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A weekly labor news podcast covering workers‘ struggles around the world from a revolutionary left perspective.
Episodes
Tuesday Nov 08, 2022
Tuesday Nov 08, 2022
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.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Friday Nov 04, 2022
Friday Nov 04, 2022
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.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Friday Nov 04, 2022
Friday Nov 04, 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 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.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Tuesday Nov 01, 2022
Tuesday Nov 01, 2022
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
Friday Oct 28, 2022
Friday Oct 28, 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 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
Tuesday Oct 25, 2022
Tuesday Oct 25, 2022
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.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Friday Oct 21, 2022
Friday Oct 21, 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.
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.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Tuesday Oct 18, 2022
Tuesday Oct 18, 2022
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 their union logo…has swords in it. This past week saw strikes at Amazon facilities all over the place, from Hamburg, Germany to San Bernardino, California, protesting low wages on Prime Week to maximize workers’ leverage. We got another big victory in the retail union wave this week when workers at an Apple store in Oklahoma City won their union election and joined the CWA. Workers at T-Mobile have joined the union surge, with customer service workers launching an independent union, the T-Force Social Care Alliance. Backed by impossible to trace dark money, business groups have been successfully lobbying states across the country to expand the legal use of child labor to keep wages low during the so-called “labor shortage.” Finally, we check in with how Starbucks has continued illegally closing stores that unionize, but how workers continue to use strike actions to fight back, getting some help this week from Billy Bragg.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Friday Oct 14, 2022
Friday Oct 14, 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.
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 rich with lessons for our struggles today. Though the Chilean Revolution was short lived, it was full of experimentation with different forms of worker control of the means of production. In this first episode, we get into the background history of the Yarur mill and the decades of struggle by the workers there for an independent union. We discuss the different class forces in play in Chile during this period and how Allende’s Popular Unity government tried to maintain a balance of these forces to allow them to advance their program of a transition to socialism. In the second part we will cover the seizure of the mill by the workers, the response from the state, and the fate of the workers’ movement in the wake of Pinochet’s coup.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Tuesday Oct 11, 2022
Tuesday Oct 11, 2022
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 demanding safe working conditions after a fire at JFK8. Also, Amazon has sued Washington State for the audacity of enforcing workplace safety laws, claiming their implementation would be too expensive. And lastly, Amazon drivers in Japan have been forced to use fake IDs to avoid having to be paid overtime. Also this week, over 500 Teamsters at Sysco facilities in Boston and Syracuse are on strike after the company tried to force them off their pension plans. Workers at a paper mill in Alabama have been locked out by their employer after voting down a contract that would remove all protections against overwork. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case next term that could potentially make strikes impossible due to legal costs, we discuss the implications for the labor movement. Finally, as always, we discuss the Starbucks Workers United movement as it approaches 250 unionized stores.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Friday Oct 07, 2022
Friday Oct 07, 2022
Order Health Communism here: https://www.versobooks.com/books/4081-health-communism
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 were so excited to be joined by our friends Bea and Artie from the Death Panel to discuss their new book Health Communism. We talk about the way capitalism divides us into "workers" and "surplus", and how the surplus are sorted into arrangements of extractive abandonment so they can be profited from. We discuss the fight for universal healthcare and why we can't just stop at health finance reform. We also talk about the revolutionary potential in the struggle to separate health from capital and build a system that really provides all care to all people.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Check out the Death Panel at patreon.com/deathpanelpod
Follow Death Panel @deathpanel_ , Bea @realLandsEnd, and Artie @avierkant
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Tuesday Oct 04, 2022
Tuesday Oct 04, 2022
We start our episode this week checking in with friends of the show Doughnut Workers United, who have finally won their union at Voodoo Doughnuts in Portland, OR after years of organizing. It only took two days for the strike by food service workers at San Francisco Airport last week to win huge gains. We also give a brief update on where the different rail unions are in the contract ratification process. Workers at the Philadelphia Museum of Art struck this past week when management refused to agree to grant workers raises that would cover inflation. The drive to unionize Trader Joe’s has spread to another store, this time in Brooklyn, and unfortunately the company’s union busting has followed. As the auto industry shifts to electric vehicles, the UAW faces an uphill battle to ensure the new EV jobs are unionized. Over 13,000 incarcerated workers went on strike against the system of mass incarceration and prison slavery they face over the past week, and the state has responded with violence and attempts to starve the workers out. Finally, as always, we check-in with the Starbucks Workers United movement and discuss the list of contract proposals that the union has released.
Doughnut Workers United Contract Support Fund: https://www.gofundme.com/f/dwu-strike-hardship-and-negotiation-fund
Gofundme for Fired Trader Joe’s organizer: https://www.gofundme.com/f/trader-joes-united-solidarity-fund
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Saturday Oct 01, 2022
Saturday Oct 01, 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 second episode of our series discussing the labor movement in films, we’re going across the pond to cover two movies from the UK. First up, we discuss Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You, a devastating realist look at the state of the working class in Britain. The film follows the struggle of a working class family trying to provide for their kids in a job market where no matter how hard you work, a living wage and a comfortable life feel further and further out of reach. Sorry We Missed You provides no illusions about class mobility or hard work winning out in the end, it forces us to confront the reality that so many jobs in the modern economy are premised on poverty wages and hours so long that you never see your family. For our second film, we discuss 2014’s Pride, which tells the true story of a group of LGBTQ activists in London who band together to support striking coal miners in Wales. The film focuses on the power of solidarity, and shows how by combining all the struggles against all the forms of oppression faced by the working class, we can be much stronger than when we’re divided.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Friday Sep 30, 2022
Friday Sep 30, 2022
In order to let as many folks as possible hear from Starbucks workers fighting for their union, 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:
This week we were excited to be joined by Alisha Humphrey, a worker-organizer with Starbucks Workers United in Oklahoma City. We discuss the ins and outs of organizing at Starbucks, what prompted her store to unionize, and how covid has played a major role in all of this. We talk about how the company’s scorched earth union busting campaign has influenced the nationwide union drive, and how organizers have dealt with union busting tactics. We also talk over how to have organizing conversations with workers who may be hesitant, how workers who are thinking about organizing can reach out for help in getting the ball rolling, and how members of the community can show their support for organizing workers. Check out Alisha's writing in Jacobin on the cruel ways Starbucks has weaponized benefits against workers here: jacobin.com/2022/08/starbucks-a…tunt-union-contract
No Contract No Coffee Pledge: crm.broadstripes.com/ctf/SJID0H
Solidarity Fund for SBWU partners: secure.actblue.com/donate/starbucksworkersfund
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Tuesday Sep 27, 2022
Tuesday Sep 27, 2022
Once again we start this week’s episode of Work Stoppage checking in on the rail workers, as details of the tentative agreements have been released and a strike remains a real possibility. We follow that with some quick updates as the NLRB hits Amazon with a complaint for illegal union busting at LDJ5, the Case New Holland strike hits five months, the ridiculous attempt to bill UMWA for $13M in unmined coal is reversed, and Chipotle continues to rack up thousands of criminal violations of labor law. The RMT will be hitting the picket lines in the UK alongside postal workers, dock workers, nearly 200,000 workers total on October 1. 1000 food service workers at San Francisco Airport went on strike this week in protest of wages 50% below the area’s living wage. We have a truly unhinged story of a small business tyrant in Iowa who bribed workers to decertify their union, amongst numerous other crimes. Home Depot workers in Philly are organizing with the aim of forming the first unionized store in the entire chain. Finally, we check in on Starbucks Workers United, where the retaliation against workers continue but strikes at many stores seem to be making a real impact and winning real gains for workers.
Gofundme for fired working mother at Washington Starbucks: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-amber-fired-5-year-partner-and-mother
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Friday Sep 23, 2022
Friday Sep 23, 2022
No Contract No Coffee Pledge: https://crm.broadstripes.com/ctf/SJID0H
Solidarity Fund for SBWU partners: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/starbucksworkersfund
This week we were excited to be joined by Alisha Humphrey, a worker-organizer with Starbucks Workers United in Oklahoma City. We discuss the ins and outs of organizing at Starbucks, what prompted her store to unionize, and how covid has played a major role in all of this. We talk about how the company’s scorched earth union busting campaign has influenced the nationwide union drive, and how organizers have dealt with union busting tactics. We also talk over how to have organizing conversations with workers who may be hesitant, how workers who are thinking about organizing can reach out for help in getting the ball rolling, and how members of the community can show their support for organizing workers. Check out Alisha's writing in Jacobin on the cruel ways Starbucks has weaponized benefits against workers here: https://jacobin.com/2022/08/starbucks-abortion-transgender-health-care-promises-pr-stunt-union-contract
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Tuesday Sep 20, 2022
Tuesday Sep 20, 2022
We start this week’s episode summarizing developments with the potential national rail strike, which was delayed but very much not completely canceled by the recent tentative agreement. Next we discuss the end of the Seattle Teachers Strike and what we can glean from the little information available at the moment. Moving into new stories, over 1000 timber workers are on strike in the Pacific Northwest over wages that don’t come close to keeping up with inflation. Over 12,000 workers at Kroger may strike this week after voting down the company’s “last, best and final offer.” Workers have been organizing an independent union at Geico in Upstate NY, which could be the first in a type of office work that is nearly entirely unorganized. Amazon workers are rising up all over the country, with walkouts in Atlanta and St Louis and a union election date set for Albany to see if workers will join the ALU. Finally, as usual, we check in on the Starbucks Workers United movement where the company’s illegal campaign of union busting refuses to let up.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Wednesday Sep 14, 2022
Wednesday Sep 14, 2022
The potential for a national rail strike has been looming for a long time, and now that we have finally reached the point where one could actually happen, we decided we needed to have someone who knows a lot more about the railroads than we do on the show to help explain the situation. We were very excited to be joined by Justin Roczniak from Well There’s Your Problem to bring us historical analysis of the long road to where we are today. We discuss the history of how the railroads have operated in the US, how the national freight network has been shaped by the profit motive, and how rail executives have let the entire national rail network decay in pursuit of maximum dividends. This history sets the stage for the current crisis, where companies have merged into a few mega-carriers with no real competition, and “precision scheduled railroads” have slashed rail crews and stretched their existing employees to the breaking point. We summarize the long labor process to get to this point demanded by the Railway Labor Act, and what we might see in terms of a potential long term outcome of the current dispute. With a national strike possible as soon as this Friday, we hope this discussion provides some helpful background to understand what state the railroads are in, how they got that way, and the roots of the horrific working conditions rail workers are fighting against.
Follow Justin on twitter @who_shot_jgr and check out Well There’s Your Problem on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPxHg4192hLDpTI2w7F9rPg
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Tuesday Sep 13, 2022
Tuesday Sep 13, 2022
We’ve got an absolutely jam packed episode this week, labor news never stops. First, we are excited to discuss the victory of the Heine Brothers Coffee workers in their union election. Next we cover the Seattle teachers strike, where workers are fighting for resources needed to serve special education and multi-language learning students. A recent report from the Washington Post has documented the incredible work by Unite Here in unionizing 90 percent of the cafeteria workers at Google campuses across the country. The union drive at Target may have hit setbacks in Virginia but has sprung up in Pueblo, Colorado as well. Every Hollywood production these days uses a ton of visual effects, but effects workers are some of the only non-union production workers in the business, which some are now fighting to change. The ALU grew again this week as workers organizing in Modesto, CA, announced their affiliation with the union. California passed a major new bill this past week aimed at regulating the fast food industry, we discuss the pros and potential cons of this kind of reform. A report from The Intercept this past week raised some troubling questions about the effect the “neutrality agreement” at Microsoft is having on the relationship between the union and the company, with the union killing a report that was critical of the company’s military contracts. Finally we close out with our weekly recap of the Starbucks Workers United movement.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee
Friday Sep 09, 2022
Friday Sep 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.
Work Stoppage is going to the movies! In this first episode of a new series, we check out some classics of labor cinema, Matewan and Cradle Will Rock. Matewan tells the story of one of the most famous battles of the Appalachian Mine Wars of the early 20th century which would culminate in the Battle of Blair Mountain shortly after. Covering the struggle of workers in West Virginia to unionize, it gives audiences a window into the absolute tyranny of the coal companies and the level of violence they were willing to use to try and prevent the unions from organizing the mines. Cradle Will Rock recounts the development of the play of the same name by the Federal Theater Project during the great depression. In whirlwind fashion, the film covers the anti-communist witch hunt to purge the Federal Theater Project, the collusion between the US ruling class and fascism, and the struggle for artistic freedom under capitalism. We discuss the themes of the films and how we can use them as agitation tools in our organizing. On future episodes, we’ll discuss many more examples of labor cinema and how we can use them to help make workers’ struggles and their history relatable in our fight to build unions today.
Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX
Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee