The Labor Notes Podcast

We bet that when you’re watching Valentine’s classics like Mamma Mia, Wuthering Heights, or The Princess Bride, you’re thinking not just about yearning, intrigue and some very gloomy hills, but also about collective action, the campaign mountain, and building power from the ground-up!   If not, here are some classic Labor Notes pieces to get you falling in love with your union all over again:  Don’t Complain, Organize!   Info Requests Can Cool an Overzealous Boss!  Slingshot: Take the High Road Taking Bottom-Up Action Changes the Balance of Power

More than 75,000 people, including teachers, food service workers, Uber drivers and many others marched through downtown Minneapolis on January 23, where federal agents have staged a military occupation in the Twin Cities since December.  The march was part of a day of action in Minnesota, and the culmination of a call for “No Work. No School. No Shopping,” by unions, houses of worship and other civic organizations. For many who participated, it was a foray into flexing economic disruption muscle, and an escalation from large demonstrations like “No Kings,” which have drawn millions to the streets. Joining this episode are Labor Notes staffers Luis Feliz Leon and Diana Varenik, who were there with workers in Minneapolis on January 23 and that weekend. Read Luis’ dispatch from Minneapolis: In the Twin Cities, A Massive Strike Against ICE

More than a million workers across the manufacturing, telecomms, health care, grocery, higher education and other sectors will be taking on their bosses in major contract expiration fights this year. These campaigns are an opportunity for rank-and-file workers to build power on the shop floor and in their unions. They can also help workers strengthen connections across the labor movement to fight existential threats in this new era of deadly immigration raids and billionaire assaults against workers and the public sector. Labor Notes organizer Keith Brower Brown joins pod co-hosts Danielle Smith and Natascha Elena Uhlmann. Keith and Natascha wrote the piece, One Battle After Another: The Big Contract Fights Coming in 2026.

Thousands of nurses, members of the New York State Nurses Association, are heading toward the third week of their open-ended strike, an uncommon strategy among nurses and a rare show of organized strength and resolve. They’re defending the safe staffing ratios that nurses have fought hard for and won through prior strikes; they’re fighting for better conditions for patients at underfunded hospitals like Montefiore in the Bronx; they’re demanding better protocols against workplace violence; and they’re fighting to make sure that management won’t just recklessly force the use of A.I. to replace the medical judgement of skilled and experienced human nurses. Read Labor Notes' coverage this month of the NYSNA strike.  Follow us on Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter for labor news updates! 

The documentary Partners: How Starbucks Baristas Started a Labor Revolution charts the seemingly improbable course set off by a group of workers in Buffalo, New York, who organized the first Starbucks location in 2021 and helped to grow a highly visible, energetic movement. The film casts Starbucks workers as a symbol of persistence in the face of vicious union-busting, and projects hope for renewed militancy among rank-and-file workers everywhere. Director Chris Sessions and Andy Myers from Working Films join pod co-hosts Danielle Smith and Natascha Elena Uhlmann. Support Striking Baristas!  1. Organize a screening of "Partners" in your community! Learn more: https://www.partnersthefilm.com/   2. Sign the "No Contract, No Coffee" pledge and don't buy from Starbucks during the strike: nocontractnocoffee.org   3. Contribute to the Starbucks Workers United national strike fund.   Check out our previous episode on the SBWU strike from November, featuring barista Sabina Aguirre and Labor Notes editor Jenny Brown.

Listen here to part 3 of our webinar in November with Haymarket Books and The American Prospect, featuring contributors to our Roundtable Series on how unions can defend worker power under Trump 2.0. You can read all the articles in the series here! Hear perspectives from Baltimore Teachers Union President Diamonté Brown, Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jackson Potter, and UAW Region 9A Director Brandon Mancilla. This webinar was co-moderated by pod co-host Natascha and David Dayen from The American Prospect. Listen to Part 1 here.  Listen to Part 2 here. 

Making new year’s resolutions we can actually keep *and* working on rebuilding the labor movement? That’s two birds with one handful of birdseed, as our gentle-hearted editor Al Bradbury would say. What would other Labor Notes staff say? Tune in to hear their voice note resolutions!  And if you too are going into the new year with a fresh sense of resolve and vigor—and maybe more than a few battle scars—you're not alone, and we want to hear from you!  Send us your resolutions, organizing questions, and even your holiday movie organizing takes, and we’ll try to tackle them on air! You can record a voice note on your phone or computer and email it to podcast@labornotes.org.

What do a "Charlie Brown Christmas," "Love Actually," "Little Women" and many of your other holiday faves have in common? We at the Labor Notes pod have played them backwards to decipher their coded organizing messages. 

You can count cards, mute your poker tells, or patiently coax the windfall out of a slot machine that someone just gave up on—but the house always wins, right?  And yet, 200 casino dealers at the Horseshoe Indianapolis Casino in Shelbyville, Indiana, just found a surefire strategy to stack their odds: solidarity. Dealer Tera Arnold joins the pod, along with our editor Al Bradbury, who reported last month on what has since become a victorious strike for union recognition, as members voted  overwhelmingly on Dec. 5 to join Teamsters Local 135.

Listen here to part 2 of our webinar last month with Haymarket Books and The American Prospect, featuring contributors to our Roundtable Series on how unions can defend worker power under Trump 2.0. You can read all the articles in the series here! Hear perspectives from Baltimore Teachers Union President Diamonté Brown, Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jackson Potter, and UAW Region 9A Director Brandon Mancilla. This webinar was co-moderated by pod co-host Natascha and David Dayen from The American Prospect. Listen to Part 1 here. 

Mail and parcel delivery workers at Canada Post, who are members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, have been bargaining for two years against an intransigent management whose stonewalling is being supported by the Canadian government.  CUPW members have mounted full on strikes twice in just the past year, and taken several other disruptive actions. Management meanwhile has largely ignored their proposals and advanced policies that would end vital services and slash jobs.  This story reflects a phenomenon of the privatization era: the rhetoric of fiscal responsibility is being used to erode affordable, quality public services, and to eliminate stable middle class jobs. And the way that CUPW members are organizing to fight back has lessons for workers everywhere.  Read the story by pod co-host and staff organizer Danielle Smith: “Canadian Postal Workers Strike Again.”

Listen here to part 1 of our webinar this month with Haymarket Books and The American Prospect, featuring contributors to our Roundtable Series on how unions can defend worker power under Trump 2.0. You can read all the articles in the series here! Hear perspectives from Baltimore Teachers Union President Diamonté Brown, Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jackson Potter and UAW Region 9A Director Brandon Mancilla. This webinar was co-moderated by pod-cohost Natascha and David Dayen from The American Prospect.

International solidarity more than just a chant. It’s how we will raise conditions for workers across borders without allowing the bosses to play us against each other.  Few things make that more explicit than the story of what auto workers in Mexico have been dealing with—from their employers, from some of their unions, and from U.S. trade policy. The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), passed in 2020, was tasked with reviewing the implementation of Mexico’s labor reforms. But those reforms have proved challenging to implement, demonstrating the limits of legal solutions to problems that ultimately call for organizing. Read the story by Labor Notes pod co-host and staff writer Natascha Elena Uhlmann: "We Can’t Bridge the U.S.-Mexico Wage Gap Without Supporting Organizing in Mexico."

As of Thursday morning, members of Starbucks Workers United were on strike in 65 stores across the U.S., a massive escalation in their fight for a first contract. They are asking customers not to buy coffee at any Starbucks location during their strike. Starbucks baristas have been in bargaining for over a year and half now, after striking regularly to get the company to the bargaining table in February 2024, as our editor Jenny Brown reported at the time. Baristas have said that they are subjected to low pay (starting at $15 to $19 an hour) that leaves them dependent on SNAP and Medicaid, and that they are dealing with dire understaffing that's led to overwork for them and long wait times for customers. Joining the pod this week are Jenny Brown, and Starbucks barista Sabina Aguirre, who works in Columbus, Ohio. Learn more about how members organized to get strike ready in Jenny’s recent piece, “Strike Captains and Practice Pickets: Starbucks Workers Aim to Bring a Contract Home.” Starbucks Workers United members are asking customers to show solidarity by:  Not crossing the picket line — don’t buy Starbucks from any of its locations during the strike. Joining a picket line near you by using the Starbucks Workers United picket line map.  Joining the allies call on Monday, November 17  Amplifying their posts on Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok, and Bluesky.  Learn more at nocontractnocoffee.org.

The current moment in the U.S.—marked by billionaire assaults on the working class, the Trump administration’s authoritarian maneuvers, and widespread voter dissatisfaction with both major political parties—presents new challenges and opportunities for the labor movement.  Rank-and-file members can and are demanding more of their leaders, and unions are being challenged to think about how they should be mobilizing their roughly 14 million members right now.  If the goal is to lift up independent working-class leaders and organizations, what should unions be doing differently to rebuild union density and democracy?   Eric Blanc, one of the contributors to the Labor Notes Roundtable series, where we have invited organizers and scholars to address that question, joins the pod to discuss his piece, “After No Kings, How Can We Escalate?” Blanc is an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University and an organizer trainer in the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee.

What can horror movies and fiction teach us about fighting back against the real life horrors of our bad bosses? Tune in to our Hallowepisode to hear about the organizing lessons we saw in the 1988 cult classic from John Carpenter, They Live, and Shirley Jackson’s 1959 pillar in the horror genre, The Haunting of Hill House. Plus, a little Stewards Corner with… Nosferatu (2024) Gulp! But don’t worry, we don’t bite.

Federal Workers organizing with the Federal Unionists Network have been using the shutdown to organize within their unions, and to push the message that workers should collectively stand firm against cuts to vital programs and executive overreach. Their actions are bringing clarity and organization to the fight at a time when leading Democrats are framing the shutdown as an inconvenience and Donald Trump as its perpetrator.  Labor Notes editor Jenny Brown joins the pod.

Employer-run safety games are not merely instructional or even “fun.” They’re there to trivialize workplace hazards and to pass the buck onto individual workers for their own safety, instead of listening to workers about how to eliminate the dangers they encounter at work every day.  Labor Notes Organizer Kari Thompson joins pod co-hosts Danielle Smith and Natascha Elena Uhlmann to talk about a Stewards’ Corner piece we ran on this topic, titled, “Workplace Safety is Not a Game.” This piece was adapted from the UE Steward, a project by the United Electrical Workers Education Department that publishes how-to articles. Browse them all at bit.ly/UESteward.

Workers at Wells Fargo are organizing the first union at a major U.S. bank—in one of the least-organized industries in the country. Labor Notes Editor Dan DiMaggio, whose story on their organizing efforts is on the cover of our October issue, joins the pod. You can also read his piece,“Wells Fargo Workers Push to Bring A Union to the Banking Industry,” on our website. Subscribe to the Labor Notes magazine by Tuesday, October 14, to start receiving it from the November issue onwards: labornotes.org/subscribe

Announcing the New Labor Notes Resource: May2028.org Are you and your co-workers organizing against attacks on our democratic rights as workers? Are you, like an estimated 250,000 workers so far, committing to heed United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain’s call for a coordinated strike? Are you already planning other ways to be part of a nationwide show of power less than three years from now? Visit May2028.org for new Labor Notes guides on organizing with your fellow union members, co-workers, and members of your community. Labor Notes organizers Luis Feliz Leon and Keith Brower Brown join the pod.