Work Stoppage

October 30 Port Shutdown: https://30october.noharbourforgenocide.com/

It's a huge week for workers in all sorts of ways. Lula won in Brazil, the students toppled Vucic in Serbia, and this Friday workers across the world will disrupt shipping traffic in protest of genocide. Jumping into our headlines, we discuss Argentine metro workers, Senegalese public workers,  California state workers, Oregon state workers, Concord Public Schools, Chili's, Rhode Island Hospital, and Long Island home health workers. For our main stories we start by following up on the fight against union busting at Rockstar Games as we approach the release of GTA VI. We've got a major roundup of recent stories of workers organizing at Amazon and the company's dystopian deployment of AI to try and stop them. Finally we have a whirlwind tour of all the massive working class movements in various stage of uprising across Europe and beyond, as workers start taking demands from the shop floor to the streets.

Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

In the second episode of our series on the impact of automation on workers, we turn to one of the century's greatest texts on the topic, Labor and Monopoly Capital by Harry Braverman. A former metal worker turned sociologist, Braverman brought his direct experience on the shop floor to his biting theoretical analysis of the reality that technology did not save workers labor or improve their lives, but instead degraded their jobs and their physical condition. Contrary to claims of technology developing objectively towards an inevitable optimum configuration, Braverman identified how the unceasing quest for total control of the production process by management led them to design and deploy technology in ways that were hugely detrimental to workers on the shop floor and society as a whole. 

Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX 

Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

United Wizards of the Coast-CWA Petition: https://actionnetwork.org/forms/uwotcpetition/

We're back and all recovered from our various maladies and contagions, with a full sized lineup of worker news to cover! We start with a jumbo headlines section covering the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Prime Healthcare, AutoZone, Minneapolis Public Schools, the UAW, Endeavor Health Edward Hospital, Boston Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, SEIU 775, AFSCME Local 12, Mississippi land barons, Charlotte International Airport, Washington State Ferries, Corvalis Municipal Government, and Wizards of the Coast. For our deeper dives this week we start with working class uprisings in Europe, as France approaches the Cool Zone in response to years of austerity and state repression. We discuss the state of worker organizing within the Mamdani Administration by members of AFSCME District Council 37. And finally, we celebrate the historic victory of Brazilian workers finally enshrining the 40 hour work week and the two day weekend into their constitution.

Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

Comrade Matteo brings us another great interview from the struggle in Italy and the broader Mediterranean region with Antonio Mazzeo, freedom flotilla participant, teacher, activist, and founder of the Observatory on the militarization of schools and universities. Originally in Italian for CSA Baraonda, Matteo translated this interview and we created an English version for our listeners to learn from. With Dan as the voice of Antonio, they discuss the ways the Italian state uses military culture to affect education in the country, how the politics of Zionism is a part of that process, and how anti-war activists are fighting back.

Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX

Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

In the first episode of our long-discussed series on how technology impacts the working class under capitalism, we go way back to the man himself. Much of the discourse around the development of "AI" and other forms of machine learning is completely without historical context and mystifies rather than clarifying the role of technology in society. So to get us started on our long journey to discover the origins of the capitalist use of technology and its implications for the development and deployment of AI, we return to Marx. The role of machinery in production and the exploitation of workers in the capitalist system was a major area of study for Marx and we draw from the development of his concepts in the Grundrisse and how those evolved into their final form in Capital. Marx's observations about the way technology is used to intensify, not relax, the labor of the machine operator, and how the relations of production under capitalism warp the impact of technology on humanity are foundational to any attempt to see through the smokescreen of hype thrown out there by AI boosters. In future episodes we will draw from the works of Harry Barverman, David Noble, Kate Crawford, Aaron Benanav, Jason Resnikoff, Matteo Pasquinelli, and others to show that technology development is always contingent on the mode of production it occurs under, and that this has profound implications for the deployment of technology like AI today under capitalism, or in a future socialist society.

Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX

Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter, John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

We start our headlines with one of the largest bargaining units we have ever seen filing for election with 1199SEIU across NY state. Other headlines from NYU, Minneapolis Public Schools, European Dockworkers fighting for Palestine, and the American child labor industry. We start our main stories in the streets, as workers and tenants have erupted into mass protest in both France and Spain and could be poised to disrupt the EU's neoliberal consensus. Taxi drivers in NYC are facing such stark conditions that more and more are becoming homeless and dying on the job, per recent reporting in The Gothamist. Finally we close with some happy news, as years of organizing by Los Deliveristas Unidos has secured a record wage theft settlement from DoorDash.

Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

AutoZone Worker Support Fund: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nate-and-the-autozone-union

Mega headlines section this week with stories from Mass General Brigham, Prime Healthcare, Henry Ford Genesys Hospital, Sam Adams Boston Brewery, AutoZone, CUPE, the AFA, Colombia's social movements, the New South Wales Teachers Federation and the San Francisco Opera. For our main stories this week, we start with some important reporting from Amie Stager at Workday Magazine on the wide dragnet of state surveillance unleashed on workers across the Minneapolis area to try and crush anti-ICE organizing. Finally, another incredible investigation from Amir Khafagy at Documented in NYC has revealed yet more fake unions, this time set up by a "former" union buster.

Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

We've got headlines this week from Amazon, Samsung, Howard House Manufacturing, the entire French economy, Bradford White, CharterCARE, NYC traffic enforcement, and Allina Health. For our first main story, pharmacists have been organizing at CVS over the last few years and are sounding the alarm on steadily worsening conditions that could imperil public health. The beverage distribution industry seems to keep producing some of the country's most vindictive owners, as West Virginia workers on strike at the Beverage Market have discovered. Finally, we discuss the front lines of the working class struggle as ICE continues to kidnap our fellow workers and all of us suffer for it.

Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

The whole crew is back this week, and we start out with headlines from across the US and the world. We've got stories from Prime Healthcare nurses, Boston Medical Center, Rhode Island Amazon drivers, Brazilian postal workers, Dutch public transit workers, Kenyan healthcare workers, Frontier Airlines flight attendants, and newspaper journalists at McClatchy. For our main stories we start with the major contract victory by workers at Blizzard, who finally secured a company-wide contract after years of struggle. The Mamdani Administration launched what may be the most interesting move so far, opening the Mayor's Office of Worker Power, we discuss the potential. Finally, a new report on the state of the labor movement shows record growth in response to the decline of the economy, but what more will it take to raise those numbers by an order of magnitude?

Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

Happy Labor Day! This week we touch on many aspects of the international gig work industry as well as the hidden labor behind "autonomous vehicles". Other stories we cover include repression of immigrants in Canada, how AI isn't replacing workers at all, tech and video game workers, and the continued union fight at Amazon. We get to celebrate the Seattle Teachers winning a TA and wrap up with a story about internal union efforts in IUPAT to make sure they are really fighting for workers. It also may come as no surprise but people in the US support unions at high levels, and new data shows that its a majority across the US political spectrum. 

Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee