Last year, we summoned all the Alvarez siblings from the ether to record our annual Halloween episode. Sadly, we were not able to record a new Halloween episode in 2024, but to celebrate the holiday and give listeners a break from all the heavy news, we are publicly releasing last year's spooky special. Jesse, Zak, Max, and MacKenna break down THE defining horror movie of our childhood, the movie that scarred us all: John Carpenter's The Thing. From the whole Alvarez family, we're wishing everyone out there a Happy Halloween!

Permanent links below...

• Working People Patreon page

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!

• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page

• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page

• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

• Jules Taylor, "Working People Theme Song

On Monday, Oct 21, 2400 behavior health workers at Kaiser Permanente's Southern California locations walked off the job in their ongoing struggle for a fair contract. Over the summer, negotiations between the health system and the bargaining committee, represented by the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), failed to close the gap between their proposals, opening the door for a strike. The workers are now well into their second week on strike.

The healthcare giant refuses to bargain seriously with the workers, offering paltry raises instead of agreeing to the workers' demands for better pay, pensions, and safer staffing levels at the Kaiser mental health clinics in and around Southern California. These gains, the union believes, would allow Kaiser to compete with other health systems, drastically improve patient care quality, and solve many of the scheduling issues that have plagued the health system since before the start of the pandemic.

The union hopes that by striking, they can show management that they are serious about securing a fair contract for their members. Last week, on the first day of the strike, Mel sat down with Chris Reeves and Lisa Caroll, two behavioral health workers who work in Los Angeles and San Diego, respectively, to talk about the state of negotiations, what workers are demanding, and how it feels to be out on the picket line in the struggle for a fair contract.

Note: This episode was recorded on Oct 21, 2024, on the first day of the strike.

Additional links/info below…

• NUHW's Strike Announcement Release

• Donate to the NUHW Mental Health Workers' Strike Fund

• Stay up-to-date on the strike here

• Check out TRNN's previous coverage of Kaiser workers striking in the east coast

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!

• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page

• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page

• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music… Jules Taylor, "Working People" Theme Song

Studio Production: Max Alvarez

We're coming up on a pretty mind-blowing anniversary in the news labor world–Two years ago, in October 2022, after the newspaper unilaterally cut off insurance benefits to production workers and newsroom workers filed ULPs for bad-faith bargaining, the workers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette walked off the job on strike.

The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh has been in negotiations for a contract with Post Gazette management for SEVEN years - since 2017 - and have battled bad faith bargaining, illegal and unilaterally imposed changes to working conditions, and loss of vacation time and insurance benefits. In October 2022, newsroom workers voted to go on strike, and strike they did.

Now, two years later, the workers of the Post Gazette are still on strike–and despite the NLRB upholding their Unfair Labor Practice charges against the company, still have a long way to go to total victory.

Today, we've brought some of the striking workers onto the show to talk about the last two years of striking, the welcome updates from the NLRB, and what's next for the workers as their battle continues.

Additional links/info below…

• Steve Mellon, 'This has to stop': Pittsburgh news workers mark 2 years on strike with billboard truck that names names

• The Pittsburgh Union Progress website

• Donate to the strike fund here

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!

• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page

• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page

• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music… Jules Taylor, "Working People" Theme Song

Studio Production: Max Alvarez Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Over the past two weeks, people around the country have watched in horror as our neighbors and fellow workers have been battered by the successive disasters of Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton. "After making landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on Sept. 26 and tearing through the Gulf Coast of Florida," Adeel Hassan and Isabelle Taft write in The New York Times, "Helene plowed north through Georgia and walloped the Blue Ridge Mountains, washing out roads, causing landslides and knocking out power and cell service for millions of people. Across western North Carolina, towns were destroyed, water and fuel supplies were disrupted, and residents were in a communications black hole, scrambling for Wi-Fi to try to reach friends and family... As of Oct. 6, there were more than 230 confirmed deaths from the storm." The hurricanes have passed, but the devastation and dire need they left in their wake remain. In this urgent mini-cast, we speak with two guests who are on the ground in Asheville, NC, providing relief and mutual aid to their community: Byon Ballard, a cofounder of the Mother Grove Goddess Temple in Asheville, where she serves as Senior Priestess, and Lori Freshwater, a journalist and relief aid volunteer who is originally from North Carolina.

Additional links/info below…

• Mother Grove Goddess Temple website, Facebook page, and Instagram

• Mother Grove Goddess Temple volunteer and donation information page

• Beloved Asheville website, Facebook page, and Instagram

• Adeel Hassan & Isabelle Taft, The New York Times, "What we know about Hurricane Helene's destruction so far"

• Dharna Noor, The Guardian, "Double punch of hurricanes could become common due to climate crisis"

• Oliver Milman, The Guardian, "'It's mindblowing': US meteorologists face death threats as hurricane conspiracies surge"

• Oliver Milman & Jonathan Watts, The Guardian, "Global heating makes hurricanes like Helene twice as likely, data shows"

• Lauren Aratani, The Guardian, "Insurance is failing hurricane survivors: 'People thought they were covered'"

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!

• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page

• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page

• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music… Jules Taylor, "Working People" Theme Song

Studio Production: Max Alvarez Post-Production: Jules Taylor

The student encampment movement last school year turned institutions of higher education into flashpoints of struggle over Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, US support for it, and the right to speak out against it. This year, college and university campuses have become laboratories of repression where different administrative efforts to silence Palestine solidarity and antiwar demonstrators are being deployed. And that is playing out right now at Cornell University.

As Aaron Fernando writes at The Nation, "Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, has taken disciplinary action against an international student that will likely force him to leave the country, and could have a chilling effect on other international students participating in political protests.

Momodou Taal is a PhD candidate in Africana studies and a graduate student worker, attending Cornell under the F-1 visa program. In the last academic year, Taal joined student-led actions demanding that Cornell divest from industries complicit in Israel's attacks on civilians in Gaza."

The Cornell grad worker union, Cornell Graduate Students United-UE, released a statement condemning the university's disciplinary actions against Taal, and is demanding the administration bargain with the union "over the effects of the discipline administered to Taal." "CGSU-UE condemns Taal's suspension, which represents a disturbing pattern of discriminatory discipline against marginalized graduate workers. The union is still fighting for just cause protections in discipline and discharge, due process for academic evaluations, strong academic freedom, and nondiscrimination protections inclusive of political affiliation and action, religious practice, and caste." In this urgent episode, Max speaks about Cornell's actions against Taal with two members of the CGSU-UE bargaining committee: Jenna Marvin, a third-year PhD student in the History of Art & Visual Studies at Cornell; and Jawuanna McAllister, a sixth-year PhD candidate in Molecular Biology and Genetics at Cornell.

Additional links/info below…

• Cornell Graduate Students United-UE website and Instagram

• Petition: "UE Local 300 Member Facing Firing and Deportation for Exercising Free Speech"

• Call for other grad unions to sign "Solidarity Statement of Support for Momodou Taal"

• Aaron Fernando, The Nation, "A Cornell graduate student faces deportation after a pro-Palestine action"

• Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, "Cornell grad student who attended pro-Palestine protest could be forced to leave U.S."

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!

• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page

• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page

• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music… Jules Taylor, "Working People" Theme Song

Studio Production: Max Alvarez Post-Production: Jules Taylor

As the climate crisis intensifies, billions of poor and working people around the world are suffering from lack of regular (or any) access to clean water, but the dawn of "AI" is about to make the problem much worse. In their recent report for Context, "Forget jobs—AI is coming for your water," Diana Baptista and Fintan McDonnell write, "Artificial intelligence lives on power and water, fed to it in vast quantities by data centres around the world. And those centres are increasingly located in the global south." In Colón, a municipality in Central Mexico that is home to Microsoft's first hyperscale data center campus in the country, working people are already bearing the environmental costs of man-made climate change, and they will be the ones to bear the costs of AI and Big Tech. "The town of 67,000 is suffering extreme drought. Its two dams have nearly dried up, farmers are struggling with dead crops, and families are relying on trucked and bottled water to fulfill their daily needs." In the latest installment of our ongoing series, Sacrificed, Max speaks with Diana Baptista, a data journalist at the Thomson Reuters Foundation based in Mexico City, about Mexico's ongoing water crisis and about the human and environmental costs of AI and cloud computing.

Additional links/info below…

• Diana's Context author page and X page

• Fintan McDonnell & Diana Baptista, Context, "Forget jobs. AI is coming for your water (Video Report)"

• Fintan McDonnell & Diana Baptista, Context, "Thirsty data centres spring up in water-poor Mexican town (Text Report)"

• David Berreby, Yale Environment 360, "As use of A.I. soars, so does the energy and water it requires"

• Tamara Pearson, The Real News Network, "Indigenous Mexicans risk their lives to defend the environment from organized crime and 'insatiable, predatory' transnational corporations"

• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, "In Brazil, the climate crisis is already turning working people into climate refugees"

• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, "East Palestine residents have been left behind—and they're running out of water"

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!

• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page

• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page

• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music… Jules Taylor, "Working People" Theme Song

Studio Production: Max Alvarez Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Two years ago, workers from several different Trader Joe's grocery stores joined the wave of unionization efforts spreading across the country. Workers in Hadley, Massachusetts, made history in 2022 by not only becoming the first Trader Joe's store to vote to unionize but also by opting to form an independent union, Trader Joe's United (TJU). However, like with Starbucks, Amazon, Medieval Times, and other companies where workers have been exercising their right to organize in recent years, rampant union busting has been part of the Trader Joe's story from the beginning. What's worse, as Alex Press writes in Jacobin, rather than be compelled to follow the law and play by the rules, the supposedly progressive grocery chain has joined Elon Musk's SpaceX in attacking the very constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board. What is the current state of the union drive at Trader Joe's? What issues are employees ("crew members") still dealing with on the job, and what can supporters do to help? In this episode, Max speaks with Alec Plant, a worker organizer at the Lincoln and Grace Trader Joe's in Chicago and a member of Trader Joe's United.

Additional links/info below…

• Trader Joe's United website, Twitter/X page, and Instagram

• Lauren Kaori Gurley, The Washington Post, "As Chicago Trader Joe's votes on unionizing, grocer fights other efforts"

• Alex Press, Jacobin, "Trader Joe's rejects the New Deal"

• Dave Jameison, HuffPost, "Trader Joe's threatened workers ahead of union vote, feds allege"

• Talia Soglin, Chicago Tribune, "Workers at North Center Trader Joe's are first in Chicago to file for union election"

• Steven Greenhouse, The New Republic, "How corporations crush new unions"

• Steven Greenhouse, The Guardian, "Major US corporations threaten to return labor to 'law of the jungle'"

• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, "Want to unionize your workplace? These worker-organizers have some advice"

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!

• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page

• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page

• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music… Jules Taylor, "Working People" Theme Song

Studio Production: Max Alvarez Post-Production: Jules Taylor

While Max was inside the Labor Notes conference this past April, attending panels and sharing space with intelligent, hard working organizers, Mel was wandering the conference grounds outside, meeting folks and talking about the joy of being a member of the working class as they sat in the grass and ate their lunches and talked with friends, old and new. There's something to be said about the people you meet when you're sharing cigarettes outside a conference center–one such person was today's guest, adorned in UFCW buttons and sharing his poetry with Mel while they smoked together on a bench near the conference.

On this week's episode of Working People, Mel sat down with labor poet and union grocer George Fish, a wonderful man full of stories about his life and work, his experiences growing up and ultimately leaving the Catholic Church, his politics–honed through decades of life experience–and his relationship to his writing and poetry.

Additional links/info below…

• To hear more about our time at LN 2024 - check out our Dispatches from Labor Notes episode

Permanent links below...

• Working People Patreon page

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!

• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page

• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page

• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music...

• Jules Taylor, "Working People" Theme Song

The death toll in Gaza continues to climb, with conservative estimates putting the numbers of dead around 40,000, but a recent report in the British medical journal The Lancet estimates the actual death toll could be 186,000 or even higher—that's roughly 8% of Gaza's population. And with each passing day, the humanitarian crises unfolding in Gaza and the West Bank gets orders of magnitude worse. Seeing the dire situation in Palestine, seven major US labor unions collectively drafted, signed, and sent a letter to President Biden demanding that US military aid to Israel stop immediately. The letter reads, in part: "Large numbers of Palestinian civilians, many of them children, continue to be killed, reportedly often with US-manufactured bombs. Rising tensions in the region threaten to ensnare even more innocent civilians in a wider war. And the humanitarian crisis deepens by the day, with famine, mass displacement, and destruction of basic infrastructure including schools and hospitals. We have spoken directly to leaders of Palestinian trade unions who told us heart-wrenching stories of the conditions faced by working people in Gaza." In this episode, Max and Mel speak with George Waksmunski, president of the United Electrical, Radio, & Machine Workers of America (UE), Eastern Region, and Brandon Mancilla, Region 9A Director for the United Auto Workers, about why their unions signed onto this call for an end to US aid to Israel and what organized labor can do to end the genocide in Gaza.

Additional links/info below…

• UAW website, Facebook page, Twitter/X page, and Instagram

• UE website, Facebook page, Twitter/X page, and Instagram

• Michael Sainato, The Guardian, "Seven major US labor unions call on Biden to 'shut off military aid to Israel'"

• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "UAW endorses Harris, but won't stop fighting for ceasefire in Gaza"

• Mel Buer, The Real News Network, "Organized labor shows up for Palestine"

• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "Labor organizers explain why they're marching on DC for Palestine"

• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, "Tortured Palestinian activist describes military and settler carnage in the West Bank"

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!

• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page

• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page

• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music… Jules Taylor, "Working People" Theme Song

Studio Production: Max Alvarez Post-Production: Jules Taylor

In 2024, Working People officially crossed the 300 episode mark! Since we published our first episode back in 2018, the show has grown in ways we never could have imagined, and the world itself has changed in radical, hopeful, terrifying ways, the labor movement has undergone incredible changes, and we've done our best to document that change and this moment in history through the conversations we've had with workers across industries, from all walks of life, about their lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles.

Over the past seven seasons of the show, we've interviewed working people, young, old, and middle-aged, union and non-union, worker-owners at worker cooperatives, workers who were just laid off, workers on strike, workers unionizing, families of workers who were killed by their jobs, Indigenous workers living on reservations, workers whose children were murdered in a school shooting, sex workers, academic workers, manufacturing workers, railroad and airline workers, educators, yoga instructors and professional massage therapists, social workers, baristas, journalists, healthcare workers, service workers, construction workers, coal miners, lumberjacks, Amazon workers. We've spoken with working people in Cuba, Canada, Brazil, Slovenia, Turkey, Myanmar, the UK, France, and more. In this special episode commemorating 300 episodes of Working People, Max and new cohost Mel Buer reflect on how far the show has come and where we're going next.

To all of our listeners and supporters, to those who have been with us since the beginning and to those who found the show at some point over the past 7 seasons, to everyone who has ever listened to the show, shared our episodes, donated to our Patreon, to everyone who ever reached out to remind us that someone was listening and encouraged us to keep going, to everyone who has supported us , THANK YOU. We love you, and we wouldn't be here without you. We hope to keep making you and all our fellow workers proud with this show, and it's an honor to be in this struggle with you.

Additional links/info below…

• Maximillian Alvarez, Current Affairs, "Can the Working Class Speak?"

• Working People, "Jesus Alvarez" (the first episode)

• Mel Buer's TRNN Author Page and Twitter/X profile

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!

Permanent links below...

• Working People Patreon page

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!

• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page

• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page

• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music...

• Jules Taylor, "Working People" Theme Song