Working People

The student encampment movement last school year turned institutions of higher education into flashpoints of struggle over Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, US support for it, and the right to speak out against it. This year, college and university campuses have become laboratories of repression where different administrative efforts to silence Palestine solidarity and antiwar demonstrators are being deployed. And that is playing out right now at Cornell University.    As Aaron Fernando writes at The Nation, “Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, has taken disciplinary action against an international student that will likely force him to leave the country, and could have a chilling effect on other international students participating in political protests. Momodou Taal is a PhD candidate in Africana studies and a graduate student worker, attending Cornell under the F-1 visa program. In the last academic year, Taal joined student-led actions demanding that Cornell divest from industries complicit in Israel’s attacks on civilians in Gaza.”    The Cornell grad worker union, Cornell Graduate Students United-UE, released a statement condemning the university’s disciplinary actions against Taal, and is demanding the administration bargain with the union “over the effects of the discipline administered to Taal.” “CGSU-UE condemns Taal’s suspension, which represents a disturbing pattern of discriminatory discipline against marginalized graduate workers. The union is still fighting for just cause protections in discipline and discharge, due process for academic evaluations, strong academic freedom, and nondiscrimination protections inclusive of political affiliation and action, religious practice, and caste.” In this urgent episode, Max speaks about Cornell’s actions against Taal with two members of the CGSU-UE bargaining committee: Jenna Marvin, a third-year PhD student in the History of Art & Visual Studies at Cornell; and Jawuanna McAllister, a sixth-year PhD candidate in Molecular Biology and Genetics at Cornell. Additional links/info below… Cornell Graduate Students United-UE website and Instagram Petition: “UE Local 300 Member Facing Firing and Deportation for Exercising Free Speech” Call for other grad unions to sign “Solidarity Statement of Support for Momodou Taal” Aaron Fernando, The Nation, “A Cornell graduate student faces deportation after a pro-Palestine action” Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, “Cornell grad student who attended pro-Palestine protest could be forced to leave U.S.” Permanent links below… Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show! Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page Featured Music… Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song Studio Production: Max Alvarez Post-Production: Jules Taylor

As the climate crisis intensifies, billions of poor and working people around the world are suffering from lack of regular (or any) access to clean water, but the dawn of “AI” is about to make the problem much worse. In their recent report for Context, “Forget jobs—AI is coming for your water,” Diana Baptista and Fintan McDonnell write, “Artificial intelligence lives on power and water, fed to it in vast quantities by data centres around the world. And those centres are increasingly located in the global south.” In Colón, a municipality in Central Mexico that is home to Microsoft’s first hyperscale data center campus in the country, working people are already bearing the environmental costs of man-made climate change, and they will be the ones to bear the costs of AI and Big Tech. “The town of 67,000 is suffering extreme drought. Its two dams have nearly dried up, farmers are struggling with dead crops, and families are relying on trucked and bottled water to fulfill their daily needs.” In the latest installment of our ongoing series, Sacrificed, Max speaks with Diana Baptista, a data journalist at the Thomson Reuters Foundation based in Mexico City, about Mexico’s ongoing water crisis and about the human and environmental costs of AI and cloud computing. Additional links/info below… Diana’s Context author page and X page Fintan McDonnell & Diana Baptista, Context, “Forget jobs. AI is coming for your water (Video Report)” Fintan McDonnell & Diana Baptista, Context, “Thirsty data centres spring up in water-poor Mexican town (Text Report)” David Berreby, Yale Environment 360, “As use of A.I. soars, so does the energy and water it requires” Tamara Pearson, The Real News Network, “Indigenous Mexicans risk their lives to defend the environment from organized crime and ‘insatiable, predatory’ transnational corporations” Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “In Brazil, the climate crisis is already turning working people into climate refugees” Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “East Palestine residents have been left behind—and they're running out of water” Permanent links below… Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show! Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page Featured Music… Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song Studio Production: Max Alvarez Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Two years ago, workers from several different Trader Joe’s grocery stores joined the wave of unionization efforts spreading across the country. Workers in Hadley, Massachusetts, made history in 2022 by not only becoming the first Trader Joe’s store to vote to unionize but also by opting to form an independent union, Trader Joe’s United (TJU). However, like with Starbucks, Amazon, Medieval Times, and other companies where workers have been exercising their right to organize in recent years, rampant union busting has been part of the Trader Joe’s story from the beginning. What’s worse, as Alex Press writes in Jacobin, rather than be compelled to follow the law and play by the rules, the supposedly progressive grocery chain has joined Elon Musk’s SpaceX in attacking the very constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board. What is the current state of the union drive at Trader Joe’s? What issues are employees (“crew members”) still dealing with on the job, and what can supporters do to help? In this episode, Max speaks with Alec Plant, a worker organizer at the Lincoln and Grace Trader Joe’s in Chicago and a member of Trader Joe’s United.  Additional links/info below… Trader Joe’s United website, Twitter/X page, and Instagram Lauren Kaori Gurley, The Washington Post, “As Chicago Trader Joe’s votes on unionizing, grocer fights other efforts” Alex Press, Jacobin, “Trader Joe’s rejects the New Deal”  Dave Jameison, HuffPost, “Trader Joe’s threatened workers ahead of union vote, feds allege” Talia Soglin, Chicago Tribune, “Workers at North Center Trader Joe’s are first in Chicago to file for union election” Steven Greenhouse, The New Republic, “How corporations crush new unions” Steven Greenhouse, The Guardian, “Major US corporations threaten to return labor to ‘law of the jungle’” Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, "Want to unionize your workplace? These worker-organizers have some advice”  Permanent links below… Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show! Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page Featured Music… Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song   Studio Production: Max Alvarez Post-Production: Jules Taylor

While Max was inside the Labor Notes conference this past April, attending panels and sharing space with intelligent, hard working organizers, Mel was wandering the conference grounds outside, meeting folks and talking about the joy of being a member of the working class as they sat in the grass and ate their lunches and talked with friends, old and new. There’s something to be said about the people you meet when you’re sharing cigarettes outside a conference center–one such person was today’s guest, adorned in UFCW buttons and sharing his poetry with Mel while they smoked together on a bench near the conference.   On this week’s episode of Working People, Mel sat down with labor poet and union grocer George Fish, a wonderful man full of stories about his life and work, his experiences growing up and ultimately leaving the Catholic Church, his politics–honed through decades of life experience–and his relationship to his writing and poetry.   Additional links/info below… To hear more about our time at LN 2024 - check out our Dispatches from Labor Notes episode Permanent links below... Working People Patreon page Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show! Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page Featured Music... Jules Taylor, "Working People" Theme Song

The death toll in Gaza continues to climb, with conservative estimates putting the numbers of dead around 40,000, but a recent report in the British medical journal The Lancet estimates the actual death toll could be 186,000 or even higher—that’s roughly 8% of Gaza’s population. And with each passing day, the humanitarian crises unfolding in Gaza and the West Bank gets orders of magnitude worse. Seeing the dire situation in Palestine, seven major US labor unions collectively drafted, signed, and sent a letter to President Biden demanding that US military aid to Israel stop immediately. The letter reads, in part: "Large numbers of Palestinian civilians, many of them children, continue to be killed, reportedly often with US-manufactured bombs. Rising tensions in the region threaten to ensnare even more innocent civilians in a wider war. And the humanitarian crisis deepens by the day, with famine, mass displacement, and destruction of basic infrastructure including schools and hospitals. We have spoken directly to leaders of Palestinian trade unions who told us heart-wrenching stories of the conditions faced by working people in Gaza." In this episode, Max and Mel speak with George Waksmunski, president of the United Electrical, Radio, & Machine Workers of America (UE), Eastern Region, and Brandon Mancilla, Region 9A Director for the United Auto Workers, about why their unions signed onto this call for an end to US aid to Israel and what organized labor can do to end the genocide in Gaza. Additional links/info below… UAW website, Facebook page, Twitter/X page, and Instagram UE website, Facebook page, Twitter/X page, and Instagram Michael Sainato, The Guardian, "Seven major US labor unions call on Biden to ‘shut off military aid to Israel’" Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "UAW endorses Harris, but won’t stop fighting for ceasefire in Gaza" Mel Buer, The Real News Network, "Organized labor shows up for Palestine" Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "Labor organizers explain why they’re marching on DC for Palestine" Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "Tortured Palestinian activist describes military and settler carnage in the West Bank" Permanent links below… Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show! Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page Featured Music… Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song Studio Production: Max Alvarez Post-Production: Jules Taylor

In 2024, Working People officially crossed the 300 episode mark! Since we published our first episode back in 2018, the show has grown in ways we never could have imagined, and the world itself has changed in radical, hopeful, terrifying ways, the labor movement has undergone incredible changes, and we’ve done our best to document that change and this moment in history through the conversations we’ve had with workers across industries, from all walks of life, about their lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles. Over the past seven seasons of the show, we've interviewed working people, young, old, and middle-aged, union and non-union, worker-owners at worker cooperatives, workers who were just laid off, workers on strike, workers unionizing, families of workers who were killed by their jobs, Indigenous workers living on reservations, workers whose children were murdered in a school shooting, sex workers, academic workers, manufacturing workers, railroad and airline workers, educators, yoga instructors and professional massage therapists, social workers, baristas, journalists, healthcare workers, service workers, construction workers, coal miners, lumberjacks, Amazon workers. We've spoken with working people in Cuba, Canada, Brazil, Slovenia, Turkey, Myanmar, the UK, France, and more. In this special episode commemorating 300 episodes of Working People, Max and new cohost Mel Buer reflect on how far the show has come and where we’re going next.  To all of our listeners and supporters, to those who have been with us since the beginning and to those who found the show at some point over the past 7 seasons, to everyone who has ever listened to the show, shared our episodes, donated to our Patreon, to everyone who ever reached out to remind us that someone was listening and encouraged us to keep going, to everyone who has supported us , THANK YOU. We love you, and we wouldn't be here without you. We hope to keep making you and all our fellow workers proud with this show, and it's an honor to be in this struggle with you. Additional links/info below… Maximillian Alvarez, Current Affairs, "Can the Working Class Speak?" Working People, "Jesus Alvarez" (the first episode) Mel Buer's TRNN Author Page and Twitter/X profile Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show! Permanent links below... Working People Patreon page Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show! Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page Featured Music... Jules Taylor, "Working People" Theme Song

Today we have an urgent and important conversation with members of the NEA Staff Organization, the union of staffers at the National Education Association, who have been locked out of their workplace by NEA management for the past four weeks. The NEA, representing over 3 million members, is the largest union in the country. Staffers working for the NEA have been bargaining for higher wages and fairer treatment by the union, and have instead been locked out of their workplace after a 3-day ULP strike a month ago. We’ve brought on former educator Rowena Shurn and national board-certified teacher Ambereen Khan-Baker, both of whom are NEASO members and Senior Policy Program Analysts at the NEA, to talk about the lockout, what it means for a union to engage in union-busting tactics with their own staff, and how NEASO members are keeping each other’s spirits up on the picket line. Additional links/info below… NEASO Website NEASO Strike Fund Nation’s biggest labor union has locked out its employees for 4 weeks now Union With Labor Dispute of Its Own Threatened To Cut Off Workers’ Health Benefits NEA Staffers Locked Out After 3-Day Strike Disrupts Convention, Biden Speech Why Did the National Education Association Just Lock Out Its Own Staffers? Staff Who Disrupted NEA’s Assembly Will Be Locked Out of Work Permanent links below… Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show! Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page Featured Music… Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song Studio Production: Mel Buer Post-Production: Jules Taylor

From East Palestine, Ohio, to South Baltimore and beyond, we’ve been connecting you with residents living in the toxic wastelands left by private and government-run industry—ordinary working people who have been thrust into extraordinary fights for their lives. In the latest installment of our ongoing Sacrificed series, we go to Toledo, Ohio, a city that, in 2014, lost access to its water supply for three days straight due to a massive, toxic algal bloom caused by runoff from industrial animal farming. We speak with filmmaker Mike Balonek and welcome back Chris Albright, a resident of East Palestine, to discuss the connections between the Norfolk Southern train derailment disaster and the Toledo Water Crisis. We also talk about an upcoming conference in Toledo on Saturday, August 3, hosted by the Justice for East Palestine Residents & Workers coalition: “Is your community a sacrifice zone? A conference on corporate-caused disasters.” The conference will focus on the Toledo Water Crisis, the derailment in East Palestine and the need for better railroad safety, and the radioactive poisoning of residents living near the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Pike County, Ohio. The conference will also feature the world premiere of filmmaker Mike Balonek’s new documentary The Big Problem In The Great Lakes, a film about the Toledo Water Crisis of 2014. Additional links/info below… Toledo conference details: Saturday, Aug. 3, 9:30AM  Mike Balonek, The Big Problem In The Great Lakes WTOL 11, "Timeline | Looking back at the 2014 Toledo water crisis" Maximillian Alvarez, Cameron Granadino, & Hannah Faris, The Real News Network, "Factory farms pose an 'existential threat' for rural Wisconsin communities" Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "Before East Palestine, there was Portsmouth" Stephanie Elverd, The Pakersburg News & Sentinel, "East Palestine residents express frustration with settlement from train derailment" Permanent links below... Working People Patreon page Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show! Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page Featured Music... Jules Taylor, "Working People" Theme Song

On Monday, July 15, on Day 1 of the Republican National Convention, Sean O’Brien, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, became the first Teamsters president ever to address the RNC. Invited by former president Trump, who is now officially the Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential election, O’Brien’s speech was no ordinary RNC filler. And to anyone watching, or anyone paying attention to the political reality in this country, this was no ordinary RNC either. O’brien’s very presence on the RNC stage, and the contents of his speech, which lasted for 17 minutes, have sparked a firestorm of intense reactions and furious debates within the labor movement and the Republican and Democratic parties alike. Everyone is talking about this speech and what it all means for workers, but workers themselves need to be driving that conversation. In this special episode, cohosted by Max and Mel Buer, we bring together a diverse panel of Teamster members from across the country to have a spirited, fair, and productive discussion about O'Brien's speech, the 2024 elections, and the future of the labor movement.   Speakers include: Amber Mathwig, a UPS warehouse worker and member of Teamsters Local 638 in Minnesota; Tony, a UPS worker, member of Teamsters Local 174 in Seattle, and a member of Teamsters Mobilize; Chantelle, a part-time UPS worker and member of Teamsters Local 177 in New Jersey; Rick Smith, a 35-year Teamster working in the freight industry and host of The Rick Smith Show; Zoey Moretti Niebuhr, a UPS worker, third-generation Teamster, member of Teamsters Local 391 in North Carolina, and president of Pride at Work—North Carolina; Jess Leigh, a UPS worker, shop steward for Teamsters Local 728 in Atlanta, and a member of the Teamsters LBGTQ Caucus and Teamsters Mobilize; Kat, a part-time UPS worker and shop steward for Teamsters Local 70 in Oakland; and Robert Conklin, a third-generation Teamster and member of Teamsters Local 665 in San Francisco. Additional links/info below… PBS NewsHour, "WATCH: Teamsters President Sean O'Brien speaks at Republican National Convention | 2024 RNC Night 1" Sean O'Brien post on X about Sen. Josh Hawley Ryan Bort, Rolling Stone, "Union Twitter account goes rogue after president speaks at RNC" Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "Everybody hates Sean" The Rick Smith Show website, Facebook page, Twitter/X page, and Instagram Teamsters Mobilize website, Facebook page, Twitter/X page, and Instagram Teamsters LGBTQ Caucus website Pride at Work—North Carolina Instagram  Maximillian Alvarez & Teddy Ostrow, The Real News Network, "UPS and Teamsters reach tentative agreement, but is a strike still possible?" Teddy Ostrow, The Upsurge / The Real News Network, "The UPS Teamsters contract has been ratified. What now?" Permanent links below... Working People Patreon page Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show! Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page Featured Music... Jules Taylor, "Working People" Theme Song

Two months ago, from April 17-21, workers and labor organizers of all stripes convened in Chicago for the bi-annual Labor Notes conference, which overlapped with the Railroad Workers United convention. As the registration website rightly noted, “Labor Notes Conferences are the biggest gatherings of grassroots labor activists, union reformers, and all-around troublemakers out there." This is not a buttoned up convention of union officials; this is a real grassroots gathering of people on the frontlines of struggle, talking openly, honestly, and strategically about their struggles, victories, and defeats, about what we can all learn from one another as fellow workers and fighters, and about how we can all contribute to growing the labor movement as fellow members of that movement. In this on-the-ground episode, cohosted by Max and Mel Buer, we speak with attendees at the RWU convention, Labor Notes, and participants in the Labor for Palestine protest that took place outside of Labor Notes on April 19.   Speakers include: Johnny Walker, a railroad worker and member of the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers—Transportation Division (SMART-TD) Local 610 in Baltimore; Matt Weaver, who has worked on the railroad since 1994, is a member of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (BMWED-IBT) Local 2624, where he also serves as legislative director for his state; Marcie Pedraza, an electrician at Ford Chicago Assembly Plant and member of United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 551; Jacob Morrison, a member of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), president of the North Alabama Labor Council, and cohost of The Valley Labor Report; Leticia Zavala, legendary farm labor organizer working with farm workers in Mexico and the United States, and a member of El Futuro Es Nuestro (It’s Our Future), a farmworker caucus within the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC, AFL-CIO); Colin Smalley, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) Local 777 in Chicago; Berenice Navarrete-Perez, vice president of the Association of Legislative Employees (ALE); Annie Shields, former journalist and union organizer with the NewsGuild of New York; and Axel Persson, a locomotive engineer in France and general secretary of the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) Railway Workers Union in Trappes. Additional links/info below… Labor Notes website, Facebook page, and Twitter/X page Railroad Workers United website, Facebook page, and Twitter page El Futuro Es Nuestro – It's Our Future website and Facebook page Labor for Palestine website The Valley Labor Report YouTube channel, Facebook page, Twitter/X page, and Patreon Duncan Freeman, The Chief Leader: "At Labor Notes conference, a sense of mission and solidarity" Axel Persson, ML Today, "CGT leader speaks to Labor Notes conference" Martha Grevatt, Workers World, "Militant pro-Palestine demonstration during Labor Notes conference takes the street" Permanent links below... Working People Patreon page Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show! Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page Featured Music... Jules Taylor, "Working People" Theme Song