unions

It’s Hump Day! Sam speaks with writer and labor organizer Mindy Isser to discuss her recent piece in In These Times entitled “In Labor’s Mission to Organize the South, Another Domino Could Soon Fall.” Then, he speaks with Anna Clark, reporter at ProPublica covering issues in the MidWest, to discu...
It’s Hump Day! Sam speaks with Daniel Poppen, member of the union organizing committee at the Trader Joe’s location in the North Center neighborhood of Chicago, to discuss the staff’s decision to file for a union election. Then, he speaks with Matt Bruenig, founder of the People’s Policy Project,...
It’s a Casual Friday all calls and all clips edition! Sam, Emma and the MR Crew break down the biggest stories of the week. First, Sam and Emma run through updates on the opening of the Erez crossing for aid to Gaza, the US economy, Biden’s student debt relief, Trump v. Tish James, and immigratio...
It’s Hump Day! Sam speaks with Nicholas Boni, writer, photographer and musician based in Brooklyn, & Cea Weaver, tenant organizer with Housing Justice For All in New York, to discuss Nicholas’s recent piece in Jacobin entitled “Social Housing for New York Is on the Table”. Then, Sam speaks wi...
It’s Hump Day! Sam and Emma speak with Trita Parsi, executive vice president at the Quincy Institute, to discuss the state of play in Israel/Gaza nearly 3 months after October 7th. Then, they’re joined by Paul Ortiz, professor of history at the University of Florida, to discuss how unions in Flor...
Sam and Emma host Jane McAlevey, Senior Policy Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley’s Labor Center, to discuss her recent book Rules to Win By: Power and Participation in Union Negotiations. They begin by running through updates on the WGA strike, an impending airline strike, the fasc...
Sam and Emma host Daniel Medwed, Professor of Law and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University, to discuss his recent book Barred: Why the Innocent Can’t Get Out of Prison. First, Sam and Emma run through updates on Russian escalation, JD Vance’s relationship to a big opioid pill mill physicia...
Sam and Emma host Timothy Jost, Emeritus Professor at Washington & Lee University Law School, to discuss the upcoming Supreme Court Case Talevski v. Health and Hospital Corps of Marion County. Then, they are joined by Nick Weiner, Senior Campaign Lead for the Committee for Better Banks at the...
Sam and Emma host Dannel Jurado of Kickstarter United to discuss their unionizing effort from the ground. Then, they are joined by Vincent Vertuccio, a student climate organizer with Now Or Never, who is planning to protest the Congressional Baseball Game this Thursday. Before that, Sam and Emma ...
Sam and Emma host Tony Delorio, Secretary-Treasurer of the Teamsters Local 665, to discuss the recent organizing efforts at Amy’s Kitchen in Los Angeles. Then Sam and Emma are joined by India Walton, former mayoral candidate in Buffalo and Senior Strategic Organizer at Roots Action, to discuss th...
Emma hosts Alex Press, writer at Jacobin, to discuss her recent pieces on the burgeoning labor movement countrywide and Eric Adams’s homelessness policies. Then Emma is joined by Daniel Bessner, co-host of the American Prestige podcast on SubStack, to discuss his recent brief for the Quincy Insti...
Emma hosts Luke Savage, staff writer at Jacobin Magazine, to discuss his new book The Dead Center: Reflections On Liberalism And Democracy After the End Of History.  Then, Emma is joined by Rana Abdelhamid, candidate for Congress in New York’s 12th Congressional District, to give us an update fro...
It’s Casual Friday! Sam and Emma host Alex Pareene, contributing editor at the New Republic and proprietor of the AP newsletter on Substack to round up the week in news. They kick off the show with updates on the Kellogg’s unionization effort, Omicron, and Tucker Carlson’s prostate (not a metapho...
Sam and Emma host Max Chafkin, features editor and writer at Bloomberg BusinessWeek, to discuss his recent book The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power.
Sam and Emma tackle a huge last week in news, as well as what’s coming down the pike in Congress, the courts, and more. They also speak with Bhairavi Desai, Executive Director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA), to discuss NYTWA’s new debt forgiveness campaign for Medallion cab drivers...
Sam hosts Heather “Digby” Parton to discuss the week’s top stories, including the infrastructure negotiations, SCOTUS decisions to gut voter rights, and more. Then, WGA East Executive Director Lowell Peterson joins to discuss the unionization efforts at MSNBC Digital. Digby and Sam start off the ...
Sam hosts Mark Joseph Stern, staff writer at Slate covering law and the courts, joins Sam to discuss the biggest cases of the recent Supreme Court term, and the implications of the rulings on cases like TransUnion v. Ramirez and Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid. They start with a discussion on SCOTU...
Sam and Emma host Sarah Jaffe (@sarahljaffe) to discuss her new book, Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone and how to build a better relationship with our labor.
On today’s show, Sam speaks with Michael Hardt, author of the book ‘Assembly (Heretical Thought)’ about how grassroots, non-hierarchical movements like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter could become more politically effective and what lessons we can take from them as we fight for everythi...
Donald Trump stumbles into promising debt relief for Puerto Rico and Mick Mulvaney walks it back.
Jeff Sessions met with the Russian ambassador and lied about it.
Jane McAlevey author of No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age, explains the distinction between organizing and mobilizing. Why organizing is reflective and face to face. Mobilizing after self-discovery. Why the Left needs to get back to back to basics organizing. The American S...
Bernie Sanders holds the largest rally so far of the 2016 election. Sanders is not only drawing big crowds but also climbing in the polls. The mainstream media still trying to marginalize Sanders and Bernie Sanders brilliant description of what extremism really is. A New Jersey Court finds a Gay ...
Caroline Fredrickson the President of the American Constitution Society and author of the Under the Bus: How Working Women Are Being Run Over, explains how women and African Americans were cut out of the benefits of the Social Safety net. How the southern politicians protected the legacy of slave...
Columbia University Professor and author of  The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power, Steve Fraser explains how Neo-Liberalism dominates American life. The collapse of organized resistance to economic power and elites and how we can recreat...
Journalist Ari Paul, explains Bill de Blasio has long angered the NYPD. The Central Park Five Case and why the NYPD are angry about it. The real problems New York City faces now. NYPD Labor Union head Pat Lynch is gunning for a favorable contract for the NYPD. Why the Police Union is out of step ...
Professor Jake Rosenfeld author of What Unions No Longer Do, explains the reasons behind the declining power of unions, the history of American anti unionism, the role of Taft-Hartley in suppressing union power, why American unions are more decentralized, the structural obstacles labor faces, the...
Jacobin online editor, and author of the new book Strike for America: Chicago Teachers Against Austerity Micah Uetricht explains what led the Chicago teachers to strike in 2012, why the strike was not about pay, why the teachers won the strike, the conflicts within the Chicago Teachers Union that...
Labor historian and journalist Richard Yeselson explained how labor militancy drove labor rights in the 1930s, how the passage of Taft-Hartley Act attacked the organizing and cultural power of labor, why the Congressional backlash against labor was connected with opposition to civil rights, what ...
Writer Richard Yeselson, explained what a “right to work” state is, why Michigan’s assault on collective bargaining is worse than Wisconsin’s, why the United States has the lowest rate of Union membership in the industrialized world and recent examples of Union success.
Freelance journalist Sarah Jaffe, explained the origins of the fast food workers strike in New York City, the logistical challenges of organizing fast food workers, the impossibility of living off of fast food wages, how the strikes grew out of community organizing efforts, the myth of teenage fa...
On today’s show Sam and Rick Perlstein discussed the Teacher’s strike happening right now in Chicago. Rick explained how effective the Chicago Teacher’s Union has been in gaining public support, the corporate special interests funding the “education reform” movement and how Rahm Emanuel’s disdain...
David Dayen from Firedoglake discusses California’s Prop 32, the ballot initiative to divest unions of their political voice under guise of “campaign finance reform”.  Prop 32 goes before voters in November.  In the better half, a fired up “Kathy Janeane Garofalo Harriss” calls in and a new low, ...