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Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Support the podcast on Patreon. Subscribe and rate on iTunes or on Stitcher. Tweet at @DissentMag with #Belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Check out the full archive here. Belabored is produced by Colin Kinniburgh. In recent days, Big Tech has been at the center of many disturbing controversies, from social media pandemic disinformation to the president stoking insurrection on Twitter. But in this episode, we’re focusing on a rare good news story coming out of Silicon Valley: Google workers have unionized! The Alphabet Workers Union has been long in the making, organized with the support of Communications Workers of America in the midst of many conflicts at the company over not just labor issues, but also institutionalized racism, gender discrimination, and ethical debates about artificial intelligence and the social influence of algorithms. For our 213th episode, Google sociologist and AWU member Alex Hanna joined us to talk about Google’s labor politics, how a minority union can mobilize through direct action, and the future of organizing in the tech industry.  In other news, we look at a pandemic uprising by teachers in Britain with London teacher James Kerr, delivery workers organizing across New York City with Gustavo Ajche, new research on how paid leave has helped flatten the curve with Nicholas Ziebarth, and job losses in the wake of California’s corporate-sponsored gig worker law. With recommended reading on a card check breakthrough for New Mexico’s public employees, and how worker ownership could transform post-pandemic livelihoods. We are now on Patreon! You can sign up to support us with a monthly contribution, at the level that best suits you. If you’re interested in advertising on the show, please email ads@dissentmagazine.org. And as always, if you have any questions, comments, or tips, email us at belabored@dissentmagazine.org   News Teachers’ Unions Won Big This Week. They’re Just Getting Started (Novara) National Education Union  NYC Food Delivery Workers Band to Demand Better Treatment. Will New York Listen to Los Deliveristas Unidos? (The City) Worker’s Justice Project – Proyecto Justicia Laboral Vons, Pavilions to Fire “Essential Workers,” Replace Drivers with Independent Contractors (KNOCK.LA) Albertsons ditches in-house delivery in some areas, pivots to contractors after Prop 22 (Business Insider) COVID-19 Emergency Sick Leave Has Helped Flatten The Curve In The United States (Health Affairs)   Conversation Alex Hanna, member of Alphabet Workers Union Google’s New Union Will Put an Unconventional Organizing Model to the Test (Jacobin) Google Workers Say the Endless Wait to Unionize Big Tech Is Over (In These Times) Google’s new union shows tech worker activism is getting organized (Vox)   Argh, I wish I’d written that! Sarah: C.M. Lewis, The Stunning Workers’ Victory in New Mexico That You Haven’t Heard About  (In These Times) Michelle: Osita Nwanevu, The Case for Giving Workers Ownership Rights (The New Republic) (For more on this subject, see Belabored Podcast #182: (Slowly) Seizing the Means of Production) The post Belabored: Going Union at Google appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Support the podcast on Patreon. Subscribe and rate on iTunes or on Stitcher. Tweet at @DissentMag with #Belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Check out the full archive here. Belabored is produced by Colin Kinniburgh. This past Monday, we gathered our favorite thinkers on labor and unions for a live recording of our 212th episode. With the help of Jane McAlevey, Bill Fletcher Jr., and Rebecca Dixon, we looked back on 2020, a tumultuous year for workers. Jane McAlevey is the Nation‘s strikes correspondent, an organizer, author, and scholar, and a senior policy fellow at the University of California at Berkeley’s Labor Center. Her most recent  book, A Collective Bargain, Unions, Organizing & the Fight for Democracy, is out now from HarperCollins. Bill Fletcher Jr. is the executive editor of www.globalafricanworker.com, the former president of TransAfrica Forum, and long-time writer and activist who has spent most of his adult life in the left and the trade union movement. Rebecca Dixon is executive director of the National Employment Law Project (NELP). We are now on Patreon! You can sign up to support us with a monthly contribution, at the level that best suits you. If you’re interested in advertising on the show, please email ads@dissentmagazine.org. And as always, if you have any questions, comments, or tips, email us at belabored@dissentmagazine.org Further Reading Learning to Strike and Win (Jacobin) Organizing for Power (Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung) The PRO Act Protects Worker Democracy, and That’s Good for All of Us (NELP) Will Biden Resuscitate the NLRB? (Labor Notes) Michelle: Trump’s National Labor Relations Board Is Sabotaging Its Own Mission (Nation) The post Belabored: How the Pandemic Changed Our Working Lives appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Support the podcast on Patreon. Subscribe and rate on iTunes or on Stitcher. Tweet at @DissentMag with #Belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Check out the full archive here. Belabored is produced by Colin Kinniburgh. Elections come and go, but some major problems continue to plague labor unions on both sides of the Atlantic, and many of those problems have their roots in the financialization of our economy. Yet unions are often stuck in a playbook that was written in a different period of capitalist development, and it shows in their struggles. How do unions adapt to a financialized world? Alice Martin and Annie Quick have some suggestions, and they wrote them down in an eminently readable book, Unions Renewed: Building Power in an Age of Finance. They’re our guests this week on the 211th episode of Belabored. We also look at a strike of essential workers who keep hospitals supplied and clean, another strike of nursing home workers, with Rosalind Reggans, the potential for lots of new green union jobs in offshore wind, and the pandemic’s impact on migrant workers’ rights in the Gulf, with Mustafa Qadri of Equidem. For Argh, we look at the struggles of retail workers as virus numbers spike, and a slow-burning public health crisis in a Southern town. We are now on Patreon! You can sign up to support us with a monthly contribution, at the level that best suits you. If you’re interested in advertising on the show, please email ads@dissentmagazine.org. And as always, if you have any questions, comments, or tips, email us at belabored@dissentmagazine.org   News Laundry, Distribution, and Food Service Joint Board, Workers United/SEIU SEIU-Backed Workers Plan Strike in Perth Amboy (New Jersey Globe) Nearly 700 nursing home workers strike for hazard pay, better conditions at Infinity centers (Chicago Sun-Times) Nearly 700 nursing home workers walk off job, begin strike in fight for better wages, hazard pay, PPE (ABC 7) Ørsted strikes deal with labor union on U.S. offshore wind development (Reuters) North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) and Ørsted Sign Landmark MOU for U.S. Offshore Wind Workforce Transition The cost of contagion: the human rights impacts of COVID-19 on migrant workers in the Gulf region   Conversation Unions Renewed: Building Power in an Age of Finance by Alice Martin and Annie Quick Martin and Quick: Our Financialised Care System is Built on a House of Cards – We Urgently Need to Rebuild It (Novara) Replacing rentier capitalism is one of the defining challenges of our age (openDemocracy) Martin and Quick: Solidarity is in the Details: Unions Adapt to a COVID-19 World (Democratic Left)   Argh, I wish I’d written that! Sarah: Michael Corkery and Sapna Maheshwari, Virus Cases Rise, but Hazard Pay for Retail Workers Doesn’t (New York Times) Michelle: Alexis Okeowo, The Heavy Toll of the Black Belt’s Wastewater Crisis (New Yorker) The post Belabored: Renewing Unions in the Age of Finance, with Alice Martin and Annie Quick appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Support the podcast on Patreon. Subscribe and rate on iTunes or on Stitcher. Tweet at @DissentMag with #Belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Check out the full archive here. Belabored is produced by Colin Kinniburgh. Election Day has finally come and gone, and we’re going to take stock of the aftermath. While the presidential race ended with a narrow victory for the Democrats, the electorate revealed how sharply divided it was. And traditional labels like “union voter” no longer provide a coherent framework for analyzing the politics of working people. There were some notable labor victories at the ballot box. Florida voted to increase the state minimum wage to $15 an hour; in Colorado voters said yes to paid family and medical leave; and in Arizona, teachers helped push through a measure to generate fresh revenue for public education through a tax on rich households. But voters also gave Uber and Lyft the greenlight to make rideshare and delivery drivers second-class workers. We discuss what these outcomes mean with Stephanie Luce (who last joined us for a post-election analysis in 2016) of the School of Labor and Urban Studies at the City University of New York, Joe Thomas of the Arizona Education Association, and Geoconda Argüello-Kline of UNITE HERE. In other news, we cover ballot initiatives with Nicole Moore of Rideshare Drivers United, the plight of unionized nonprofit workers with Kayla Blado of the Nonprofit Professionals Employee Union, mobilizing to get out Pennsylvania voters, and standing up for Philadelphia nurses. With recommended reading on the the “sacrificial” victims of the COVID-19 crisis and the inadequacy of voting out Trump. We are now on Patreon! You can sign up to support us with a monthly contribution, at the level that best suits you. If you’re interested in advertising on the show, please email ads@dissentmagazine.org. And as always, if you have any questions, comments, or tips, email us at belabored@dissentmagazine.org   News Ballot Measures: Mixed Results for Workers (Labor Notes) Support The Democracy Collaborative Workers’ Union in their layoff negotiations A difficult but necessary time at TDC: The truth about our reorganization PA Stands Up At least 1,500 nurses in the Philadelphia area may be on the verge of going on strike (CNN) PASNAP   Conversation Viewpoint: This Election Shows Labor’s Ground Game Matters (Especially During a Pandemic) (Labor Notes) Arizona Proposition 208, Tax on Incomes Exceeding $250,000 for Teacher Salaries and Schools Initiative (2020) Michelle: A Blow for Labor Rights in California (Dissent)    Argh, I wish I’d written that! Michelle: Sarah Jones, COVID Took My Grandfather. But It Wasn’t What Killed Him (New York Magazine) Sarah: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Voting Trump Out Is Not Enough (New Yorker)  The post Belabored: Labor at the Ballot Box appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Support the podcast on Patreon. Subscribe and rate on iTunes or on Stitcher. Tweet at @DissentMag with #Belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Check out the full archive here. Belabored is produced by Colin Kinniburgh. Donald Trump won the presidency on naked white nationalist appeals to the worst in America; that is absolutely true. But four years ago he also ran on a message of hope: he promised to bring industrial jobs back to the places that had been shedding them for years. We followed up with some of the workers and union leaders from some of those plants to see what the feeling is. As Trump and Pence bluster about saving jobs, about Carrier and Lordstown “booming,” what’s it really like? We spoke with Chuck Jones, formerly president of United Steelworkers Local 1999 in Indianapolis, which represents workers at Carrier and  Rexnord, Shannon Mulcahy, a former Rexnord worker and now an activist with Our Revolution, and Tim O’Hara, former president of United Autoworkers Local 1112 in Ohio and former Lordstown autoworker. We also look in at a co-op of cafe workers with barista activist Matthew Soliz of Slow Bloom and the potential for foster parents to unionize. Before the election, we discuss the latest on Uber and Lyft and California’s Proposition 22 with Nicole Moore of Rideshare Drivers United, and some thoughts from some friends of the show on what happens if there’s an attempt to steal the election. For Argh, we consider the hell that is the nursing home industry, and the struggle to parent in a pandemic. We are now on Patreon! You can sign up to support us with a monthly contribution, at the level that best suits you. If you’re interested in advertising on the show, please email ads@dissentmagazine.org. And as always, if you have any questions, comments, or tips, email us at belabored@dissentmagazine.org   News Coffee Workers Form Worker Co-Op in the Wake of Mass Firings (UE) Massachusetts Foster Parents Could Be First To Unionize (CBS Boston) Uber can continue to push pro-Prop 22 messages at drivers in its app, court says (The Verge) Ballotpedia, Proposition 22 (Ballotpedia) Getting Out of Tight Corners (The New York Review of Books) Unions are Beginning to Talk About Staving Off a Possible Coup (Labor Notes)   Conversation Sarah: Despite Trump’s ‘Jobs, Jobs, Jobs’ Bluster, the Rust Belt Is Still Reeling from Plant Closures (The Progressive) Sarah: The Last Stand in Lordstown (The New Republic) Sarah: The Road Not Taken (The New Republic) Sarah: Back at the Carrier Plant, Workers are Still Fighting On Their Own (The Nation)   Argh, I wish I’d written that! Sarah: Maureen Tkacik, “The Corporatization of Nursing Homes” (The American Prospect) Michelle: Hadas Thier, “Parenting Is a Job. During the Pandemic, It’s Impossible.” (Jacobin) The post Belabored: Trump’s Broken Promises appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Support the podcast on Patreon. Subscribe and rate on iTunes or on Stitcher. Tweet at @DissentMag with #Belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Check out the full archive here. Belabored is produced by Colin Kinniburgh. Six months into the COVID-19 crisis and the economic lockdown, millions of workers are still left behind. The pandemic relief package that’s currently languishing in the Senate excludes millions of workers, including undocumented immigrants, as well as many other types of workers who do not qualify under the criteria for federal and state aid schemes—perhaps because they are formerly incarcerated, or because they worked off the books. Community and labor groups have been campaigning for equal benefits for excluded workers, particularly since so many are working low-wage jobs that leave them especially at risk of getting sick or losing their jobs. Although California has managed to provide some relief for undocumented workers, New York has so far failed to pass a similar measure. The National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) held a rally in New York on Indigenous People’s Day, calling on Governor Andrew Cuomo to support relief legislation that would cover excluded workers, to offer benefits parallel to the pandemic unemployment assistance other workers have received. We speak with Nadia Marin-Molina, co-executive director of NDLON, about the grassroots push to include the excluded, not just during the pandemic, but across the economy and public benefits system. In other news, we cover layoffs at the New School, Dr. David Michaels on the failures of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under Trump, mourning workers in Minnesota, and Bay Area hospital workers on strike. With recommended reading on a Kafkaesque customer service job scheme and Trump’s trickle-down economics. We are now on Patreon! You can sign up to support us with a monthly contribution, at the level that best suits you. If you’re interested in advertising on the show, please email ads@dissentmagazine.org. And as always, if you have any questions, comments, or tips, email us at belabored@dissentmagazine.org   News The New School University Student Senate Addresses University Decision to Lay Off 122 Staff Members (New School Free Press) Halting Workplace COVID-19 Transmission: An Urgent Proposal to Protect American Workers (The Century Foundation) Remembering Those Who’ve Died of COVID-19 (CBS Minnesota) Understaffed and Unsafe, Bay Area Hospital Workers Strike (Labor Notes) East Bay Health Care Workers Strike Forces County to Disband the Boss (Labor Notes)   Conversation Nadia Marin-Molina, Co-Executive Director, National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) #FundExcludedWorkers   Argh, I wish I’d written that! Michelle: Ken Armstrong, Justin Elliott and Ariana Tobin, Meet the Customer Service Reps for Disney and Airbnb Who Have to Pay to Talk to You (ProPublica) Sarah: Daniel Marans, Trump Promised A Break With GOP Trickle-Down Economics. He Delivered More Of The Same. (Huffington Post)   The post Belabored: Essential but Excluded, with Nadia Marin-Molina appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Support the podcast on Patreon. Subscribe and rate on iTunes or on Stitcher. Tweet at @DissentMag with #Belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Check out the full archive here. Belabored is produced by Colin Kinniburgh. With the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, we have seen what the Republican party’s priorities are: putting lifetime appointees on the Supreme Court who can further dismantle workers’ rights, abortion rights, and every other kind of right we count on. What they don’t seem to care about is the millions of people still unemployed and struggling to pay the bills without expanded unemployment benefits. The Democrats in the House have introduced a new HEROES Act and are pushing for quick passage, but what are its odds of passing? We speak to Rebecca Dixon, executive director of the National Employment Law Project and unemployment insurance expert, about what’s happening. We also look at the latest relief plan in the UK with economist James Meadway, a new study on manufacturing workers’ struggles in the Midwest, a fight for fair pay for garment workers, and gig workers getting the benefit of Seattle’s hazard pay law. For Argh, we consider the ongoing struggles of postal workers against attempts to dismantle the USPS, and the ways employers are spying on employees even while they work from home. We are now on Patreon! You can sign up to support us with a monthly contribution, at the level that best suits you. If you’re interested in advertising on the show, please email ads@dissentmagazine.org. And as always, if you have any questions, comments, or tips, email us at belabored@dissentmagazine.org   News Promises unfulfilled: Manufacturing in the Midwest Clean Clothes Campaign: Garment workers and the pandemic DoorDash and Postmates Pay Out More Than $350,000 to Seattle Gig Workers Due to Hazard Pay Law James Meadway: The Tories’ New Support Scheme Shows They’re Adapting to Our New Reality. The Left Must Do the Same   Conversation $2.2 trillion HEROES Act would provide second round of stimulus checks https://unemployedact.com/  Long Lines for Unemployment; How Did We Get Here and What Do We Do Now? Closing Doors on the Unemployed: Why Most Jobless Workers Are Not Receiving Unemployment Insurance and What States Can Do About It Unemployed Workers and Benefit ‘Replacement Rate’: An Expanded Analysis VIDEO: Why the U.S. Unemployment System is Failing The covid-19 recession is the most unequal in modern U.S. history   Argh, I wish I’d written that! Michelle: Steven Hill, In These Times, Employers Are Spying on Remote Workers in Their Homes Sarah: Jacob Bogage, Washington Post, Postal Service workers quietly resist DeJoy’s changes with eye on election   The post Belabored: The Senate Fiddles While America Burns, with Rebecca Dixon appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Support the podcast on Patreon. Subscribe and rate on iTunes or on Stitcher. Tweet at @DissentMag with #Belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Check out the full archive here. Belabored is produced by Colin Kinniburgh. School’s back in session across the country—or is it? September was supposed to herald a partial return to normalcy for communities that have been ruptured by the pandemic, as college students returned to campus and children resumed in-person classes. But city after city has been forced to walk back plans for reopening brick-and-mortar instruction. And colleges that have attempted to start the semester with students on campus have been wracked with anxiety, as administrators try in vain to contain outbreaks and restrict social activities. We talked to three educational workers about school reopening, and their struggle to protect their health and that of their students: Erin Markiewitz, Vice President of GEO, the Graduate Employees’ Organization at the University of Michigan, talks about the graduate workers’ decision to strike earlier this month, which triggered a legal attack from the administration; Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, discusses the lawsuit the teachers filed against the state’s plan to resume in-person instruction statewide; and Annie Tan, a special education teacher and member of the MORE Caucus in New York City, explains why educators like her are nervous and frustrated about Mayor Bill De Blasio’s haphazard school reopening plan. In other news, we look at how the West Coast wildfires are affecting farmworkers; a strike at the Tate London; Heidi Shierholz of Economic Policy Institute on a legal defeat for a regressive Labor Department rule; and a nonprofit unionization streak, with Kayla Blado and Katie Barrows of the Nonprofit Professional Employees Union. With recommended reading on workplace safety in the midst of a pandemic, and why urban homesteaders are rebranding tenant farming. We are now on Patreon! You can sign up to support us with a monthly contribution, at the level that best suits you. If you’re interested in advertising on the show, please email ads@dissentmagazine.org. And as always, if you have any questions, comments, or tips, email us at belabored@dissentmagazine.org   News Wildfires Make Dangerous Air For Farmworkers: ‘It’s Like You Can’t Breathe’ (NPR) Michelle: No Sanctuary in Fire-Stricken California’s Immigrant Communities (The Nation) NY Court Strikes Down Significant Portions of DOL’s Final Rule Defining Joint Employment Scenarios Under FLSA (JD Supra) EPI applauds judge’s decision on joint-employer rule: Trump’s rule would have cost workers more than $1 billion annually (EPI) ‘It’s All Performative, They Don’t Care’: Why Tate Workers Are Going on Strike (Novara) Tateunited.com Sarah: Nonprofit Workers Join the Movement to Unionize (Progressive) Nonprofit Professional Employees Union   Conversation University of Michigan Graduate Employees’ Organization Vice President Erin Markiewitz Graduate employees reach deal with University of Michigan to end strike (MLive) Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO) Florida Education Association President Andrew Spar Judge sides with Florida’s largest teachers’ union in school reopening lawsuit against state  (WTSP) Annie Tan, special education teacher, member of Movement of Rank and File Educators I’m a Teacher in New York. I’m Doing My Job by Fighting an Unsafe Reopening. (New Republic) Note: Shortly after we interviewed Annie Tan, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio announced an updated, “staggered” schedule for the return to school, so most students would begin their classes virtually rather than in person on Monday, September 21. Middle and high school students are now due to return on October 1. Sarah: Teachers Fight for Their Lives and the Future of Public Education (Rethinking Schools)   Argh, I wish I’d written that! Sarah: Kevin Reuning, OSHA complaints show workplace safety is still a concern as the economy reopens (Strikewave) Michelle: Nick Martin, The New York Times Discovers a Manhattan Makeover for Nu-Tenant Farming (New Republic) The post Belabored: Is it Safe to Go Back to School? appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Last week, beginning with the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks, a strike wave spread across professional sports as athletes chose not to play in order to express solidarity with victims of racist violence. The strikes may have been short-lived, but they made a huge impact, disrupting the pretense of normalcy that sports entertainment normally helps viewers create. We talk to sports reporter and author Dave Zirin about why the athletic strikes were so important, and why the media can’t seem to understand them as strikes. We also look in on the latest around New York City teachers’ strike threat with Ronnie Almonte of the MORE Caucus (and partner of Dissent‘s publishing director Flynn Murray), what farmworkers are facing under COVID-19 with Mily Trevino-Saucedo and María De Luna of  Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, the university workers that often get forgotten, and ask Dania Rajendra why Amazon is hiring spies. For Argh, we consider the police union and whether it is in fact a union, and question whether organizing without organizing is actually possible. We are now on Patreon! You can sign up to support us with a monthly contribution, at the level that best suits you. If you’re interested in advertising on the show, please email ads@dissentmagazine.org. And as always, if you have any questions, comments, or tips, email us at belabored@dissentmagazine.org.   News New York City Delays Start of School to Ready for In-Person Classes (New York Times) Workers, Small Farmers and Communities of Color Especially Vulnerable Unless Congress Acts (Ms.) Amazon Is Hiring an Intelligence Analyst to Track ‘Labour Organising Threats’ (Vice) UNC housekeepers speak out: ‘They don’t give a damn about us’ (Prism)   Conversation Dave Zirin Dave: The Milwaukee Bucks and Brewers Strike for Racial Justice (The Nation) Dave: Professional Athletes Are Showing America Just How Powerful Labor Really Is (The Nation) Dave: The Sports Strikes Against Racism Have Not Been Coopted (The Nation) Sterling Brown: Your Money Can’t Silence Me (The Players’ Tribune) Sarah: Don’t Call It a Boycott: NBA Players Are Inspiring a Strike Wave (The Progressive)   Argh, I wish I’d written that! Sarah: Eve Ewing, Blue Bloods: America’s Brotherhood of Police Officers (Vanity Fair) Michelle: Marianne Garneau and Lexi Owens, Between Scylla and Charybdis (Organizing Work) The post Belabored Podcast #205: Wildcat Sports Strike Wave, with Dave Zirin appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Support the podcast on Patreon. Subscribe and rate on iTunes or on Stitcher. Tweet at @DissentMag with #Belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Check out the full archive here. Belabored is produced by Colin Kinniburgh. The United States Postal Service seems to be in a chronic state of crisis. But for the past few weeks it’s been at the center of a new political firestorm, as public fear rises over potential disruptions to mail-in voting in the lead-up to the election. Trump’s newly appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has been working to overhaul the postal service in the name of “efficiency,” and many fear that he is fulfilling a longstanding conservative goal of destroying and ultimately privatizing the postal service. While Trump falsely claims mail-in balloting will lead to widespread voter fraud, DeJoy provoked outrage with aggressive reforms at the agency, including the mysterious disappearance of mailboxes and mail sorting machines from many communities nationwide. Though DeJoy walked back his reform plans earlier this week, lawmakers and labor advocates are skeptical. We talk to three postal workers in Washington, DC; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Portland, Oregon about what’s happening to our mail and the workers who handle it at this most beloved of federal agencies. In other news, we look at a fast food worker strike at Bojangles, a strike that almost happened at Detroit nursing homes, the reinstatement of graduate wildcat strikers at University of California Santa Cruz, and a British sandwich-maker’s sad sick pay policy.  We are now on Patreon! You can sign up to support us with a monthly contribution, at the level that best suits you. If you’re interested in advertising on the show, please email ads@dissentmagazine.org. And as always, if you have any questions, comments, or tips, email us at belabored@dissentmagazine.org.   News Fast food workers continue strike over restaurant’s handling of COVID-19 (ABC News) Metro Detroit nursing home workers delay strike planned for Monday (Detroit Free Press) Makers of M&S sandwiches faced pay dock if they self-isolated, says union (The Guardian) UC Santa Cruz Reinstates 41 Fired Grad Students (Inside Higher Ed) UC Santa Cruz Reinstates 41 Graduate Students After Months-Long Strike (Vice)   Conversation Alex Fields, mail carrier in Knoxville, Tennessee Arrion Brown, facilities maintenance technician in Washington, DC Larry Guarnero, clerk in Portland, Oregon and steward for the American Postal Workers Union USPS Suspends Changes After Outcry Over Delivery Slowdown (New York Times) ‘Postmaster DeLay’ Takes One Step Back amid Media Scrutiny, Public Protest, and Worker Resistance (Labor Notes) Michelle: Postal Workers Want Investment and Hazard Pay (Dissent)   Argh, I wish I’d written that! Michelle: Shoshana Walter, American Rehab Chapter 8: Shadow Workforce, (Reveal) Sarah: Barbara Madeloni, Educators Demand Virtual Schools as ‘Least Bad’ but Safe Option, (Labor Notes) The post Belabored Podcast #204: Protect the Post Office appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Support the podcast on Patreon. Subscribe and rate on iTunes or on Stitcher. Tweet at @DissentMag with #Belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Check out the full archive here. Belabored is produced by Colin Kinniburgh. The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic saw governments around the world experimenting with ways to pay people to stay home, from the $1,200 stimulus check sent out by the U.S. government to the UK’s furlough scheme to more direct basic income-style programs. Now, as some of those programs wind down—even as the pandemic is far from over—what have we learned about what happens when the government just, well, gives people money? Our guest this week is Barb Jacobson from the Basic Income UK network, a longtime organizer and advocate for universal income.  We also talk with New York teacher Kevin Prosen about the fight over reopening schools, and a breakthrough union vote for California childcare workers. We look at the battle over renewing expanded unemployment benefits, and the latest from Uber drivers battling misclassification. And for Argh, we consider organizing the unemployed and who has a right to the suburbs.  We are now on Patreon! You can sign up to support us with a monthly contribution, at the level that best suits you. If you’re interested in advertising on the show, please email ads@dissentmagazine.org. And as always, if you have any questions, comments, or tips, email us at belabored@dissentmagazine.org.   News Sarah: How the New York City School System Failed the Test of Covid-19 (The Nation) Full Steam Ahead on Reopening Schools? No Way, Say Teachers (Labor Notes) Chicago Public Schools will go fully remote to start the fall (Chicago Sun Times) California family child care providers vote to join union (EdSource) California labor commissioner sues Uber and Lyft, alleging wage theft (LA Times) We Drive Progress Wave of evictions expected as moratoriums end in many states (AP) Why a Relief Bill is so Elusive This Time (The American Prospect)   Conversation Basic Income UK Barb Jacobson on Patreon Barb Jacobson, Coronavirus and Universal Basic Income: Inoculating against the virus of insecurity (The Canary) UBI Lab Network Basic Income Conversation Citizen’s Basic Income Trust Basic Income Earth Network Income Movement Action for a “people’s stimulus” Basic Income March (September 19) US Basic Income Guarantee   Argh, I wish I’d written that! Sarah: Jake Douglas and Ben Reynolds, ‘We Feed You, Don’t Let Us Starve’: Restaurant Workers Mobilize to Extend Unemployment Benefits (Labor Notes) Michelle: Richard Kahlenberg, The Low-Wage Mothers of Color Who Want to Become Suburban Moms (The American Prospect) The post Belabored Podcast #203: What the Pandemic Taught Us About Basic Income, with Barb Jacobson appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Support the podcast on Patreon. Subscribe and rate on iTunes or on Stitcher. Tweet at @DissentMag with #Belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Check out the full archive here. Belabored is produced by Colin Kinniburgh. On July 20, people across the country walked off the job, shared a moment of silence, and rallied in the streets, as part of the Strike for Black Lives, a labor mobilization to support Black Lives Matter. Although labor groups have participated variously in the nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism since May, the Strike for Black Lives was a coordinated initiative of about sixty labor organizations and other social justice groups. We spoke with three workers who participated in actions in their communities: nursing home worker Trece Andrews, fast food worker Adriana Alvarez, and adjunct professor Constance Lee. In other news, we look at a campaign to unionize employees of the Scholars Strategy Network; new research reveals the psychological impacts of working from home; AFL-CIO General Counsel Craig Becker discusses a move by the National Labor Relations Board to crush a Depression Era protection for unions; and Saru Jayaraman of One Fair Wage talks about the stunning pay disparities among tipped restaurant workers in the pandemic era. With recommended reading on the history of racism in the labor movement, and how bosses and politicians are conspiring to force workers back to dangerous workplaces. We are now on Patreon! You can sign up to support us with a monthly contribution, at the level that best suits you. If you’re interested in advertising on the show, please email ads@dissentmagazine.org. And as always, if you have any questions, comments, or tips, email us at belabored@dissentmagazine.org.   News A Persistent Legacy of Slavery: Ending the Subminimum Wage for Tipped Workers in New York as a Racial Equity Measure (One Fair Wage, UC Berkeley Food Labor Research Center) Pro-Democracy Nonprofit Scholars Strategy Network Hires Union-Busting Law Firm to Fight Staff Union (NPEU) NLRB to review petition to decertify union at Mountaire plant (Delaware State News) Trump’s Labor Board Eyes Striking Down FDR-Era Union Protection (The Young Turks) We’re working an extra ’28 hours per month’ in lockdown (Metro)   Conversation Strike for Black Lives Essential Workers Hold Walkouts And Protests In National ‘Strike For Black Lives’ (NPR)   Argh, I wish I’d written that! Sarah: Bill Fletcher Jr., Race Is About More Than Discrimination (Monthly Review) Michelle: David Sirota, Republicans are forcing Americans to return to dangerous workplaces (Guardian) The post Belabored Podcast #202: The Strike for Black Lives appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Trump's recent proclamation temporarily bans guestworkers from coming to the United States, but what does it actually do? Daniel Costa of the Economic Policy Institute explains. The post Belabored Podcast #201: Trump’s Latest Migration Outrage appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

For the 200th episode of Belabored, Sarah and Michelle speak to Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Stacy Davis Gates about what it’s like to be an educator and an organizer during a pandemic and an uprising against police brutality. The post Belabored Podcast #200: Back to the Streets of Chicago appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

For a short time in 1919, the working class ran the city of Seattle. Radicals experienced intense police violence, and those deemed "outside agitators" faced deportation. The story of a general strike. The post Belabored Podcast #199: Radical Seattle, with Cal Winslow appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

What should you do if your boss is pressuring you to return to an unsafe workplace? The post Belabored Podcast #198: Not Safe to Work appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

The illness in the food chain should remind us that we are all only as healthy as the sickest person in society. The post Belabored Podcast #197: Food Workers and the Virus appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Veteran labor activist Bill Fletcher, Jr. on how the labor movement can cope with the crisis and salvage itself. The post Belabored Podcast #196: How the Pandemic Will Change Labor, with Bill Fletcher, Jr. appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

The director of Athena joins us to talk about why Amazon workers have been walking off the job. The post Belabored Podcast #195: Delivering Us from Coronavirus, with Dania Rajendra appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc on the economy. Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute joins us to discuss the disappointing relief bill that was signed into law today. The post Belabored Podcast #194: The Coronavirus Bailout, with Mike Konczal appeared first on Dissent Magazine.