Work Stoppage

PREVIEW: Work Stoppage 2022 Year In Review

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!

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Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

Ep 137 - Alabama Sleighride

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.

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Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

Ep 136 - First Contract Fight

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.

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Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

Movie Time 4 PREVIEW: Made in Dagenham and Norma Rae

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.

Ep 135 - There’s No Such Thing As a ”Pro-Labor Capitalist”

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.

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Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

PREVIEW: Interview: Academia is a Racket

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

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Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

Ep 134 - Biden Betrays the Rail Workers

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

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Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

Overtime Episode 25 PREVIEW - Rank and File Rebellions of the 1970s - Pt 3

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.

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Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

Ep 133 - Unions Keep Workers Safe, Not OSHA

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.

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Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

Ep 132 - Looks Like a Rail Strike’s Back on the Menu

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 in the two biggest rail unions finally have the results of their vote on the TA, and SMART-TD workers have voted it down, bringing us very close to a nationwide rail strike. While most of the news about Elon Musk lately has been his mismanagement of Twitter, news has come about about rampant wage theft and unsafe conditions at the construction of Tesla's latest "gigafactory" in Austin. Another group of educators has joined the academic strikewave, as adjunct faculty at The New School in NYC hit the picket lines to fight for a wage they can actually afford to live on. A report from The Intercept this week revealed shady management of UAW assets by the incumbent administration, including lowballing estimates of size of the strike fund by tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. This past week also saw the formation of a new union in the South, the Union of Southern Service Workers, to fight for workers rights in one of the most exploited parts of the country. Finally, lots of Starbucks news this week as workers launched the "Red Cup Rebellion", the first nationwide coordinated strike since the union launched a year ago.

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Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

Overtime Episode 24 PREVIEW - Rank and File Rebellions of the 1970s Pt 2

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 by union workers. Movements like the United National Caucus and the Bell Workers Action Committee arose in response, fighting for democratic control both on the shop floor and within their unions themselves. This era saw both explosive wildcat strikes and oppressive responses from leadership to movements they saw as attacks on their power. While many of these movements were short lived, there's so much we can learn from their fights to inform our practice today. On the third and final part of this series we will cover rank and file movements by nurses, teachers, flight attendants and the formation of the longest lasting and most successful of the 70s rank and file movements, Teamsters for a Democratic Union.

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Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

Ep 131 - Inflation is Class Warfare

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 company having kids as young as 13 cleaning slaughterhouses. Also this week, workers at an Amazon air hub in Kentucky launched their drive for a union and a living wage. Airline pilots for Delta and United have both taken steps recently towards a potential strike, but are held back by the Railway Labor Act just like the rail workers. In a frustrating story this week, staff workers at SEIU Local 2015 were forced to strike for nearly two weeks due to refusal to negotiate over wages and healthcare. 250 workers hit the picket lines at publisher HarperCollins in NYC this week, fighting to make publishing a career that can actually pay the bills and to open it up to a more diverse workforce. The biggest strike in the US since 2019 kicked off this week as 50,000 academic workers at the University of California system are fighting for raises, better benefits, and workplace protections. The strike wave in the UK has grown once again, as nearly half a million workers in nursing, academia, and public service all announced upcoming strikes. Finally, Starbucks workers hit 260 union stores this week as well as over 7000 workers at unionized locations.

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Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

Overtime Episode 23 PREVIEW - Rank and File Rebellions of the 1970s Pt 1

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 major union there were workers who refused to accept concession-filled contracts from sellout leadership and took resistance into their own hands. These movements, even where they were not successful, hold many valuable lessons for those of us who want to rebuild the labor movement today. Based primarily on the excellent collection of essays, Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below During the Long 1970s, this series will explore how we can improve our own movements for reform based on the struggles of the 70s. In our first episode, we introduce the economic and political background to the period and discuss rank and file movements in the United Farm Workers and the United Mine Workers of America. Future episodes will cover the CWA, the UAW, the Teamsters, and more!

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Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

Ep 130 – There Are No Illegal Strikes, Just Unsuccessful Ones

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 nightmare of Medicare and the ACA struck for a living wage. Activision continues to fight union efforts in Albany, now trying to subvert an ongoing election by trying to force a change in bargaining unit makeup. The Feds announced the breakup of a modern slavery operation in Florida this week, but the fact that it took 5 years to prosecute the case doesn’t bode well for actually stopping the practice. A recent report from the Seattle Times has revealed a long battle by a Delta pilot against attempts by the company to weaponize their mental health evaluation system against them to quash criticism of inadequate safety protocols. 40,000 sanitation workers in India won regular contracts and better safety conditions after an 11 day strike. Our big story this week is the attempt by the right wing Ford government to make it illegal for school support staff to strike, prompting the entire Canadian labor movement to mobilize and threaten a general strike across the province. Finally, we’ve got a new kind of Starbucks union drive as the company is now testing locations that force workers to do two jobs, including stocking shelves at an Amazon Go store, but only paying them for one. 

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Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

UNLOCKED - Royal Mail Strike Interview

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 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, and how both the workers and the broader public have been hit hard since the privatization of the mail. We talk about the solidarity being built between different unions during the current cost of living crisis, and how workers have supported each others' strike actions. Finally, we look at the political situation in the UK and how the resurgent union movement can force the changes that the working class desperately needs.

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Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

Movie Time 3 PREVIEW - The Organizer and Western Ghats

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 century textile workers and their earliest attempts at organizing, even before major national unions existed. For our second film this week we watched Western Ghats (Merku Thodarchi Malai), from India's southern state of Tamil Nadu. Western Ghats follows the struggle of landless workers forced to labor for the big landowners as they strive to become independent peasant farmers themselves. The film portrays the difficulties of peasants, the way debt is used to dispossess them, and the semi feudal conditions they face in many parts of the Global South in ways western cinema rarely covers.

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Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

Ep 129 – End Slavery, End the Empire

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 incredible pressures placed on workers and the toll that takes both physically and mentally. A new report from Documented NY this week highlighted the complicity of the NYC government with rampant wage theft against immigrant workers hired to sanitize the subway in 2020. An investigation by NBC News has highlighted the rampant use of slave labor on US military bases around the world, adding yet another reason to support the end of US Imperialism. Grad student workers at Yale submitted cards this week for what would be one of the largest new bargaining units of the year if successful.  Finally, we check in on the Starbucks Workers United movement, as the company continues to refuse to bargain and the court system continues to show its true nature as a weapon against the working class.

Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX 

Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

PREVIEW: Royal Mail Strike Interview

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, and how both the workers and the broader public have been hit hard since the privatization of the mail. We talk about the solidarity being built between different unions during the current cost of living crisis, and how workers have supported each others' strike actions. Finally, we look at the political situation in the UK and how the resurgent union movement can force the changes that the working class desperately needs.

Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX

Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

Ep 128 – Protect the Right to Strike!

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 well, forcing the company to agree to hire more workers. Two teachers strikes in Massachusetts directly challenged the state’s law banning public workers from striking, winning major gains in spite of court orders trying to stop their strikes. Like much of Europe, France has seen a major cost of living crisis erupt into labor action, and the Macron government has attacked the right to strike to stop workers from standing up against austerity.  We also check in on union drives at Chipotle, Lowe’s, Home Depot, and CVS.  As usual, we close discussing Starbucks Workers United as they continue to win victories even as Starbucks can’t stop breaking the law.

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Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

Overtime Episode 22 PREVIEW - Weavers of Revolution Pt 2

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 the mill in their own hands. Pulling the government along behind them, workers advanced the transition to socialism themselves, seizing the mill and demanding its nationalization. During the period of worker self-management, the mill's productivity soared along with workers wages while the culture of fear and oppression disappeared. Workers developed their own systems of democratic management, bringing dignity and respect to their jobs for the first time. Though their victory was short lived due to the US-backed coup that overthrew the government, there is so much we can learn from these workers' incredible struggle.

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Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee