America’s Work Force Union Podcast

At Ellis Island in the early 1900s, the Bricklayers' union was advertising to arriving immigrants. The biggest selling point beyond wages was the eight-hour workday, because the workers coming over had been working 12- and 14-hour days. That was a union promise. The eight-hour workday, the 40-hour workweek and OSHA all exist because unions fought for them. Every American worker has benefited, union member or not. On today's Trades Day episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, Mechanical Insulators LMCT Executive Director Pete Ielmini discusses the LMCT's presence at the Association of Energy Engineers World Energy Conference and Expo in Orlando, where a live bare-pipe demonstration showed $300 to $400 in annual energy loss per uncovered foot and a game show format packed the room. He also updates the Federal Mechanical Insulation Act — passed in the House on the suspension calendar, four Senate co-signers and a closing legislative clock — and reflects on what the labor movement built for every worker in this country. Visit mechanicalinsulatorslmct.com for more.

He spent eight and a half years writing for Jimmy Kimmel, went on strike twice with the Writers Guild and watched a well-organized union deliver real results. Then he went to medical school, became an ER doctor at UCLA, and watched conditions worsen every year for 11 years. Now he is one of the organizers behind UC Doctors United — an effort to unionize nearly 10,000 attending physicians across the University of California system, the only group at UCLA Health currently without union protection. On today's episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, UC Doctors United organizer Dr. Jacob Lentz discusses the organizing drive, why it is about patient care and not physician pay, what his Writers Guild experience taught him about what unions actually do and how he is making the case to colleagues who have spent careers being told unions are the problem. Visit ucdoctorsunited.org for more.

A McKinsey report argued that 95% of a firm's value is produced by 5% of its workforce. An MIT professor spent years finding out what that means for the other 95%. His answer: approximately 35% of the entire US workforce is now employed with no employer intention of retaining them — building cleaners, security guards, travel nurses, freelance journalists, adjunct faculty and millions of W-2 workers in jobs their employers never intend to keep. On today's episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, MIT Sloan Professor Emeritus Paul Osterman discusses his book Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment, published by Harvard University Press in August 2026. He discusses why companies are making this shift, what AI will do to the numbers and why the evidence that unions make workers better off is clear. Book available through Harvard University Press at hup.harvard.edu.

CSX reported $3.94 billion in quarterly revenue and approximately $1 billion in quarterly net earnings. Then it notified the union it plans to cut its maintenance of way workforce by 29% and defer capital track maintenance at the same time. Nine hundred system production employees will be furloughed by November 15. Human track inspections have been reduced by 40% in the past 90 days. Workers who find defects are being pressured not to report them. Jason Graham, one of today's guests, lives near East Palestine, Ohio. On today's episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, BMWED General Chairmen Brian Thompson and Jason Graham discuss what is happening at CSX, why no other Class 1 railroad is doing this at the same scale, what deferred track maintenance actually means and what it will take to stop it. Visit bmwe.org for more.

A refinery worker responds to an eight-hour fire and is later diagnosed with PTSD. ExxonMobil does not record it as a workplace illness. OSHA cites them. The case goes to the Fifth Circuit. Three judges rule that OSHA never had authority to require mental health injury reporting in the first place — because the word illnesses in the 1970 OSHA Act might not have meant mental illness. The regulation they just invalidated has been on the books for 25 years. Congress never objected. Republican and Democratic administrations left it in place. On today's episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, labor lawyer Andrew Strom discusses what the Fifth Circuit actually decided in the ExxonMobil case, why a 25-year-old regulation can apparently be rewritten by three unelected judges, how employers nationwide use the Fifth Circuit as a destination court for challenges to labor and employment law and why OSHA should appeal to the Supreme Court but probably will not. Visit onlabor.org for more.