Work Stoppage

We start this week following up on the effort to unionize in immigration law by the brave organizers of Hudson Workers United, whose fight has now dragged on for over a year.  Next we check in with the ALU, where the focus has turned to the LDJ5 sorting center’s upcoming election, and Amazon has cranked up the union busting.  In our weekly look at the Starbucks Workers United movement, we discuss strikes protesting the company’s retaliation against its employees in North Carolina and Seattle.  Meanwhile, the union is 7-1 in NLRB elections over the last week.  Indiana grad student workers have gone on strike to demand recognition of their union, and have seen solidarity from undergrads and faculty.  Theater is not an industry we have covered much, but there have been a few signs that the surge in labor organizing may be spreading there as well.  Finally, workers have won union recognition at two Verizon retail stores in Washington, and we discuss the potential impact of the energy from Amazon and Starbucks workers spreading to retail. Fired Starbucks Worker Gofundme:  https://www.gofundme.com/f/fundraiser-for-hannah-a-fired-sbwu-organizer Indiana Grad Students Strike Fund: https://www.gofundme.com/f/igwcue-strike-fund-spring-2022 If you like the show, please support us at patreon.com/workstoppage.  We couldn’t do the show without your support, and patrons get access to evergreen Overtime episodes and periodic Shop Floor Discussion episodes on current issues too long to cover in our regular episodes. Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX Follow the pod @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. On April 1, the Amazon Labor Union won one of the most historic labor victories in the US in decades.  Despite the enormous difference in resources, the ALU was able to defeat one of the richest, most anti-union corporations in the world.  This is such a momentous development, we thought it would be important to try and learn as much as possible from their incredible work.  So in this Shop Floor Discussion, we discuss the ways that the ALU’s campaign differed from traditional union organizing campaigns.  We go over their commitment to worker-led, rank-and-file organizing, the way they embraced the diversity of the JFK8 workforce and made it a strength, how they used every tactic possible to get their messaging out, and how their adaptability and willingness to go beyond the scope of traditional tactics helped them succeed. While there’s no single blueprint that can be copied from one workplace to another, there’s a lot that the ALU’s success can teach us about how to successfully organizing in today’s harsh labor environment.  If we want to revive the US labor movement, we would be wise to learn from this amazing upset. Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX Follow the pod @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee.

We start this week’s episode of Work Stoppage checking in on the fallout from P&O Ferries illegally laying off their entire workforce without warning.  Three weeks later and their fleet is still out of service, leading to massive shipping and travel delays in the UK. Next we discuss the end of the striking IBEW workers at WTTW, where the three week strike seems to have ended largely in defeat with a concession filled contract.  25,000 healthcare workers in Finland are on strike, demanding fair wages and an end to short staffing.  We cover the police raid on the headquarters of the Unione Sindacale di Base in Italy after they have led several anti-imperialist protests. Then we discuss the potential move by the NLRB to ban captive audience meetings and what the general outlook of the labor movement should be to NLRB rulings.  We had another major victory for organizing in higher education this week, as 4000 MIT graduate students voted to unionize with the UE.  Finally, we do our weekly check-in with Starbucks Workers United, where workers have won an incredible nine more union elections over the past week, bringing their total to 18 recognized union stores. If you like the show, please support us at patreon.com/workstoppage.  We couldn’t do the show without your support, and patrons get access to evergreen Overtime episodes and periodic Shop Floor Discussion episodes on current issues too long to cover in our regular episodes. Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX Follow the pod @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee.

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. Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX Follow the pod @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 final part of our series on the decline of the US labor movement, we reach the End of History.  We discuss major events in US labor since the 90s, including waves of mergers, corporate consolidation, accelerating financialization, NAFTA, and the crash of 2008.  We then get into some common myths about why US labor union membership has declined, as well as about the US economy overall.  We finish off with a call for a rededication to rank and file union democracy and embracing the class struggle, rather than class collaboration. Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX Follow the pod @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee.

It’s another packed episode this week, as the class struggle never stops. First, we follow up with the Minneapolis educators, who have agreed to a new contract, ending their three week strike. Next we do our weekly Starbucks roundup, discussing union busting in Boston and union victories in Mesa, AZ, Seattle, and Knoxville, TN. Another major teachers strike is on, this one in Sacramento, where low wages and awful working conditions low has led to a crisis of short staffing. IBEW technicians have been on strike for a couple weeks now at Chicago’s PBS affiliate, WTTW, where the union is fighting to protect union work from being farmed out to contractors. Finally, we finish up covering the colossal two day general strike in India, where as many as 200 million workers have shut the country down to protest the anti-worker policies of the Modi government. If you like the show, please support us at patreon.com/workstoppage. We couldn’t do the show without your support, and patrons get access to evergreen Overtime episodes and periodic Shop Floor Discussion episodes on current issues too long to cover in our regular episodes. Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX Follow the pod @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 second part of our series on the decline of the US labor movement, we discuss the impact of business unionism in the 1970s and the 1980s.  We dispel the commonly promoted image that Jimmy Carter was a friend of the working class, and cover some of the many anti-labor actions taken by his administration.  We cover the Reagan years, the PATCO strike, and the rise of Neoliberalism.  Finally we go over the development and spread of Lean Manufacturing and Just-In-Time Logistics, and how those methods of management have come to shape today's labor environment.  Throughout, we show how the class collaborationist ideology of business unionism left the major US labor unions totally unprepared to deal with the assault by business in the 70s and 80s.  In our last episode of the series, we will discuss some of the more recent developments in the 90s and 2000s, some myths and realities of our current labor climate, and what we need to change to rebuild a strong labor movement in the US. Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX Follow the pod @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee.

After some discussion about the transition to new leadership at the Teamsters, our first story on this week’s episode of Work Stoppage covers the recent walkouts at 3 Amazon facilities carried out by Amazonians United.  Then we hit the weekly quota of Starbucks coverage discussing the return of Howard Schultz as CEO, the refusal of the company to stop its aggressive union busting campaign, and a strike by Starbucks workers in Kansas City.  Next we discuss an awful story out of the UK, where 800 workers at one of the country’s largest ferry companies, P&O Ferries, were summarily fired by a 3 minute zoom recording with no prior warning.  Also this week, 500 workers at the Richmond oil refinery in the Bay Area have gone on strike over wages not covering soaring costs of living.  Airport workers in Italy refused to continue work this week after discovering that so called “humanitarian aid” they were loading onto a transport plane was in fact weapons being sent by NATO, prompting protests from the workers and their union.  Finally, teachers and education workers in San Francisco staged a 3 day sit in at the headquarters of the Unified School District to protest unpaid wages during a payroll system changeover. Video of P&O boss laying off workers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04lx6GiFyyE  If you like the show, please support us at patreon.com/workstoppage.  We couldn’t do the show without your support, and patrons get access to evergreen Overtime episodes and periodic Shop Floor Discussion episodes on current issues too long to cover in our regular episodes. Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX Follow the pod @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 episode of a new series, we dig into the primary causes of the ongoing decline of union membership in the US, especially in private industry.  While there are certainly spots of hope in movements like Starbucks Workers United and other grassroots union organizing drives, US labor union density has continued its long 40 year decline.  If we want to rebuild the US labor movement as a fighting movement of the working class, we must understand the root causes of the precarious situation we are in today.  In this episode, we look at some of the foundational issues behind the problems of the US labor movement, like the class collaborationist approach of “business unionism”, the refusal of major unions to address “controversial issues” like racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression, and an abandonment of the struggle for control of the shop floor.  In future episodes, we will look at some of the key moments in the failures of business unionism from the height of raw union membership numbers in the 70s, through the losses of the Reagan era, to the long steady retreats of the Neoliberal 90s to today. Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX Follow the pod @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee.

Our episode of Work Stoppage starts this week with a reminder that the workers at Amy’s Kitchen have called for a boycott as the company attacks their union efforts.  Our first full story catches up with the Teamsters in Seattle who are now facing attempts by companies to break the strike in the concrete industry by hiring unlabeled “Ghost Trucks” to supply job sites.  Next, Starbucks workers in Denver aren’t waiting for official union recognition to strike against retaliation by the company.  Then, we discuss a recent bill in Florida that would have put new onerous requirements on public unions in an attempt to sap them of resources.  Also this week, in Slovenia 40,000 teachers and other education workers struck to demand living wages and compensation for working through the pandemic.  We also cover recent violence in South Africa, where a leader in the militant Shack Dweller’s Movement was gunned down by armed men connected to the local ruling political party.  Finally, the GMG union held a successful four day strike, the first open ended strike by a digital media outlet, to demand that their healthcare include Trans affirmative care and that their wages keep pace with soaring inflation. If you like the show, please support us at patreon.com/workstoppage.  We couldn’t do the show without your support, and patrons get access to evergreen Overtime episodes and periodic Shop Floor Discussion episodes on current issues too long to cover in our regular episodes. Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX Follow the pod @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee.