with safe staffing measures for the first time. About a quarter of the striking workers at UC ratified new contracts this week but the majority have stayed out, escalating tactics in response to the intransigence of the administration. The strike at the New School ended this weekend after solidarity between faculty and students forced the school administrators to concede to the workers' demands. Grad students at BU became the latest group of academic workers to unionize this week. Workers also voted overwhelmingly to unionize at the Ultium Cells electric car battery factory in Warren, OH this week. We are getting the first test of Microsoft's "neutrality agreement" with the CWA as QA testers at ZeniMax are aiming to build the largest union within a major games publisher in the country. Workers at Disney World are struggling for a new contract as their low wages leave a majority unable to pay their bills, causing many to have to live out of their cars. And finally, this week marks the 1 year anniversary of the first successfully unionized Starbucks, as the movement has exploded to cover over 7000 workers.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Friday Dec 09, 2022
Friday Dec 09, 2022
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 thought it would be a good idea to bring on a guest who could help us dig into the conditions that have prompted this increase in labor action in academia. We're joined by Prez, a PhD candidate based in NYC, to discuss the conditions faced by grad students, adjunct faculty, academic researchers, and other academic workers that have pushed so many into organizing. We talk about the way the pandemic has affected academic workers, how workers with disabilities are often left abandoned by their employers, and how the allure of tenure and the social status that comes with it is used to justify forcing academic workers to accept poverty wages.
Check out Prez's podcast The Minyan, which you can find on Twitter @the_minyan
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Tuesday Dec 06, 2022
Tuesday Dec 06, 2022
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 immediate future, and what we can expect long term. Then we discuss updates on the truckers' strike in South Korea, where President Yoon has declared the strike illegal and attempted to force drivers back to work. We also check in on the HarperCollins strike, where workers have received support from many authors who are refusing to submit work to the publisher. We follow up with the QA workers of Blizzard Albany, who finally won recognition of their union. The country's largest strike of 50k academic workers at UC has hit its second month as administrators refuse to agree to provide a living wage and critical benefits. Workers at the New York Times voted to authorize their first strike in 50 years if a deal is not reached before December 8th. 15,000 workers in Minnesota are gearing up for a major strike escalation as healthcare companies continue to refuse the provide safe staffing and fair wages. 800 dockworkers in Mobile, AL have been on strike for two weeks as their employer, CSA, is refusing to pay workers the pension contributions they owe them after four years without a contract. Workers in Ontario got some relief this week as courts struck down a draconian wage law. The movement to reform the UAW made massive wins this week in the union's elections, making a near sweep, making a near sweep for the UAWD backed reform slate. And of course, Starbucks continues its war on workers while the union keeps on winning elections.
Railroad Workers United Donation Fund: https://myemail.constantcontact.com/RWU-Raises-Funds-to-Wage-the-Struggle-.html?soid=1116509035139&aid=jZnP-zHBM4I
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Friday Dec 02, 2022
Friday Dec 02, 2022
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 sector workers joined unions, teachers, nurses and civil servants had bargaining rights for the first time. Along with flight attendants, nurses, and many other professions, women workers struggled successfully to not just win respect on the job, but to totally change public consciousness around women in the workforce. We also finish our run of rank and file stores with the Teamsters and the birth of the longest enduring organization from this era, Teamsters for a Democratic Union. Fighting against concession filled contracts for decades, the TDU has been a constant presence since this era in the struggle to democratize and reform the Teamsters. As the longest surviving and most successful union reform movement in the US labor movement, there is so much we can learn from the history of the TDU, and all the other inspiring struggles by the rank and file to stop the loss of all that prior generations of union workers had fought for.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Tuesday Nov 29, 2022
Tuesday Nov 29, 2022
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 third week as the University of California refuses to meet workers needs for a living wage and benefits. Electric truck maker Rivian continues to show that tech industry "disruption" usually just means violating labor and safety laws. The horrifying death of a foundry worker at Caterpillar in Illinois exposed the total toothlessness of OSHA and raises the question: how much is a human life worth? In happier news, three major unions announced an agreement to collaborate to unionize Delta wall-to-wall, in a move that could set a new pattern for organizing. Truck drivers in South Korea have launched another major strike after the right wing Yoon government backed out of a deal agreed to earlier this year. And of course, we end with Starbucks, where the company keeps closing stores, but union drives keep winning at a faster pace.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee