California educators across the state are joining forces in their fight for full staffing, safe and stable schools, and competitive compensation in their contract negotiations this year.

What grocery workers are organizing for, and the way they’re doing it, can be a model for working class unionism.

In recent years, reform-minded members of the United Food and Commercial Workers—UFCW, one of the largest unions in the U.S.—have ramped up their campaigns to make their union more democratic and responsive to the needs of its 1.3 million members.

These members have organized toward resolutions at the 2023 convention, including to have direct elections of the international union’s top officers.

They sued the international in the spring of 2024 over other union democracy issues, pointing out how the UFCW allocates fewer delegates to larger locals. 

And they’re leading more vigorous contract fights and campaigns than we've seen in these sectors in decades.

Their fight can tell us a lot about how vital a reform current can be in transforming a union to actually represent its members’ interests, and fight for the working class as whole.

Most union meetings are, frankly, pretty dry and ineffective.

In this moment of existential struggle, what would it mean for our unions to act like a movement? How do we make sense of and tie together the multitude of attacks against working people?

We're joined again by Luis Feliz Leon, who walks us through strategic organizing formations and building on our victories.

If you haven't listened to part 1 of our conversation, don't miss it! We establish why unions are such a critical site for building power, and concrete tasks for organizers today.

Billionaires and powerful interests are attempting to hijack our government to marginalize dissent, crush worker power, and drive immigrant workers and trans people out of public life—and that's just their starting point.

Meanwhile, workers have been building actions with their coworkers, most recently at more than a 1,000 May Day rallies across the US.

How do we escalate from this month's massive rallies and walkouts? How can workers build a movement that can resist against state terror and carry a vision for a society that works for all of us? How and where should we be meeting each other right now? 

Labor Notes Organizer Luis Feliz Leon joins the pod this week to talk about what organizing in this phase can look like.

This is part 1 of a two-part episode. Tune in again on Friday, May 23, for part 2! 

Stewards are often thought of merely as enforcers of a union contract on behalf of the unit.

Labor Notes Organizer Barbara Madeloni joins the pod to share her notes for building power in a weary and anxious moment: Keep walking toward each other; Make a sober assessment of our landscape (avoid toxic positivity); and respond to attacks while building an offensive movement—one with a vision for providing the things people need to have full lives.

Workers at GM’s Silao, Guanajuato plant had a salary review period right in the midst of Trump’s tariff threats.

It would have been easy for the company to extract concessions in the face of widespread uncertainty, but workers held the line and won double-digit raises for the second time in recent years. Their winning streak is also forcing pro-boss, company unions to wake up and deliver for workers—if only for fear of a union election they’d likely lose. 

There’s a straight line from years of bipartisan support for ICE and CBP to the alarming political repression we’re experiencing today, where workers and students are being ripped from their daily lives and hauled into detention centers hundreds of miles away. 

How does a letter get from rural Alaska to tip of Florida for less than a dollar? The U.S. Postal Service of course!