On this week’s episode of Work Stoppage we start by checking in on the Teamsters strike at a Pepsi plant in Indiana, where workers have gotten a surprising show of support from the local government of the nearby town of Hammond.  Then we take a look at how a Wisconsin healthcare company is giving bonuses only to non-union workers, and discuss a new app called Unit which claims it can help workers unionize without any of the resources of an actual union.  We also cover a walkout by tech workers at the New York Times and the revelations of the Times’ anti-union strategy to try and force as small a bargaining unit as possible.  Finally, we talk about a weeklong strike by contract sanitation workers in India demanding equal pay for equal work, and the inspiring success of workers in Venezuela who seized a Kellogg cereal factory when the company abandoned it.

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Ep 64 - Robo-Union Trojan Horse

After yet another crazy week both in and outside the labor world we’ve got another packed episode for you.  First, we follow up with the workers at REI in Manhattan who have won their union election in a landslide.  Next, the NYT Tech Guild also overwhelmingly won their election, becoming the largest union of tech workers in the US.  Following up our story on the rise of independent unions in Mexico, workers at the Tridonex auto parts factory in Matamoros voted by a large margin to replace their old company union with a new democratic one.  We also discuss organizing efforts by Philly Starbucks workers to fight for covid safety protections after the company dropped its mask mandate for customers, and also touch on 3 more union election victories in Buffalo for the Starbucks Workers United movement.  We cover two stories of workers in Italy: First, tens of thousands of students protested to end the requirement that all high school students perform unpaid labor for private companies in order to graduate after multiple students have died on the job.  Then, thousands of doctors have protested the government’s austerity policies towards primary care physicians and its slow slide towards privatization.  Finally, we cover the massive strike of teachers and education support professionals in Minneapolis.

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.

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Follow the pod @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee.

Ep 95 - Union Democracy Gets the Goods

We start this week with congratulations for workers at REI, Barnes and Noble, and the Chicago Nature Museum who all won union elections last week. Our first full story covers an ongoing strike by San Diego bus drivers over being forced to work split shifts that take up 13 hours of their day. In DC, workers with UNITE HERE are protesting the move to close one of the most popular and acclaimed new restaurants in the country just to crush a union drive. An investigation by The Nation this week revealed the widespread levels of exploitation and hazardous working conditions in the legal weed business. Tech workers at Amazon have moved to escalate the class struggle at the company in response to recent layoffs. The National Eating Disorders Association decided that rather than continue to operate a helpline used by thousands every year if the workers unionized, they'd rather replace the workers with a chatbot that doesn't work. Finally, resident doctors in Queens struck this week for the first time in over three decades over low wages and disparities with other hospitals.

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

Ep 159 - You Can't Automate Empathy

Lines & Lines

We've got another supersized episode this week! We start with headlines from Japan, Chile, Chicago, Chattanooga, Missouri, Rhode Island, and San Jose. For our first store we discuss the fight by Indian tech workers to have a right to time outside of work.  Next, a recent report from IGN reveals how video game companies are working to cut actors out of the business with AI. The war on student workers escalated again this week as Columbia works with the Trump Administration to attack anti-genocide speech. Finally, we close with a roundup on the attacks on federal workers, attempts to shut the Department of Education and gut the Department of Labor, and the growing fight back against the gutting of the government.

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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 250 - Halfway to Halfway to 1000!

If you're not a patron, you can get full access to this episode by supporting us at patreon.com/workstoppage.

We were very excited to be joined this week for a special interview episode by Dr. Erik Baker, lecturer at Harvard University and author of the great new book, Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America. The book is a fascinating intellectual history of how the concept of "entrepreneurialism" came to dominate ruling class narratives about the economy. This ideology of the individual business owner charting their own course, being their own boss, and "making their own job" has also had deep impacts on the labor movement through mechanisms such as independent contracting. So it was wonderful to get a chance to discuss this history, how it has impacted the union struggle, and how we see it manifesting today!

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

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

Interview Preview: Make Your Own Job by Erik Baker

We start this week with headlines on organizing in healthcare, logistics, airlines, construction, software development, video games, and trading cards. We did a deeper dive on a set of stories from Canada last week, this week we have three big stories from workers and farmers in India fighting against neoliberal exploitation. The next major step forward for Mexico's young independent labor movement may be coming up, as Labor Notes reports on efforts to bring new union SINTTIA to a second major plant from GM. The Supreme Court took a major step towards dismantling the NLRA and the entire post-Depression regime of contractual collective bargaining this week, and unions will need to shift tactics to respond. Finally, we discuss how the 4 day workweek is going in Iceland.

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

Ep 260 - Beyond the Board

WorkWeek hears from two lawyers that represent workers are either in technology or facing technology. Labor employment lawyer Gail Glick represents a worker who was retaliated against when she challenged the 24 hour spying by the use of an ap on her smart phone. Ruth Silver-Taub talks about work issues for labor in Silicon Valley.
These presentations were made at LaborTech 2015 at Stanford University.
For more information
www.labortech.net
Production of WorkWeek Radio
workweek@kpfa.org
https://soundcloud.com/workweek-radio



WW 9-1-15 Technology, Labor  and The Law

Discussion with Moira Weigel and Ben Tarnoff (writers and co-founders of Logic Magazine) and Ines Schwerdtner (Jacobin Magazine author and podcaster at halbzehn.fm).
 
Silicon Valley is commonly portrayed as the epicentre of innovation. A place packed with start-up nerds, neoliberal workaholics, and brilliant freethinkers designing the technologies to save us all (and becoming billionaires in the process). The “Californian Ideology” implies that the internet is always and everywhere a force for good and that all of those industry “creatives” and “entrepreneurs” are driven solely by their passion and purpose. Like Steve Jobs once said, they do what they love.

At the same time, when performing their jobs as engineers, designers, product managers and so on all of these people are also workers. These workers aren't inspired by a higher calling, but by necessity. At the end of the day, they're just selling their labor to make a living.

Recently more and more of them have begun to see themselves as workers and build a common identity based on mutual interests and in opposition to Silicon Valley elites. 

These members of the new tech worker movement don’t sound much like the “hippie yuppies” of Californian Ideology lore. They embrace a more collective, worker-driven politics and building alliances with the shuttle drivers, security guards, janitors, and cafeteria staff who make up the industry’s “invisible workforce.”

At Amazon, employees petitioned CEO Jeff Bezos for “a choice in what [they] build, and a say in how it is used.” At Google, tech workers are challenging their employers to drop contracts with the Pentagon, ICE, and other government agencies. They organise for workplaces free from sexual harassment and discrimination and demand better wages, benefits, and working conditions for the contractors who supply much of the labour that makes the industry run.

Join Moira Weigel and Ben Tarnoff to talk with Ines Schwerdtner about the role of tech workers in challenging neoliberal hegemony.

Hosted by the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, Ada Magazin and www.halbzehn.fm

Website: https://www.rosalux.de/veranstaltung/es_detail/KB2ZP/the-new-tech-worker-movement/

The New Tech Worker Movement

[de] Die Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung ist eine der sechs parteinahen politischen Stiftungen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Sie steht der Partei DIE LINKE nahe. 
Vorrangige Aufgabe der Stiftung ist die politische Bildung. Die Stiftung fördert mit ihrer Arbeit eine kritische Gesellschaftsanalyse, progressive kulturelle Ansätze sowie die Vernetzung emanzipatorischer Akteure. Sie agiert international im Feld der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit und des gleichberechtigten Dialogs und dokumentiert mit Hilfe des Archivs des demokratischen Sozialismus wichtige Ergebnisse linker Politik. Darüber hinaus fördert sie im Rahmen ihres Studienwerks den wissenschaftlichen Nachwuchs mit Stipendien.

[en] The Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung is one of the largest foundations dedicated to political education in Germany today, and stands in the intellectual and political tradition of democratic socialism. Initiated in 1990 as a small political association in Berlin known as “Gesellschaftsanalyse und politische Bildung e. V.”, it has since grown into a nationwide organization encompassing political education, discussion forums for critical thought and political alternatives, as well a research facility for progressive social analysis.

RSS-Feed: http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:5251722/sounds.rss 
Impressum: https://www.rosalux.de/impressum/
Newsletter und Themenverteiler: https://info.rosalux.de

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