The Labor Notes Podcast is taking a Summer Friday. We’ll be back next week!

The Trump Administration has been surveilling and investigating unions including the Communications Workers (CWA) and Service Employees (SEIU), as part of its targeting of groups resisting immigration raids in Minnesota, according to a report this month in the New York Times.

But union members and representatives have since told Labor Notes that they are undeterred. “We are proud of our work and will never apologize or back down because of these dirty tricks and intimidation,” said CWA Local 7250 President Kieran Knutson.

Read the story by Luis Feliz Leon: Federal Spies Hunt Minnesota Unions in Search of Conspiracy, But Find Solidarity.

Also check out our episode back in February about the uprising in Minnesota, featuring Luis and Diana Varenik: “How Workers Pulled Off a Mass Strike in Minnesota.”

This fall, 200,000 members of the Letter Carriers will get the chance to vote (perhaps fittingly, by mail ballot) for new leadership. 

For many postal workers fed up with low pay, forced overtime, dangerous heat, and robberies—conditions they see their opaque, undemocratic leadership failing to address—the upcoming election is a focal point for recent reform currents brewing in the union.  

They’ll be voting on 10 officers, three trustees, and 15 regional business agents. Labor Notes Editor Al Bradbury joins the episode. 

Also check out: 

Letter Carriers Set to Deliver Change in Upcoming Union Election by Alexandra Bradbury, July 29, 2026

On the Labor Notes Pod, in April 2025: Facing Privatization And DOGE Attacks, Postal Workers Are Fighting Back

Labor Notes Online Workshop: What to Do When Your Union Breaks Your Heart, Tuesday, August 18 

Labor Notes Online Workshop: Running for Union Office, Tuesday, September 15 

New Labor Notes Book: Running for Local Union Office 

You want more members to share the work of your contract action team? Win more grievances? Commit to wearing Hawaiian shirts together to the Jaws screening? You know what we're about to suggest: Think like an organizer.

It's a common Labor Notes refrain to many organizing conundrums—but what does it mean? A problem-solving approach that engages and involves more people? More direct asks of our fellow union members?  Union movie club?

Labor Notes Organizer Joe DeManuelle-Hall joins the pod.

And don't miss our upcoming online Stewards' Workshop on this topic: Thinking Like an Organizer! Monday, August 10, 8 p.m. Eastern. SIGN UP HERE!

For over four decades now, workers have seen their steady, reliable pension payouts replaced by more uncertain returns from 401(k) plans—where employees’ payments are invested in retirement accounts that are vulnerable to the stock market.

But just this month, power workers in Pennsylvania did something that worked—workers at PECO, the electric company for the Philadelphia region and Pennsylvania’s largest electric and natural gas utility, won defined-benefit pensions for 600 newer hires who had been offered 401(k)s, and they won full medical coverage in retirement, Mindy Isser reported for Labor Notes. 

Pod co-hosts Danielle Smith and Natascha Elena Uhlmann talk about Mindy’s piece on how they did it.

More than 2,000 stadium workers in Los Angeles scored a goal that VAR can’t take away: they overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike and built a credible threat to walk off the job during World Cup matches scheduled at the SoFi stadium—and they won the right to strike over ICE. 

Their campaign, and others like it this summer—including in Philadelphia where workers at the Sheraton and Warwick hotels won contracts that will raise wages to $30 an hour by 2028—show how workers are strategically assessing their leverage and notching concrete wins.

Read the story by Labor Notes Organizers Paul Prescod and Natascha Elena Uhlmann. Paul and UNITE HERE Local 274 member Kathleen Householder from Philadelphia join the episode.

Gig workers are often sold the lie that their job is flexible, customizable, and lets them be their own boss. But that hides the reality that they don’t control a lot of their own basic working conditions, including the rates they’re paid or even if they can continue working with the app, if they’re arbitrarily deactivated. 

Have you ever been so stumped by an organizing challenge that you wished you could just beam out a help signal to others who’ve dealt with the same thing? Enter special guests Tera Arnold and Dakota Massman, who fielded several organizing questions along with pod co-hosts Danielle Smith and Natascha Elena Uhlmann at our first ever live episode of the Labor Notes Podcast, which took place last month at the 2026 Conference in Chicago. 

You might be in a battle of wits with a great white shark on a New England beach and needing a bigger boat. Or maybe you're getting into property fights with your goth relatives (or imposters) in the Addams Family. Perhaps you're just a toy, a child's plaything, but developing power analysis in the Toy Story franchise.

Wherever your big screen adventures are playing out, we at the Labor Notes Podcast think you're probably applying a labor lesson from our bestseller, Secrets of a Successful Organizer, or our new book, Keep Going: A Guide to Organizing When It's Hard.

Tune into this week's episode for why our favorite summer blockbusters are really about organizing. 

Links to resources we mention in this episode: 

Stewards’ Corner: Workplace Safety Is Not a Game (Labor Notes Podcast, October 2025)

Four Union Strategies to Fight on A.I. (Article on labornotes.org | Labor Notes Podcast, May 2026) 

Keep Going: A Guide to Organizing When It's Hard: Order your copy | See Inside: Introduction: How to use this book; Chapter 1: Cultivate Respect 

You guys loved our episode about having bad meetings so much that we’re actually bringing it back. Revisit this old Labor Notes pod banger and evergreen organizing question: “What if Unions Meetings Were Actually Good?”