The Labor Notes Podcast

More than 2,000 stadium workers in Los Angeles scored a goal that VAR can’t take away: they overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike and built a credible threat to walk off the job during World Cup matches scheduled at the SoFi stadium—and they won the right to strike over ICE. 
Their campaign, and others like it this summer—including in Philadelphia where workers at the Sheraton and Warwick hotels won contracts that will raise wages to $30 an hour by 2028—show how workers are strategically assessing their leverage and notching concrete wins.
Read the story by Labor Notes Organizers Paul Prescod and Natascha Elena Uhlmann. Paul and UNITE HERE Local 274 member Kathleen Householder from Philadelphia join the episode.

Gig workers are often sold the lie that their job is flexible, customizable, and lets them be their own boss. But that hides the reality that they don’t control a lot of their own basic working conditions, including the rates they’re paid or even if they can continue working with the app, if they’re arbitrarily deactivated. In May, hundreds of app workers across Mexico held a two-hour work stoppage to escalate their demands and to fight for a collective agreement with app giants like Uber, DiDi, and Rappi (two Uber Eats-style delivery platforms), reported Natascha Elena Uhlmann. Joining Natascha and Danielle this week is Luis Fernando Mora Reyes, an app worker from Mexico City and the secretary of training and culture for the National App Workers Union (la Union Nacional de Trabajadores por Aplicación or UNTA). Read Natascha’s story in English: Mexico's Gig Workers Fight Efforts to Hollow Out Their Employee Status WinLee el artículo de noticias de Natascha en español: Los trabajadores por aplicación luchan por hacer valer sus derechos bajo la reforma laboral

Have you ever been so stumped by an organizing challenge that you wished you could just beam out a help signal to others who’ve dealt with the same thing? Enter special guests Tera Arnold and Dakota Massman, who fielded several organizing questions along with pod co-hosts Danielle Smith and Natascha Elena Uhlmann at our first ever live episode of the Labor Notes Podcast, which took place last month at the 2026 Conference in Chicago. Tera and Dakota, of Teamsters Local 135, were two of the casino dealers at the Horseshoe Indianapolis Casino who walked out last year on a rare and courageous strike for union recognition. Send us more organizing questions in writing or on a voice note to podcast@labornotes.org, and we’ll try to answer them on the pod!

You might be in a battle of wits with a great white shark on a New England beach and needing a bigger boat. Or maybe you're getting into property fights with your goth relatives (or imposters) in the Addams Family. Perhaps you're just a toy, a child's plaything, but developing power analysis in the Toy Story franchise.
Wherever your big screen adventures are playing out, we at the Labor Notes Podcast think you're probably applying a labor lesson from our bestseller, Secrets of a Successful Organizer, or our new book, Keep Going: A Guide to Organizing When It's Hard.
Tune into this week's episode for why our favorite summer blockbusters are really about organizing. 
Links to resources we mention in this episode: 
Stewards’ Corner: Workplace Safety Is Not a Game (Labor Notes Podcast, October 2025)
Four Union Strategies to Fight on A.I. (Article on labornotes.org | Labor Notes Podcast, May 2026) 
Keep Going: A Guide to Organizing When It's Hard: Order your copy | See Inside: Introduction: How to use this book; Chapter 1: Cultivate Respect 
 

You guys loved our episode about having bad meetings so much that we’re actually bringing it back. Revisit this old Labor Notes pod banger and evergreen organizing question: “What if Unions Meetings Were Actually Good?”   

It feels like we just saw about 4,700 of you a week ago in Chicago, so we're taking some space this week to give you a chance to miss us a little. (i.e. We're catching up on sleep after the 2026 Labor Notes Conference, and will be back to our programming next week!)    
In the meantime, watch the conference livestream:  
Friday, June 12
Main Session: WATCH HERE 
Saturday, June 13
The Soul in the Machine: Resisting A.I. Pressure on the Character and Quality of Our Jobs: WATCH HERE 
Opening Up Bargaining: WATCH HERE 
Sunday, June 14
Main Session: WATCH HERE 
See you next week, solidarity y'all! 

What do you do when you work at a public school in a “right-to-work state” that also bars public employees from collective bargaining? And what happens, when your school district exploits its leverage over employees to snatch raises owed to workers? 
Members of the Durham Association of Educators in North Carolina turned to the tried and tested principles of collective action. They helped channel members’ frustrations into action, brought more school workers into the union, and built an escalation campaign that empowered members to hold out until their demands were met—and they won. 
Theirs is among several stories of strategic, persistent organizing featured in the new Labor Notes book, “Keep Going: A Guide To Organizing When It’s Hard,” by Ellen David Friedman—Organizing that gets the goods, even against what may seem like stacked odds. 
Author and Labor Notes board chair Ellen David Friedman and Durham Association Educators member Carlos Pérez join the pod. 
Order your copy of “Keep Going” here!
And read Ellen David Friedman’s Labor Notes interview with DAE’s Carlos Perez and Allison Swaim on their organizing wins in North Carolina.

You’ve learned the passes on the campaign mountain, figured out your co-workers’ most widely and deeply felt issues, and polished up your 1-1 skills. It’s time to start bringing in your co-workers—with the humble spreadsheet. 
List-building is a foundational organizing function that helps you map your workplace, reach out to members, and assess the strength of the union you’re building together.
This episode is based on a recent piece by Labor Notes Organizer Lisa Xu, “List-Building 101, or How to Expand Your Reach as a Troublemaker.” 

It’s natural to feel overwhelmed by the boss’ relentless union busting (it’s why they do it!) and to get discouraged by lapses and disengagement by union leadership.
It can also compound the difficulty of organizing—figuring out how to make a meeting worthwhile, how to connect with members when it feels like your shop floor is in disarray, or even getting through concrete tasks like drafting agendas and to-do lists when everything starts feeling heavy. 
That’s when a return to basic organizing principles—and coming up with structural solutions with our co-workers—may be the way forward. 
Teamsters Local 804 Organizer Antonio Rosario and Sarah Slichter from the Movement of Rank-and-File Educators, join the pod.

A.I is a management power grab, disguised as an inevitable technical upgrade. To fight it, workers can use four strategies proven in the past: name the real problem; unionize it; ransom it; and block it.
Also read the piece by Labor Notes Organizer Keith Brower Brown: Four Union Strategies to Fight on A.I.