It’s a jam packed episode this week, everyone’s excited for the main story but we’ve got a lot to talk about in the labor world first. After hitting a few quick updates to some ongoing stories, we discuss the end of the Sacramento teachers’ strike, where a new tentative agreement has won raises without cuts to healthcare. Next, we cover some of the recent news in organizing in the games industry, with the ABK Workers Alliance winning covid protections with the threat of a walkout, support for unions on the increase in the industry, and Capcom raising salaries to try and head off employee organizing. Then we do a whirlwind tour of recent organizing victories by student workers at Wesleyan, New Mexico State, Clark University, and Dartmouth. Amazon wasn’t the only major win last Friday, as Starbucks’ flagship Roastery voted to unionize in the biggest single win of the Starbucks Workers United movement so far. Finally, while the vote is too close to call in Bessemer, Chris Smalls and the Amazon Labor Union pulled off an absolutely historic victory to form the first unionized Amazon warehouse in the country. We discuss the election, the background to the drive, and what lessons we can learn from the incredible worker-organizers in the ALU and how they can be applied more broadly to re-invigorate the labor movement.
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