Boot Biters

Yay it's our first listener recommended strike! Today we're learning about the 1973 wildcat strike that broke out at a Ford plant in Cologne, Germany when predominantly Turkish guest workers stood up for their unjustly fired colleagues and walked out. There are a lot of interesting parallels to US migrant worker policy to talk about. While this one got shut down violently by police, it gained a lot of national attention, changed the way management engaged with its workforce going forward, and forced German industry and society to reckon with its problematic attitudes toward guest workers. Let's dive in!

Find Boot Biters - A Labor History Podcast online:

• Website and Transcripts: https://rss.com/podcasts/boot-biters/
• You can also listen to the pod on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts!

• Instagram and TikTok: @bootbiterspod

• BlueSky: @bootbiterspod.bsky.social

Support the podcast, get access to the Water Cooler monthly bonus episodes, and check out resources used in episodes for further reading (resources are publicly available): patreon.com/BootBiters

Credits: Creator, Host, Social Media, Art, Music, General Chaos Sower: Dakota Saunders

This one has another cool labor song! Also weirdly nepo babies doing good? In this episode, we're covering the 1909 Shirtwaist Strike or the Uprising of the 20,000, when predominantly Jewish and Italian women launched a general strike in the garment industry in New York City, winning better pay and strengthening their union, not to mention inspiring a whole lot of other workers to demand better for themselves too! Let's dive in!

Find Boot Biters - A Labor History Podcast online:

• Website and Transcripts: https://rss.com/podcasts/boot-biters/
• You can also listen to the pod on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts!

• Instagram and TikTok: @bootbiterspod

• BlueSky: @bootbiterspod.bsky.social

Support the podcast, get access to the Water Cooler monthly bonus episodes, and check out resources used in episodes for further reading (resources are publicly available): patreon.com/BootBiters

Credits: Creator, Host, Social Media, Art, Music, General Chaos Sower: Dakota Saunders

In this episode we're talking about the Bread and Roses or the Singing Strike of 1912, when an insanely diverse and incredibly organized group of mill workers, many of them women, working in the industrial town of Lawrence, MA went on a successful strike to protest a wage cut. This strike was another dramatic one, with a sabotage plot orchestrated by the mill owners and women strikers duking it out with cops. Even though several strikers died over the course of the strike, their sacrifice wasn't in vain, with eventual pay raises and changes to working conditions being seen not just in Lawrence but across all of New England. Let's get into it!

Find Boot Biters - A Labor History Podcast online:

• Website and Transcripts: https://rss.com/podcasts/boot-biters/
• You can also listen to the pod on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts!

• Instagram and TikTok: @bootbiterspod

• BlueSky: @bootbiterspod.bsky.social

Support the podcast, get access to the Water Cooler monthly bonus episodes, and check out resources used in episodes for further reading (resources are publicly available): patreon.com/BootBiters

Credits: Creator, Host, Social Media, Art, Music, General Chaos Sower: Dakota Saunders

In this episode we're continuing the Pullman saga, but this time we're talking about the Black porters and maids who were busy developing their own union (with the coolest name) the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Their slow but steady movement would grow to result in not just the first negotiated bargaining contract between Black workers and a company in the U.S. but the birth of wider civil rights activism. Let's get into it!

Find Boot Biters - A Labor History Podcast online:

• Website and Transcripts: https://rss.com/podcasts/boot-biters/
• You can also listen to the pod on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts!

• Instagram and TikTok: @bootbiterspod

• BlueSky: @bootbiterspod.bsky.social

Support the podcast, get access to the Water Cooler monthly bonus episodes, and check out resources used in episodes for further reading (resources are publicly available): patreon.com/BootBiters

Credits: Creator, Host, Social Media, Art, Music, General Chaos Sower: Dakota Saunders

In ANOTHER two parter (I know! I know!) we're talking the 1894 Pullman Strike, when predominantly white factory workers living and working in the company town of Pullman went on strike. This one didn't end the most hopefully, with business cartels playing dirty, federal troops getting called in to violently suppress the strike, and strike leaders being arrested.

BUT in our second part, we'll cover the work that Black porters and maids at Pullman were doing undercover to develop their own union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and how their movement would grow to result in not just the first negotiated bargaining contract between Black workers and a company in the U.S. but the birth of wider civil rights activism.

Find Boot Biters - A Labor History Podcast online:

• Website and Transcripts: https://rss.com/podcasts/boot-biters/
• You can also listen to the pod on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts!

• Instagram and TikTok: @bootbiterspod

• BlueSky: @bootbiterspod.bsky.social

Support the podcast, get access to the Water Cooler monthly bonus episodes, and check out resources used in episodes for further reading (resources are publicly available): patreon.com/BootBiters

Credits: Creator, Host, Social Media, Art, Music, General Chaos Sower: Dakota Saunders

GLOWING VOMIT SAY WHAT? In this episode we cover the 1888 Matchwomen Strike that took place in the East End of London when women and girls walked out of a matchstick factory called Bryant and May after a retaliatory firing of one of their colleagues who was a whistleblower in a damning article. This action won a huge victory for their working conditions, pushed for legislative changes, and impacted the wider labor movement for years to come in the UK!

Find Boot Biters - A Labor History Podcast online:

• Website and Transcripts: https://rss.com/podcasts/boot-biters/
• You can also listen to the pod on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts!

• Instagram and TikTok: @bootbiterspod

• BlueSky: @bootbiterspod.bsky.social

Support the podcast, get access to the Water Cooler monthly bonus episodes, and check out resources used in episodes for further reading: patreon.com/BootBiters

Credits: Creator, Host, Social Media, Art, Music, General Chaos Sower: Dakota Saunders

In this episode, we learn about the mostly forgotten Chinese workers who predominantly built the Central Pacific Railroad. We cover the insane conditions they faced (from both the elements and the railway company) and the major risk they took in launching a strike along the tracks. While the strike was shut down, it did push the railway to quietly raise wages and institute pay raises during adverse weather.

Find Boot Biters - A Labor History Podcast online:

• Website and Transcripts: https://rss.com/podcasts/boot-biters/
• You can also listen to the pod on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts!

• Instagram and TikTok: @bootbiterspod

• BlueSky: @bootbiterspod.bsky.social

Support the podcast, get access to the Water Cooler monthly bonus episodes, and check out resources used in episodes for further reading: patreon.com/BootBiters

Credits: Creator, Host, Social Media, Art, Music, General Chaos Sower: Dakota Saunders

In this episode we cover the hostile landscape for worker organizing in apartheid South Africa, the immediate lead up to the 1973 Durban Strikes, and deep-dive into the strike wave that spread from factories in Durban and Pinetown to municipal workers in the city and turned into a powerful general strike. These strikes had a direct impact on future legislation and positioned trade unions and worker organizing as an important tool for wider anti-apartheid activism.

Find Boot Biters - A Labor History Podcast online:

• Website and Transcripts: https://rss.com/podcasts/boot-biters/
• You can also listen to the pod on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts!

• Instagram and TikTok: @bootbiterspod

• BlueSky: @bootbiterspod.bsky.social

Support the podcast, get access to the Water Cooler monthly bonus episodes, and check out resources used in episodes for further reading: patreon.com/BootBiters

Credits: Creator, Host, Social Media, Art, Music, General Chaos Sower: Dakota Saunders

In this first part of a two-part episode series talking about the 1973 Durban Strikes, we set some contextual background and learn how labor issues played a major role in fueling apartheid. In this episode we learn about the colonial interests in the region, the various laws passed well before Apartheid that set the precedent, the rise of Afrikaner nationalism, and the strategy of the National Party. This was a party that capitalized on a failed, repressed strike led by white miners and harnessed the growing anger of a poor white voting base to put forward a platform of formalized segregation that tried to keep Black African working power repressed. And that inadvertently made working organizing such a powerful tool to ending apartheid, leading to major actions like the Durban Strikes.

Find Boot Biters - A Labor History Podcast online:

• Website and Transcripts: https://rss.com/podcasts/boot-biters/
• You can also listen to the pod on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts!

• Instagram and TikTok: @bootbiterspod

• BlueSky: @bootbiterspod.bsky.social

Support the podcast, get access to the Water Cooler monthly bonus episodes, and check out resources used in episodes for further reading: patreon.com/BootBiters

Credits: Creator, Host, Social Media, Art, Music, General Chaos Sower: Dakota Saunders

Ey, it's the bulls! Cheese it!

After discussing the real-life historical events of the 1899 Newsboys Strike, it's time to talk about the 1992 movie Newsies! What a movie for Disney to put out! We talk about the historical inaccuracies, the things the movie did right and well, and how they almost pushed the envelope even farther in the original screenplay (with a special guest star: the Specter of Communism).

Find Boot Biters - A Labor History Podcast online:

• Website and Transcripts: https://rss.com/podcasts/boot-biters/
• You can also listen to the pod on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts!

• Instagram and TikTok: @bootbiterspod

• BlueSky: @bootbiterspod.bsky.social

Support the podcast, get access to the Water Cooler monthly bonus episodes, and check out resources used in episodes for further reading: patreon.com/BootBiters

Credits: Creator, Host, Social Media, Art, Music, General Chaos Sower: Dakota Saunders