UC Strike Enters Third Week, Banner Action at the Cal-UCLA Football Game w/ Adrian Wilson

November 29, 2022Posted inLabor

The University of California (UC) academic worker strike entered its third week this week. The largest academic worker in U.S. history and the administration shows no signs of moving on demands. Pickets and walk outs have continued across the ten UC campuses. At the Cal-UCLA game on Friday in Berkeley, an independent group of strikers hung a massive banner off of two flag poles during the game.

🎙: http://bit.ly/3XIrBbe

Scott talks with Adrian Wilson (@circleadrian), a striking UC graduate student-worker about the banner action and the strike.

There is Power in a Union As Thousands of Academic Workers Set to Strike in California

November 12, 2022Posted inLabor

Over 36,000 academic workers across the University of California’s 10-campus system held a strike authorization vote. The vote passed with nearly 98% approval. The strike will begin on November 14th. Workers are demanding include increased compensation, access to sustainable transportation, more childcare assistance, and increased job security.

Listen in: bit.ly/3A7HTjJ

Scott talks with Galen Liang, a grad student and UAW 2865 member to get an update on the looming strike.

Best of G&R: May Day vs Labor Day. How the ruling class stops radical organizing.

April 30, 2022Posted inLabor, Peoples' History
Happy May Day tender comrades!  
Here is a repost of our May Day episode from 2021. In it, Bob and Scott talk about the history of May Day from pagan rituals to the Haymarket Affair to International Workers’ Day to Labor Day and Loyalty Day.  And we discuss how the ruling class’s “war on the left” fits into the politics of May Day vs. Labor Day.
Spend an hour of your International Workers’ Day weekend hearing about the history of May Day. You won’t regret it. 

How Union Organizing Fights the Boss w/ union organizer Daisy Pitkin

April 29, 2022Posted inLabor
We’re in the midst of a new era of momentum and militancy around labor organizing. We’re seeing headline grabbing organizing campaigns at Starbucks and Amazon shifting the political landscape. But beyond Starbucks and Amazon, union organizing has been spreading to sectors across the country.     
In our latest episode, we talk with labor organizer and writer Daisy Pitkin about her new book “On the Line: A Story of Class, Solidarity, and Two Women’s Epic Fight to Build a Union.” We talk about her work organizing a series of factory laundromats in Phoenix, AZ in the early 2000s. Pitkin worked with immigrant women working in the terrible conditions to organize a union. Most notably, she worked with a woman named Alma, who Pitkin describes as “the gutsiest worker leader I’ve ever met.”  
This was all done despite a vicious corporate backlash in the reddest of red states.   
Currently, Pitkin is organizing Starbucks workers in the Rust Belt. We discuss the Starbucks campaign and the future of labor organizing.