Originally published on June 29, 2023.

Happy Pride Month! In this bonus episode, we're sharing the efforts that LGBTQ+ Teamsters are engaging in to fight for liberation at UPS, other Teamsters employers, the union itself, and beyond.

We spoke with Andrew Rivas, a UPS package car driver and political coordinator of Teamsters Local 533 in Reno, Nevada. He is also on the board of the relatively new Teamsters LGBTQ+ caucus. Andrew told us about the initiative, what it's like to face and fight against discrimination in the workplace, and specifically what the LGBTQ+ Caucus is demanding in the UPS contract negotiations.

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Hosted by Teddy Ostrow

Edited by Teddy Ostrow & Ruby Walsh

Produced by NYGP & Ruby Walsh, in partnership with In These Times & The Real News

Music by Casey Gallagher

Cover art by Devlin Claro Resetar

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Support the show at Patreon.com/upsurgepod.

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Show Notes

Originally published on June 15, 2023.

The 1.2-million-member United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) is one of the largest and most powerful private sector unions in the country. Unfortunately, it has embodied some of the worst elements of business unionism over the decades. But a reform movement is burgeoning to change that.

We've covered the role of Teamsters for a Democratic Union in bringing militancy and democracy to the Teamsters union. Now, the independent organization Essential Workers for Democracy is looking to play that role in the UFCW. We spoke with Enrique Romero Jr., the group's organizing director and a rank-and-file grocery worker at Fred Meyer in Bellingham, Washington.

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Hosted by Teddy Ostrow

Edited by Teddy Ostrow & Ruby Walsh

Produced by NYGP & Ruby Walsh, in partnership with In These Times & The Real News

Music by Casey Gallagher

Cover art by Devlin Claro Resetar

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Support the show at Patreon.com/upsurgepod.

Follow us on Twitter @upsurgepod, Facebook, The Upsurge, and YouTube @upsurgepod.

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Show Notes

Originally published on May 8, 2023.

Hollywood television and movie writers are on strike! In this bonus episode of The Upsurge, Teddy and Ruby will take you to the picket lines in Manhattan. Hear from a number of writers – including Ruby's dad! – why they laid down their pens.

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Hosted by Teddy Ostrow

Edited by Teddy Ostrow & Ruby Walsh

Produced by NYGP & Ruby Walsh, in partnership with In These Times & The Real News

Music by Casey Gallagher

Cover art by Devlin Claro Resetar

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Support the show at Patreon.com/upsurgepod.

Follow us on Twitter @upsurgepod, Facebook, The Upsurge, and YouTube @upsurgepod.

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Show Notes

Originally published on April 13, 2023.

Matt Cavagrotti is a part-time UPSer out of Teamsters Local 519 in Knoxville, Tennessee. But unlike most of his part-time union siblings, he heads to the airport for work.

Matt is one of more than 15,000 "air workers" at UPS, who are responsible for sorting, preloading and unloading the millions of packages aboard the over 2,000 daily flights to 700+ airports around the world. Air workers are integral to UPS's revenues, and yet they're among the most exploited in the entire company workforce – and have been since the late 1980s.

This is because their conditions are governed under the egregious concessions of Article 40 in the national collective bargaining agreement at UPS – a "stain" on the contract. Alongside other air workers, Matt is organizing to reform Article 40 and break a lesser known division in the Teamster ranks.

In this bonus episode of The Upsurge, Matt unpacks the history and impacts of Article 40 in the national UPS contract, and why air workers deserve solidarity just like any other UPSer.

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Hosted by Teddy Ostrow

Edited by Teddy Ostrow & Ruby Walsh

Produced by NYGP & Ruby Walsh

Music by Casey Gallagher

Cover art by Devlin Claro Resetar

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Support the show at Patreon.com/upsurgepod.

Follow us on Twitter @upsurgepod, Facebook, The Upsurge, and YouTube @upsurgepod.

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Show Notes

Originally published on March 30, 2023

On Dan Arlin's second day back as a package car delivery driver at UPS, after a three-year stint driving tractor-trailer trucks, he was fired – without explanation – and walked off company property. The 23-year veteran of UPS is a pro at his job. He knew he had done nothing wrong, but the company didn't like one thing: his union activism.

Harassment and retaliation is a way of life at UPS. After he was fired in March 2022, Arlin was committed to getting his job back. And indeed, fighting tooth and nail for eleven months, Arlin was finally reinstated on Valentines day this year.

In this bonus episode of The Upsurge, we dug into Arlin's remarkable story, which is one of both pain and perseverance, struggle and solidarity.

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Hosted by Teddy Ostrow

Edited by Teddy Ostrow & Ruby Walsh

Produced by NYGP & Ruby Walsh

Music by Casey Gallagher

Cover art by Devlin Claro Resetar

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Support the show at Patreon.com/upsurgepod.

Follow us on Twitter @upsurgepod, Facebook, The Upsurge, and YouTube @upsurgepod.

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Show Notes

The Big Three have fallen like a house of cards.

The UAW's historic Stand Up strike has come to an end – for now, at least. After forty-four days on the picket line, the Auto Workers have reached tentative agreements with each of the Big Three automakers. GM was the last domino to fall on October 30, just days after Ford and then Stellantis acquiesced to their own tentative deals.

50,000 strikers have returned to work, and all 146,000 Big Three union members are now voting on the contracts. While it's up to the workers to decide whether the deals are adequate, one thing is already clear: the UAW has turned the tide on decades of concessionary bargaining.

For this episode, we invited Barry Eidlin back on the show to unpack the gains and wider implications of the UAW's tentative agreements. Barry Eidlin is an associate professor of sociology at McGill University, who studies class, labor, politics and social movements. He is the author of Labor and the Class Idea in the United States and Canada, published by Cambridge University Press in 2018.

We explore why the agreements may represent a shift toward a "new kind of unionism," how the UAW's prospects for organizing the rest of the auto industry may have changed, and what listeners should be following in the rest of the labor movement.

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Hosted by Teddy Ostrow

Edited by Teddy Ostrow

Produced by NYGP & Ruby Walsh, in partnership with In These Times & The Real News

Music by Casey Gallagher

Cover art by Devlin Claro Resetar

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Support the show at Patreon.com/upsurgepod.

Follow us on Twitter @upsurgepod, Facebook, The Upsurge, and YouTube @upsurgepod.

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Read Barry Eidlin's article on the Belvidere plant in Jacobin.

Nearly five weeks into the UAW's historic Stand Up Strike, there are just under 34,000 Big Three Auto Workers on strike in assembly plants and parts depots across the country. The latest escalation came on Wednesday, October 11, when the union called on 8,700 Ford workers at the Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, Kentucky, to walk off the job. 

For this episode, we're bringing you a UAW Strike update. You'll hear from two guests: Chris Budnick and Lisa Xu. Chris is a striking Ford worker at the Kentucky Truck Plant and the co-chair of Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD). Lisa is an organizer at the labor movement publication and organizing project Labor Notes, and she was previously an organizer with UAWD. 

Chris and Lisa bring us up to speed on the strike escalations, discuss how non-striking Auto Workers are participating in the Stand Up, and unpack the massive concession made by General Motors last week – the folding of their battery plants into the UAW's master contract with the company. 

Finally, we take a step back to reflect on the Stand Up Strike overall. We take stock not just of what was won contractually so far, but also of how far the union has come in the past year, and where it's going. 

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Hosted by Teddy Ostrow

Edited by Teddy Ostrow

Produced by NYGP & Ruby Walsh, in partnership with In These Times & The Real News

Music by Casey Gallagher

Cover art by Devlin Claro Resetar

**

Support the show at Patreon.com/upsurgepod.

Follow us on Twitter @upsurgepod, Facebook, The Upsurge, and YouTube @upsurgepod.

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Hear Teddy talk about the UAW strike on The Response podcast.

The UAW's Stand Up Strike is alive and growing. More than 18,000 auto workers across the Big Three – Ford, GM and Stellantis – are on strike across twenty states, and just a few hours after this episode posts, thousands more will likely join them. The Fiery Labor Fall is here.

In this episode, we bring you on the ground of UAW picket lines and rallies across three states – Michigan, Ohio, and New York. You'll hear the perspectives and stories of over a dozen rank-and-file auto workers, as well as direct interviews with UAW president Shawn Fain and other union leaders. 

Follow Teddy as he zig-zags across states to ask the workers themselves what they think about the strike. UAW auto workers explain the stakes and key demands of their fight, how it's gotten to this point, and what the renewed militancy of their union means to them. 

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Hosted by Teddy Ostrow

Edited by Teddy Ostrow and Ruby Walsh

Produced by NYGP & Ruby Walsh, in partnership with In These Times & The Real News

Music by Casey Gallagher

Cover art by Devlin Claro Resetar

**

Support the show at Patreon.com/upsurgepod.

Follow us on Twitter @upsurgepod, Facebook, The Upsurge, and YouTube @upsurgepod.

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Read Teddy's dispatch from the picket lines in Michigan and Ohio for The Real News Network, and his interview with labor sociologist Barry Eidlin for Jacobin. Also hear him and TRNN editor in chief Maximillian Alvarez talk about the UAW strike on Rev Left Radio.

The hot labor summer isn't over yet. 

In a week's time, the United Auto Workers may launch a strike of 150,000 of its members if the Big Three automakers – Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler) – fail to meet the workers' demands in a new contract by September 14. 

You see, the Big Three made a quarter-trillion dollars in profits over the past decade. And with non-union electric vehicle and battery manufacturing on the rise in the United States, this may be a make-or-break moment for the union. So, with a more militant leadership at its helm, the UAW is demanding more than they have in a long time: serious wage increases; the elimination of tiers; the return of pensions, COLA, and retiree healthcare; and a 32-hour workweek.

For this episode, we unpack the auto workers' demands, their stakes for the auto industry and the broader working class, and the burgeoning EV transition. We also explore how during this round of negotiations, the union is doing something it hasn't done in a very long time. Inspired by the Teamsters, the UAW is conducting a contract campaign, with rallies, practice pickets, and all.

To discuss all this and more, we spoke with two UAW activists in Metro Detroit. Luigi Gjokaj was an assembly worker at Stellantis since 2010 and is the newly elected vice president of UAW Local 51. Jessie Kelly is a skilled moldmaker at General Motors and alternate committeeperson at UAW Local 160.

You'll also hear from auto workers in Metro Detroit and Chicago, who attended rallies and practice pickets to drum up unity before the strike deadline.

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Hosted by Teddy Ostrow

Edited by Teddy Ostrow and Ruby Walsh

Produced by NYGP & Ruby Walsh, in partnership with In These Times & The Real News

Music by Casey Gallagher

Cover art by Devlin Claro Resetar

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Support the show at Patreon.com/upsurgepod.

Follow us on Twitter @upsurgepod, Facebook, The Upsurge, and YouTube @upsurgepod.

On Tuesday, August 22, the Teamsters union announced that its members voted to ratify the national UPS contract by 86.3% –  and with record turnout. Workers won significant raises, the abolition of the two-tier driver system, air conditioning in package cars, thousands of new full-time jobs, and more. 

In our previous episode, we discussed the gains of the tentative agreement and the years of Teamsters' organizing it took to make them possible, including the past year's contract campaign which built a credible strike threat. In this episode, we dug deeper into the various layers of members' reactions to the contract, as well as what's required of the membership to enforce it and build on it moving forward. 

We invited Greg Kerwood, a UPSer from Local 25 in Somerville, Massachusetts, back on the show to share his point of view. Greg explained what he's heard from the membership, how social media may have distorted members' views, and why it's important to translate the disappointment of some workers – including his own – into productive organizing on the shop floor. 

We also share some news on the future of The Upsurge…

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Hosted by Teddy Ostrow

Edited by Teddy Ostrow and Ruby Walsh

Produced by NYGP & Ruby Walsh, in partnership with In These Times & The Real News

Music by Casey Gallagher

Cover art by Devlin Claro Resetar

**

Support the show at Patreon.com/upsurgepod.

Follow us on Twitter @upsurgepod, Facebook, The Upsurge, and YouTube @upsurgepod.

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Hear Teddy discuss the UPS Teamsters' reaction to the tentative agreement on The Valley Labor Report.