The Labor Notes Podcast

Everything Sucks! Here’s What We Can Do About It

Labor Notes Organizer Barbara Madeloni joins the pod to share her notes for building power in a weary and anxious moment: Keep walking toward each other; Make a sober assessment of our landscape (avoid toxic positivity); and respond to attacks while building an offensive movement—one with a vision for providing the things people need to have full lives. As a one-time reform president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, Barbara learned what it meant to organize in the face of attacks on public schools in Massachusetts. Here’s how she thinks some of those strategies could be put to use now on a broader scale.

Mexican Autoworkers Faced Down Tariff Threats and Won Double Digit Raises—Plus, Labor Notes May Issue Preview!

Workers at GM’s Silao, Guanajuato plant had a salary review period right in the midst of Trump’s tariff threats.
It would have been easy for the company to extract concessions in the face of widespread uncertainty, but workers held the line and won double-digit raises for the second time in recent years. Their winning streak is also forcing pro-boss, company unions to wake up and deliver for workers—if only for fear of a union election they’d likely lose. They’re also hard at work building a new union culture—moving workers from a mindset of “Everyone steals, but hopefully you guys steal less” to feeling a sense of ownership over their union. Their fight demonstrates that militancy is the answer to navigating turbulent times—and the whims of bosses and billionaires everywhere.

Union Members are Leading the Defense of Immigrant Workers

There’s a straight line from years of bipartisan support for ICE and CBP to the alarming political repression we’re experiencing today, where workers and students are being ripped from their daily lives and hauled into detention centers hundreds of miles away. Over the past year, union members and workers centers have been more intensively building networks and resources to support immigrant workers.They’ve been organizing to win contract language to protect members from employers simply handing over confidential information or workplace premises to ICE agents; drafting and sharing know-your-rights resources; and mobilizing support at rallies and actions to stand with those being targeted. That groundwork is mobilizing worker-led resistance to deportation actions against immigrant workers including farmworker union leader Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez, and sheet metal worker Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a member of the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, whom the administration shipped off to El Salvador from his home in Maryland. 

Facing Privatization And DOGE Attacks, Postal Workers Are Fighting Back

How does a letter get from rural Alaska to tip of Florida for less than a dollar? The U.S. Postal Service of course!The USPS is such a staple of our daily lives, it’s easy to take the public service for granted. But corporate greed has threatened to privatize and consolidate the agency in ways that would make the service more costly for the public and help the rich get richer.Fortunately for us, the USPS isn’t just a vital public service but also the largest union employer in the U.S., and postal workers have long been engaged in a fight to protect our mail.Now with the Trump administration setting its sights on the agency and DOGE sniffing around, postal workers are building on the organizing they’ve already done and continuing their fight for the future of the postal service.

Mexico City’s Trolleybus Workers Took on Austerity and Won

What do you do when neoliberal ghouls are set on privatizing services you love and rely on? For Mexico City’s trolleybus workers, the answer was building a coalition of public transit riders, climate activists and labor allies prepared to fight back. They turned fear into action, and supporters into organizers—mobilizing commuters who relied on the transit network to bring other riders into the fight. As Trump’s schmuck parade sets out to dismantle critical public services millions rely on, we can learn from Mexican workers’ fight to stave off privatization and win vital investments in their public transit system. PLUS: You heard it here first—it’s pod co-host Danielle’s birthday! Her one birthday demand, we mean wish, is that you subscribe to the pod and leave us a review. Happy birthday Danielle!!!

How TSA Agents and Federal Workers are Fighting a Hostile Administration

Facing an administration bent on privatizing public services, federal workers are flocking to their unions in large numbers and connecting with one another through the new rank-and-file group the Federal Unionists Network. TSA agents are among the latest groups of workers organizing a response after the Department of Homeland Security decided earlier this month to abruptly end their collective bargaining agreement.

How Workers Are Fighting for a Liveable Planet

It matters to us as workers to have a liveable planet! And the labor movement has unique leverage and responsibility to push for climate action in the workplace and in contracts.The upcoming April issue of Labor Notes spotlights how workers are fighting for better conditions as they contend with storms, heat waves, and wildfires while on the job, and how they are staking their place in the transition away from fossil fuels. Labor Notes Organizers Kari Thompson and Keith Brower Brown join pod co-hosts Danielle Smith and Natascha Elena Uhlmann.Subscribe to the Labor Notes magazine at labornotes.org/store/labor-notes-subscription!

What the Tariffs Debate Is Missing: Workers’ Voices

When Nippon sought to acquire U.S. Steel in a $15 billion acquisition last year, the companies went to great lengths to convince U.S. Steel workers that the deal would benefit them too (and not just line executives’ pockets). But the workers didn’t buy it. Tune in to the inaugural episode of the Labor Notes Podcast to hear about how the workers saw through the companies’ shenanigans and resisted an acquisition that could have left them on the chopping block. The deal, which likely would have helped Nippon evade tariffs, was blocked by the Biden administration at the end of 2024, but might not be entirely off the table for the future.