Work Stoppage

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

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

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. Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX  Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

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. Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX  Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

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. Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX  Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

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! Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX  Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

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

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

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

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