Black Friday means we've got a retail and service work news packed episode this week. First we start on a sad note discussing the end of the Medieval Times strike in California. Next we discuss the McCarthyite retaliation being faced by unionized public defenders in New York City for taking a stand in favor of Palestinian human rights. A recent piece in The Guardian exposes the way service workers from other countries are exploited by the J-1 work visa program. 20,000 cleaning workers in NYC are gearing up for a major contract fight as bosses try and force concessions. Macy's workers in Washington State struck on Black Friday against incredibly low wages and constant understaffing. Wells Fargo workers in New Mexico and Alaska have filed to join the CWA, trying to break into the nearly entirely non union financial sector. Finally, we discuss the formation of a new democratic reform caucus in IATSE.

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

Ep 184 - Minimum Wage is Not Enough

Great Yarmouth in Norfolk is probably a town you have never heard of, but it has a large population of EU migrant workers who came to the UK before Brexit to work in chicken factories and on farms. We wanted to know about their lives especially their working conditions. The working conditions were not good, and harassment and bullying were common. We were interested to know what they did about this, did they actually enforce any of their employment rights and if not, why not? In her address to the IIEA, Professor Barnard answers the question: “What Happens When Enforcement Doesn’t Happen: The Implications for the Individuals, for Other Employers and for The State.”

About the Speaker:

Catherine Barnard is Professor of EU law and Employment Law and senior tutor and fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. She is the author of EU Employment Law, The Substantive Law of the EU: The Four Freedoms, and European Union. She is a member of the European Commission funded European Labour Law Network (ELLN). She is also a Senior Fellow of the UK in a Changing Europe (UKCE). Her work focuses on the legal issues around migration, together with the legal and constitutional issues associated with Brexit, in particular examining the Withdrawal Agreement and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement.

What Happens When Enforcement Doesn’t Happen

This event was the launch Zoe Hurley's new book 'Social Media Influencing in the City of Likes: Dubai and the Postdigital Condition'.

Evaluating the cases of multiple influencers, from local to transnational content creators, Hurley reveals how residents, non-citizens and migrant workers survive as influencers in the city of ‘likes.’ Providing de-Westernising perspectives of Dubai’s social media influencing industry within the broader context of global platform capitalism, the book offers an important contribution to the field of social media through illustrating visible economies in a city circuited by social media influencing.

Zoe Hurley is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and Assistant Professor in the College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Zayed University, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Her research focuses on postdigital cultures, feminist-semiotics and social media in the Arabian Gulf. She has published articles in leading academic journals, including Feminist Media Studies, Visual Communication, New Media + Society, Social Media & Society, Information Communication & Society, Postdigital Science and Education. Her monograph, 'Social Media Influencing in the City of Likes: Dubai and the Postdigital Condition', advances decolonial semiotic theorising.

Sarah Hopkyns is an Assistant Professor/Lecturer at the University of St Andrews, UK. She has previously worked in higher education in the United Arab Emirates, Canada, and Japan. Her research interests include world Englishes, language and identity, language policy, translingual practice, linguistic ethnography, linguistic landscapes and English-medium instruction (EMI).

Polly Withers is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre, where she leads the project “Neoliberal Visions: Gendering Consumer Culture and its Resistances in the Levant”. Polly’s interdisciplinary work questions and explores how gender, sexuality, race, and class intersect in popular culture and commercial media in the global south.

Social Media Influencing in the City of Likes: Dubai and the Postdigital Condition

Working abroad can be a big challenge…

Leaving friends & family on the promise of a better wage, together with very little knowledge of the culture you're about to experience. What could prepare you at a moment's notice?

My good friend Moses Ocaya knows. I first met him when I was at a British school in Qatar, where he was managing all the students [as a security guard] as they came to and from the school. In between my late night music lessons, we would sit with some warm tea and while the night away discussing our hectic lives exploring our place in an intimidating world.

We eventually had had enough conversations (and tea!) for us to write a song together. 

"Child of the Nile" is one of the first songs of mine as part of the 'Third Culture' musical exploration of cross-cultural happenings. Inspired by Moses and his tough tribulations but positive attitude to life as a white-collar worker in Qatar, and a tribute to travelling workers worldwide.

He had then, and still continues to inspire me everyday since our friendship began.

Recorded at home in Doha, Qatar, in 2013
Mixed and Mastered by Pete Lamb of Music Workshop, Devizes, UK, in 2021

Written by Sam Crónin and Ocaya Moses

Vocals, Guitar, Bass, Ukulele, Percussion and Djembe by Sam Crónin
Backing Vocals by Moses Ocaya

Child of the Nile (feat. Ocaya Moses)

Boyfriend. Cargo. Distressed. Flare. Mom. 

What do these terms have in common?

If you’ve ever shopped for jeans, you’ll know the answer. 

It takes about 15 minutes and 12 steps to produce a pair of finished blue jeans. In this episode of Story Of…, host Richa Govil gets under the skin of a fabric that is arguably a second skin for people globally. 

It is estimated that 4.5 million pairs of jeans are sold every year, with an estimated 50-70% of the production concentrated in India, Bangladesh, and China. In 2023, India was estimated to be the fastest growing country for denim consumption. In 2020 alone, Indians bought 640 million pairs of jeans. 

Our guest, Arima Mishra is a faculty member at the School of Development at Azim Premji University. A medical anthropologist, she shares surprising findings from her research in Bengaluru’s garment factories. Karnataka, accounting for around 20% of India’s garment production, houses over 760 factories in the state capital alone. Arima's interest began with a shocking discovery of high mortality rates among young female garment workers, prompting a deeper investigation into their lives and health vulnerabilities.

Through personal anecdotes and research, we uncover the realities these women face—migrants from various regions, primarily from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, working under intense pressure to meet production targets. They endure physical and mental stress, often leading to serious health issues like chronic pain, irregular periods, and even cancer. Despite laws and policies aiming to protect workers, their everyday working conditions remain challenging.

This episode also touches on broader issues of women's workforce participation and empowerment, highlighting the nuanced impact of employment on women's health and well-being. Arima’s findings challenge us to rethink occupational health beyond visible hazards and consider the profound effects of daily working conditions.

Tune in to ‘Story of Jeans’ to learn the human stories stitched into the fabric of your denim. Next time you buy a pair of jeans, remember the young women who crafted them, balancing dreams and hardships somewhere on the shop floor in a Bengaluru industrial estate. 

Credits:
Akshay Ramuhalli, Bijoy Venugopal, Bruce Lee Mani, Narayan Krishnaswamy, Prashant Vasudevan, Sananda Dasgupta, Seema Seth, Shraddha Gautam, Supriya Joshi, and Velu Shankar

Acknowledgements:

Garment workers interviewed bySumedha Mohanty. Additional thanks to Rajesh Joseph, Arima Mishra, and Dechamma CS

Story Of Jeans | Story Of… with Richa Govil | Radio Azim Premji University

Amid rising labour shortages and employers around the world struggling to find skilled workers, labour migration, if managed properly, can help widen the pool of available skills. But the complex issue of increasing migration and the skills challenges faced by migrant workers and employers is huge. So how can we help migrant workers acquire the skills they need to find decent jobs, and employers find the skilled migrant workers they need for their enterprises? And what is the ILO doing to address this question, both in destination countries and countries of origin? In this episode, the ILO’s Christine Hofmann, Regional Skills Specialist for Africa, addresses these issues and the policy response.

Skills for migration and employment: Do we need a new paradigm?

It's our first episode of the new year, so let's ring it in with some class struggle! We start with some headlines on workers at Amazon, Starbucks, Milk-Bone, VW, Hilton Hotels, and the University of Southern California. For our first full story we discuss a recent investigation by The Guardian into the appalling conditions faced by the migrant workers who produce Champagne. Next, ski patrol workers in Park City, Utah are on strike at the country's biggest resort company. Mental health workers at Kaiser Permanente have been on strike since October, the latest group of workers fighting criminal understaffing in the US healthcare system. Speaking of nurses, we discuss recent analysis by People's Dispatch on the way imperialism forces many nurses in Brazil to migrate to the West. Finally, we discuss reports of a potential neutrality agreement between the UAW and Rivian.

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

More info on the show at http://workstoppagepod.com/

Ep 240 - An Avalanche of Struggle

Know Your Rights Toolkit: https://assets.nationbuilder.com/arisechicago/pages/2726/attachments/original/1735833065/Toolkit_immigrant_workers_-_digital_EN.pdf
Alamo Drafthouse Worker Support Fund: https://www.gofundme.com/f/mutual-fund-for-laid-off-alamo-drafthouse-employees
ILWU Los Angeles Wildfire Relief Fund: https://checkout.square.site/merchant/6RSQCXFP2D8CP/checkout/EBJ3K7AK2WR2SCPQUAHP2DUB

Trump's back, which means its time to ramp up the fight back against attacks on our fellow workers. After our headlines, we discuss how the government of the Bahamas used legal repression to crush a planned two day nationwide strike before it happened. Then we discuss a recent exposé in The City by friend of the show Claudia Irizarry Aponte on a "union" for home health workers that does more for the bosses than for its members. Also this week, we've got two stories on wage theft, union busting, and retaliation by Geo Group against immigrants detained in its privately operated concentration camps. Finally, we discuss a recent Labor Notes piece sharing the lessons from union struggles to defend immigrant workers across the country and how our unions can defend our fellow workers.

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

More info on the show at http://workstoppagepod.com/

Ep 242 - El Pueblo Unido

Petition Supporting Monterey Bay Aquarium Workers: https://mbaworkersunited.org/community-letter-support

We have a supersized episode this week, with so much going on we could barely cover everything. We start with an extended headline segment covering developments in Palestine, Canada, Pakistan, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Chicago, and Monterey Bay. We were also lucky this week to be joined for a short interview with Claudia Irizarry Aponte, investigative journalist for The City, to discuss her recent investigation of unions in the home health care industry in NYC. Trump started his second turn with a flurry of attacks on workers, we discuss some of the ways unions like AFGE and the CTU are fighting back. We discuss an unusual area for us this week, fine dining, as workers at 5 of the swankiest restaurants in Washington DC are unionizing. Amazon went scorched earth on Canadian workers this week, shuttering its entire operations in Quebec rather than bargain with  its workers. Finally, despite its friendly reputation, Costco is playing hardball at the bargaining table, which may force 18,000 Teamsters to strike this week!

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

More info on the show at http://workstoppagepod.com/

Ep 243 - Opposing CompanyCo

Louisiana Nurses Strike Fund: https://www.gofundme.com/f/donate-to-the-nurses-strike-fund

Another whirlwind week of attacks on workers rights and the fightback from the labor movement. In our headlines we check in on the Oregon Nurses Association, the UFW, Student Workers of Columbia, the Professional Staff Congress, and more workers across the country and the world. 10,000 workers at King Soopers in Colorado are on strike, we discuss the first week of UFCW Local 7's fight for a fair contract. Nurses in New Orleans used the spotlight on the city for the Super Bowl to highlight their struggle for safe staffing. Workers in National Nurses United, the UE, AAUP, SPFE and many other unions across the country are fighting back against the twin assaults on our trans siblings and our immigrant co-workers, we discuss some of their first steps. Finally, the AFGE, AFSCME, and the AFL-CIO at large are leading the fight against Elon Musk's attempts to purge and loot the federal government.

Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX 

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

More info on the show at http://workstoppagepod.com/

Ep 245 - Striking Is Our Hammer

You are listening to Radio Azim Premji University, our campus radio station. Azim Premji University was founded in 2010 with the vision to contribute to the realisation of a just, equitable, humane and sustainable society. On our channel, you can tune in to a variety of engrossing shows on themes ranging from democracy and culture, science and mathematics, and more. You can also experience a slice of campus life. If you are a seeking student, an arts aficionado, curious about science, or just passionate about India, subscribe and start listening.

Credits:
Akshay Ramuhalli, Bijoy Venugopal, Bruce Lee Mani, Narayan Krishnaswamy, Prashant Vasudevan, Sananda Dasgupta, Seema Seth, Shraddha Gautam, Supriya Joshi, and Velu Shankar

Folk-singer travelling the world of music 🌎 
Expat-raised singer-songwriter, covers performer & travelling musician 🚶‍♂️🎒 🎸 🎶 
 
👉💿 See LinkTree for all my other channels.

Welcome to the LSE Middle East Centre's podcast feed.

The MEC builds on LSE's long engagement with the Middle East and North Africa and provides a central hub for the wide range of research on the region carried out at LSE.

Follow us and keep up to date with our latest event podcasts and interviews!

The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations and is devoted to promoting social justice and internationally recognized human and labour rights, pursuing its founding mission that labour peace is essential to prosperity.

Today, the ILO helps advance the creation of decent work and the economic and working conditions that give working people and business people a stake in lasting peace, prosperity and progress. Its tripartite structure provides a unique platform for promoting decent work for all women and men. 

Its main aims are to promote rights at work, encourage decent employment opportunities, enhance social protection and strengthen dialogue on work-related issues.

Sharing Ideas Shaping Policy. The Institute of International and European Affairs is an independent policy research think-tank based in Dublin.

New tracks tagged #migrant workers