Work Stoppage

Ep 285 - Labor Librarians

Long drive ahead of you this week? We've got your labor news ready to go! We start with a ton of headlines checking in with Starbucks, Amazon, Nestle, New Seasons Market, the University of Pennsylvania, Sharp Healthcare, and the nightmare that is the state of Florida. For our full stories this week, we start by checking in on union busting in a place even our jaded listeners might not expect: public libraries. Then we check in on developments with the strike by workers at Canada Post and discuss the ramifications of the end of their nationwide industrial action. Finally, the LA Times released an expose this week showing the stark levels of child exploitation in US agriculture, a scourge which is directly tied to the long history of superexploitation of migrants that US agribusiness fortunes are built on.

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

Ep 284 - No Coffee 'Til Contract

It's another jam packed episode, once again workers are doing so much we struggled to cover it all! We start with headlines from the University of California, Portland State University, University of Chicago, Case New Holland, GM Canada, Walgreens, the ECHL, Kickstarter, and the United States Federal Government. Starbucks workers launched their largest strike ever this past week, we check in on the first pickets and the fight for a contract. The extremely long and hard fought strike by workers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette finally came to a conclusion this week through legal action. Over 15,000 workers in Iran's oil sector went on strike recently for pay, benefits, and to preserve their country's sovereignty. Finally, we check in on the malfeasance of the Labour Party who under Keir Starmer are simultaneously attacking both Doctors and Teachers.

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

Ep 283 - The Gales of November

Election day got all the coverage in the major media last week, but workers struggles don't stop so we've got our weekly roundup for you with all the news that got crowded out. We start with headlines from public workers in Memphis, students in Alberta, Teamsters in Philly, climbing gym workers in Minnesota, bartenders in Utah, and Iron Workers in Chicago. Our main stories start covering the impact on workers across the country by the government shutdown combined with the Trump Administration's attacks on the union movement. The VA has seen some of the harshest cuts, and we discuss the ripple effects this is having on veteran's healthcare. UC workers won a tentative agreement after threatening the largest strike in the university system's history, we discuss the organizing effort that made it happen. Finally, Starbucks workers have officially voted to authorize a massive nationwide strike, with the first rallies set to start this week.

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Ep 282 - "Notwithstanding" My Ass

We're back with another packed episode as John returns and people everywhere are talking about general strikes. First we start with headlines from Volkswagen, Breakthrough Beverages, Minneapolis Public Schools, Texas State University, Microsoft, Uber, and the FAA. The Trump Administration has rolled out another policy to attack workers, this time attacking our right to keep all our digits. A recent piece on On Labor raises the possibility of sectoral bargaining in higher education as a solution to intransigent administrators constantly undermining student workers. The UK hit a new low as a recent report shows that even when they rule companies are illegally refusing to pay workers, they don't even bother collecting their fines. The provincial government of Alberta is waging a scorched earth campaign to rob teachers of their right to strike, which may actually prompt a general strike across the province. Finally, we follow up with yet another report exposing that most of the companies claiming they're replacing workers with AI...aren't.

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

Ep 281 - No NLRB? No Problem

We start with headlines from Starbucks, Amazon, MIT, Ohio University, Harvard, UPS, Fairfax County, Allina Healthcare and Tunisia. In a possible major shift, Saudi Arabia announced the end to their system of contract slave labor known as the Kafala system, we discuss how that may play out in reality. A recent piece from In These Times spoke with unionized workers at Reuters in British Columbia who are fighting their employer's collaboration with ICE. Over 100,000 workers launched a mass strike in New Zealand against austerity policies crushing the country's education and healthcare sectors. Finally, Capital and Main put out an excellent report this week on efforts by workers at dollar stores in Louisiana to organize for better pay and conditions outside the usual NLRB process, and how that might be replicated elsewhere.

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

Ep 280 - Kaiser Clown Car

With millions of people taking to the streets this weekend, we've got a packed episode for you. We start with headlines from Republic Services, Blizzard Entertainment, Starbucks, Microsoft, the Royal College of Nursing, Tata, and the nation of Spain. Tens of thousands of workers just wrapped up a historic week long strike at Kaiser Permanente, we discuss their continued struggle. Peoples Dispatch reports on the fight by workers in the cotton industry of Benin against forced labor.  Volkswagen is facing a potential fight, Labor Notes breaks down the organizing effort in Chattanooga. Air traffic controllers aren't getting paid due to the shutdown, and yet their union is advocating workers not to call in sick. Finally, more and more workers are standing up to ICE kidnapping their neighbors, we recount some of their latest efforts and tactics.

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The Working Class Has No Border Ep 9: Mexican Workers Organize The Factories (1920-1950) PREVIEW

If you're not a patron, subscribe at patreon.com/workstoppage to get full access to the episode.

For the final episode in our series, we finally discuss the struggle of Mexican workers in the factories of the southwest. We've covered farmworkers, miners, oil workers, and by the 1920s, more and more jobs began to open up for Mexican workers in more stable jobs in canneries and other factories. But just as with the extractive sectors, bosses used open racism to segregate their workforce and drive conditions down for everyone. We discuss the organization of railroad workers in Los Angeles, cannery and furniture factory workers across California, and the truly epic strike by pecan shellers in San Antonio that reshaped the industry. We close out our series summarizing the lessons we've learned throughout all these struggles, and how they can be applied to rebuild our labor movement into the fighting organization of the entire working class that this moment so desperately needs.

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Ep 279 - Frogs Against Fascism

The government may be shut down, but labor never stops, so neither do we. We open with some headlines at Mauser Packaging Solutions, Hilton Hotels, Canada Post, Microsoft, the nation of Greece, and the LA Times. Home healthcare workers in Michigan won a huge union victory this week, with tens of thousands winning union representation for the first time. Thousands of healthcare workers in California and Hawaii are gearing up for what may be the largest strike at Kaiser Permanente in history this week. The Trump Administration is using its own campaign of terror against farmworkers to justify lowering their wages. Finally, Chicago has become the epicenter of ICE's attack on the working class, and even the Pope is calling for labor unions to step up their defense.

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

Ep 278 - Blocchiamo Tutto!

We've got some huge international strikes and check-ins on some long running campaigns this week. We start with headlines from Iowa hospitals, Cornell University, Incheon International Airport, New Zealand primary schools, Doordash, and Amazon. Our first main story we discuss a Labor Notes piece updating us on the ongoing effort to organize one of the country's biggest banks, Wells Fargo. After the illegal seizure of the Global Sumud Flotilla, Italian workers made good on their threats to launch a massive general strike. Workers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette have been on strike for over 2 years, we discuss what's keeping them going after all this time and the importance of their struggle to a dire media landscape. Finally, a piece in the American Prospect from Sarah Lazare demonstrates clearly how the attacks on immigrants are attacks on all of us, and why the time is now for a unified fightback by organized labor.

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

The Working Class Has No Border Ep 8: The Real Salt of the Earth PREVIEW

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Even as the Mexican Revolution was winding down, the struggle for equal rights in their own country by Mexican miners and oil workers was still heating up. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, spurred by the forces of change in the revolution and the staunch internationalism of the IWW, Mexican miners launched some of their biggest strikes yet. Facing intransigent bosses, gunboat diplomacy by the US, and dealing with a bourgeois government dedicated to ensuring stability for investment, the challenges the miners faced were steep. But even decades of violent repression couldn't stop the struggle for a fair living by the workers facing some of the deadliest conditions in any industry. We close our survey of the struggles of Mexican miners on both sides of the border with the epic battle between Mine Mill Local 890 and Empire Zinc, a struggle so inspiring it was captured on film.

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Ep 277 - Defend the Post

No Contract, No Coffee Pledge: https://starbucksworkersunited.controlshift.app/petitions/no-contract-no-coffee-pledge-to-act-in-solidarity-with-starbucks-workers-united

We're back at full strength as John returns this week, and it was a busy one! We start with headlines from Microsoft, Apple, Volkswagen, Aricell, RISE, Northwell Health, Oklahoma Public Schools, Spirit Airlines, and Starbucks. In a wild story from friend of the show Claudia Irizarry Aponte at The City, managers at Brooklyn Defender Services tried to bribe workers to replace the UAW with a company union. We've got an update on the continuing mobilization of Italian workers in solidarity with Palestine, as dockworkers from around Europe pledge efforts to coordinate. Teamsters at the University of Minnesota brilliantly used their leverage to win the first strike in their history. Canada Post workers are on strike once again, this time as the Liberal government launches attempts to gut postal service nationwide. Finally, in the spirit of many recent worker uprisings, we check in on the struggle in Ecuador, where Indigenous-led movements are fighting IMF austerity.

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Ep 276 - Palestina Libera!

Support Palestinian Families: https://lifeline4gaza.com/

The news has been...a lot lately, but there have been a ton of labor stories that have been drowned out and we are here to bring them to you! We start with headlines from Texas State University, California Public Schools, Chicago day laborers, nurses at the VA, farm workers in upstate New York, Republic Services, and Netflix Animation. Workers across Europe have been in motion this week, and our first major story covers the fight against austerity by millions of French workers who have taken to the streets. We saw another extremely cynical union busting drive under religious justification, this one at Loyola Mormont University. Finally, we discuss the historic general strike by Italian workers that shut down the entire country in solidarity with Palestine and the Global Sumud Flotilla.

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

The Working Class Has No Border Ep 7: Mexican Miners Power The Second Industrial Revolution PREVIEW

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For the first of two episodes focusing on the struggle of miners in the Southwest, we discuss the critical role played by Mexican miners in the growth of the US electrical industry at the turn of the 20th century. As demand for copper exploded, the mines of Arizona and northern Mexico became incredibly valuable, and thus demand for labor soared.  Mine owners used racial hierarchies and job segregation to split their workers against each other to prevent the power of solidarity from shutting down their isolated mining towns. Mexican miners organized in the thousands, but were often refused solidarity from the house of labor, whether the AFL or the Western Federation of Miners. We discuss the bloody struggles for fair wages and safe working conditions in the early 1900s, as Mexican miners were often forced to stand alone against the tyranny of the bosses and the state, waging heroic struggles and paying for every extra cent they earned with blood. 

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Ep 275 - Fight Outside The Lines

We're down a host this week, but Dan and Lina press on to bring you the labor headlines.  We've got stories from the CTU, Hyundai, Amazon, and Onatrio Public Colleges. For our first main story, it turns out not only is AI not intelligent, in order to be even slightly coherent, it relies on low paid human labor. Union busting law firm Littler Mendelson was exposed in an article in the American Prospect for advocating breaking labor law bosses don't like. Workers at Starbucks are continuing to devise new tactics to pressure the company to finally sign a union contract as membership has soared past 12,000. Finally, two articles this week from Jacobin and In These Times ask how labor can change tactics to respond to a crisis the NLRB process is not designed to solve.

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Ep 274 - We Can't Wait

It's back to school time so we start this week's headlines with a bunch of stories of teachers fighting for the learning conditions their students deserve all over the country, in primary, secondary, and higher education. We've also got headlines on rideshare drivers, healthcare workers, hotel workers, train drivers, and dockworkers. This week saw yet another new low for Columbia University admins, who are now trying to strip all grad workers of their right to unionize. ICE staged its largest workplace raid ever this week, abducting over 450 workers at a major Hyundai factory under construction in Georgia, halting the project and causing outrage in South Korea. The latest jobs numbers are out, so we close by taking some time to dig into the numbers showing that these racist attacks are hurting rather than helping US born workers, and leading to a recession. 

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

The Working Class Has No Border Ep 6: Fighting California Fascism PREVIEW

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In our sixth episode, and final episode of our subset on the struggle of farmworkers,  we discuss the epic agricultural strikes of the 1930s.  With farm wages slashed to starvation levels during the Great Depression, organization in the fields made the slogan "Fight, Don't Starve!" a reality. While the AFL continued to refuse to organize farmworkers, the Communist Party stepped into the gap and organized the largest agricultural strike wave in US history in 1933. In response, farm owners and their allies in the state unleashed truly fascist repression, attempting to drown these struggles in blood. But the perseverance of the workers and their dedication to racial and national unity managed to extract vital wins even in the depths of the worst economic downturn in the country's history. These struggles would terrify farm owners so much, they would lobby the state to create the country's first guest worker program, the Bracero Program, to institute a legalized regime of apartheid in the fields and try to prevent the racial unity that proved so powerful. These fights and the response from the capitalist class laid the foundations for the structures of exploitation and oppression faced by farmworkers today, and carry many lessons for those who would organize for a better future.

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Ep 273 - Labor Dabor

It's Labor Day! Which means we're working and hopefully you aren't, because the labor news needs reporting, but everyone else needs to be at a protest, picket line, and/or barbecue. We start with headlines from Northwestern University, Arena League Football, the Offshore Wind industry, Yosemite National Park, UPMC, Activision Blizzard, and Valleyview Municipal Library in Alberta, Canada. For our main stories we discuss the continued campaign of escalations by the incredible organizers with No Azure for Apartheid, fighting Microsoft's collaboration with genocide. Next we've got a story that couldn't be more emblematic of the purpose of the nationwide campaign of ICE terror, with union organizers in upstate New York being specifically targeted for deportation. Uber and Lyft drivers in California took a major step towards official unionization this week, but the deal that made that possible comes with quite a few asterisks. Finally, the UAW notched another major win in an extremely tight election at the BOSK EV battery plant in Glendale, Kentucky.

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Ep 272 - So Be It

We're back to full strength this week and have another jam packed episode for you! We start with headlines from workers at Microsoft, Uber, Amazon, Portuguese Airports, Kaiser Permanente, SpaceX, and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Then we've got a follow up on last week's landmark defiance of Canada's attempt to crush the Air Canada strike, with flight attendants winning big after standing their ground. Next we've got an update on the war on education, with stories from the University of Oregon, Columbia University, the AAUP, and public school teachers in Oklahoma. Continuing with our airport centered theme, we also have a maddening story of union busting by airport transportation contractor SkyHop, from a recent report by Amir Khafagy for Documented. Finally, after nearly four months, the workers at Butler Hospital in Providence, RI finally won their strike and ratified a new contract, we discuss what they won in the process.

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The Working Class Has No Border Ep 5: Farmworkers, The IWW, & Fighting Eugenics PREVIEW

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In the fifth episode of our series on the class struggles on the US-Mexico border, we continue our deep dive into the history of the fight by farmworkers in the Southwest to demand fair wages, working conditions, and dignity. The 1920s were an area of ruling class dominance in the US, and along with their surging wealth, the ideology of eugenic "race science" was developed to justify the extreme inequality and exploitation of the oppressed. In this context, Mexican workers in the fields of California and the factories of the Midwest faced explicitly racist super exploitation by their bosses. In this episode, we discuss efforts by radical organizers in the IWW, the Communist Party, and Mexican mutualistas to combat this extreme racism and unify the fightback of all farmworkers, with many lessons for us to draw from in our fight against racist ICE terrorism today.

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Ep 271 - Air Workers Vs Canada

We've got a shorter episode this week as all the hosts are super busy, and John's away, but the labor news never stops! We start with a check-in on the war on working people being waged by ICE terrorists, including yet another worker murdered by one of their raids. We also check in on organizing at Starbucks, Instacart, Republic Services, and Activision Blizzard. We've got just two main stories this week, the first covering a recent deep dive by Luis Feliz Leon on the strike by Teamsters at Mauser Packaging Solutions in Chicago, where workers are fighting deadly working conditions and bosses who refuse to agree not to collaborate with ICE. Finally, Air Canada workers who have seen their wages slashed over the past two decades are standing up not only to their employer, but to the Liberal government trying to use the law to force them to end the strike.

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