Belabored

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Subscribe and rate on iTunes here. Tweet at @dissentmag with #belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Belabored is produced by Natasha Lewis. Detroit’s been through a lot in recent years; the city has become a sort of a symbol of American industrial decline, and with that the declining power of unions. Last week, Detroit’s “emergency manager” filed for bankruptcy, in what will be the largest municipal bankruptcy in the country if it goes forward. A judge is currently holding it up, and we took this opportunity to invite Marcy Wheeler of the blog emptywheel to explain to us what’s going on with Detroit, emergency managers, the auto industry, and unions. We also discuss strikes at fast-food restaurants during the heat wave, a hunger strike to stop deportations, port truck drivers, and layoffs at Chicago’s schools. Links for those following along at home: Josh on port truck drivers organizing.Josh on strikes at restaurants with no air conditioning. Mike Elk on lack of OSHA regulations for heat. Marcy Wheeler on Detroit’s deadbeat emergency manager. Marcy Wheeler on Detroit’s assets being sold off. Marcy Wheeler on Rick Snyder, Michigan governor. New York Times on Detroit’s bankruptcy Pieces We Wish We’d Written: Sarah: Madeleine Schwartz at Dissent on Nancy Fraser’s Fortunes of Feminism Josh: Mike Elk on Bangladesh worker safety. The post Belabored Podcast #16: Who Bankrupted Detroit? appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Subscribe and rate on iTunes here. Tweet at @dissentmag with #belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Belabored is produced by Natasha Lewis. In the latest episode of the Belabored podcast, Josh and Sarah are joined by the Nation‘s Lee Fang, investigative reporter and author of The Machine: A Field Guide to the Resurgent Right, for a conversation about the enemy. They discuss the bait-and-switch tactics being used to avoid worker safety accords in Bangladesh, the rise of the online education wing of the corporate education reform movement, and how the whole big-money machine fits together. They also discuss the beginning of hearings over Chicago school closings, the latest at the NLRB, more strikes by low-wage workers, and more. Links for those following along at home: Lee on Bangladesh worker safety accord Lee on Walmart’s ties to weak worker safety protections Josh and Lee on Walmart’s ties to Obama’s budget chief Lee on How Online Learning Companies Bought America’s Schools Pieces We Wish We’d Written: Sarah: Michelle Chen on sex workers’ rights Josh: Chris Geidner on the EEOC and transgender rights. The post Belabored Podcast #15: Renegade Retailers and Education Ideologues appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Subscribe and rate on iTunes here. Tweet at @dissentmag with #belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Belabored is produced by Natasha Lewis. The 14th episode of Dissent’s Belabored podcast opens with a round-up of news at the intersection of labor and the law, including a living wage bill, civil disobedience over an allegedly illegal hospital shutdown, a lawsuit over mandatory payroll debit cards, and a federal court challenge to “independent contracting.” Then, in the latest Belabored Explainer segment, Sarah and Josh tell you everything you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask about retaliation: What is it? When’s it illegal? Why does it happen so much anyway, and what’s labor doing about it? Links for those following along at home: Sarah on civil disobedience in defense of a SUNY hospital Sarah on McDonald’s dropping a payroll debit card requirement Moshe Marvit and Vincent Mersich on Chicago cabbies’ legal campaign to become employees Dave Jamieson on Walmart’s wage claims and DC’s living wage bill Josh on rapid-response protests that saved strikers’ jobs at Wendy’s and the Ronald Reagan Building Josh on alleged Walmart retaliation and Alan Grayson’s bill to toughen remedies Josh on the sorry state of US labor law Sarah on fighting retaliation at Dishes Jake Blumgart on your rights at work (or lack thereof) Pieces we wish we’d written: Francesca Borri, “Woman’s Work,” Columbia Journalism Review Lee Fang, “US Retailers Launch Lobby Blitz to Sell Weak Bangladesh Safety Plan,” The Nation The post Belabored Podcast #14: Labor and the Law appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Subscribe and rate on iTunes here. Tweet at @dissentmag with #belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Belabored is produced by Natasha Lewis. On the 13th episode of Dissent’s Belabored podcast, Sarah and Josh discuss intra-union struggles over education reform in DC and Newark, the coming teacher evaluation regime in New York, drastic unemployment benefit cuts in North Carolina, and a new national settlement between Hyatt and the hotel workers union UNITE HERE. Then they’re joined by Michelle Chen of In These Times, whom they interview about the limits of immigrant “legalization,” the Supreme Court’s narrowing of Voting Rights Act protections, and labor protests in Dubai and Bangladesh. Some links for those following along at home: Sarah on New York teacher evaluations Josh on a near-upset in Newark Rania Khalek on the DC teacher’s union and school closures Ned Resnikoff on unemployment cuts Sarah on “sadism as politics” Harold Meyerson on the UNITE HERE – Hyatt deal Michelle Chen’s reporting on immigration recruitment abuse, domestic labor, food supply chain activism, food stamps, a Dubai strike, protests over Bangladesh factory conditions, and unionism in China. The stories we wish we’d written: Marc Lifsher, “Many low-wage workers who won judgements were never paid,” Los Angeles Times Michael Grabell, “The Expendables,” ProPublica The post Belabored Podcast #13: Education Workers appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Subscribe and rate on iTunes here. Tweet at @dissentmag with #belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Belabored is produced by Natasha Lewis. The twelfth episode of Dissent’s Belabored podcast starts with a rundown of recent news: nurses fighting to save a hospital, the firing of a dozen Walmart strikers, a deal to end New York’s legal services strike, and a new bill to make managers pay for retaliation. Then Sarah and Josh have an extended interview with union veteran and writer Rich Yeselson about his provocative Democracy essay proposing “Fortress Unionism.” They explore several of Yeselson’s arguments, from what labor can learn from its Taft-Hartley defeat, to whether it’s time for unions to retrench. Yeselson talks about “alt-labor against the white whale” and labor’s “sweet spot of weakness.” Links for those following along at home: Sarah on nurses’ struggle to save the Long Island College Hospital Josh on Walmart firings, civil disobedience at Yahoo headquarters protesting the alleged retaliation, and Congressman Grayson’s new anti-retaliation bill Rich Yeselson on “Fortress Unionism,” his coda on a coming Supreme Court case, and his take on labor’s “Right to Work” defeat in Michigan Josh’s American Prospect article on “Alt-Labor” and Sarah on “6 Ways to Juice Up the Labor Movement” Responses to “Fortress Unionism” from Eric Robertson and Brad Plumer (and check out Yeselson’s exchanges with Kate Bronfenbrenner and others in the comments) Articles we wish we’d written: Daniel Denvir, “Secret Poll: Corbett should exploit Philly school crisis, attack teachers union for political gain,” City Paper Seth Freed Wessler, “How Fast Food Companies Steal Workers’ Pay,” Colorlines The post Belabored Podcast #12: Hold the Fort? appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Subscribe and rate on iTunes here. Tweet at @dissentmag with #belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Belabored is produced by Natasha Lewis. This week’s Belabored podcast opens with a rundown of recent good and bad news for labor: a worker takeover of public broadcasting in Greece; the passage of a new law protecting New York child models; McDonald’s forcing debit cards on its employees; and a hunger strike in protest of Philadelphia school cuts and layoffs. Then they interview sociologist Penny Lewis on her new book Hardhats, Hippies, and Hawks: The Vietnam War as Myth and Memory, and how we still misunderstand the relationship between labor, the left, and the working class. Some links for those following along at home: Penny Lewis’ book Ned Resnikoff on the Philly hunger strike Anna Lekas Miller on the Greece radio takeover Sarah on McDonalds’s debit cards   The stories we wish we’d written: Bryce Covert, Think Progress: “What Those Mocking Miss Utah Miss About the Gender Wage Gap” Tim Wu, The New Republic: “The Right to Evade Regulation: How Corporations Hijacked the First Amendment”   The post Belabored Podcast #11: Hardhats and Hippies appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Subscribe and rate on iTunes here. Tweet at @dissentmag with #belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Belabored is produced by Natasha Lewis. This week’s Belabored opens with Sarah and Josh’s rundown of the week’s good and bad news for labor: a GOP effort to pre-empt paid sick days; a landmark legal ruling on unpaid internships; a letter from Elizabeth Warren on trade deal transparency; and two rallies in New York. Then the podcast turns to Josh’s recent trip to Arkansas to report on the Walmart shareholder meeting and the striking workers’ protests there. They discuss the spectacle and ideology of the meeting, how the workers management flew to Arkansas reacted to the strikers who traveled there, and whether the campaign will make Walmart toxic for Democrats. For those following along at home: Josh on paid sick leave shenanigans in Florida Zach Carter on Elizabeth Warren’s letter Steven Greenhouse on a district court ruling on internships Colby Hamilton on the legal services strike Josh’s dispatches from Arkansas: Wednesday; Thursday; Friday The stories we wish we’d written: Meredith Clark, MSNBC.com: Senate set for battle over military sexual assault Dhanya Skariachan and Jessica Wohl, Reuters: “Exclusive – Wal-Mart’s everyday hiring strategy: Add more temps” The post Belabored Podcast #10: Whose Walmart? appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Subscribe and rate on iTunes here. Tweet at @dissentmag with #belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Belabored is produced by Natasha Lewis. Kicking off a new regular feature on Belabored, Josh and Sarah provide a detailed explainer on wage theft. What is it, why and how do bosses get away with it, and how do we stop it? Explainers will be a part of the show going forward, so send us your questions, suggestions, and terms you’d like to hear defined. Hashtag, as always, #belabored. They also discuss the uprisings in Turkey and the role of labor unions, international actions targeting McDonald’s, the ongoing conflict at Palermo’s Pizza, and an independent organizing campaign at an upscale New York deli. Some links for those following along at home: Kim Bobo’s book on wage theft Sarah: Wage theft allegations at Dishes Josh: 84 percent of NYC fast food workers report wage theft Josh: New York named national leader in fighting wage theft Sarah: Wage theft at CitiBike Paul Mason on Turkey’s uprising Workers join Turkey’s uprising Josh: Palermo’s Pizza Josh: Guest Workers as Bellwether Josh: Striking Guest Workers will take McDonald’s fight global Sarah: Who cares for Chicago’s children? And the stories we wish we’d written: Farai Chideya: How to Fix Journalism’s Class and Color Crisis Micah Uetricht: 10-Year Strike at Chicago’s Congress Hotel Ends in Defeat, but Leaves a Legacy The post Belabored Podcast #9: Who Stole My Wages? appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Subscribe and rate on iTunes here. Tweet at @dissentmag with #belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Belabored is produced by Natasha Lewis.   On this week’s Belabored, Sarah and Josh round up some of the past week’s labor headlines: Savannah port truckers organizing; Seattle fast food workers striking; Chicago teachers suing; and a bankruptcy judge’s blow to retired mineworkers. Josh asks Sarah about her In These Times feature on the wage theft allegations against the company running New York’s new bike-share initiative. Sarah asks Josh about his reporting for The Nation on Walmart workers’ new strike and caravan to the company shareholder convention. Before closing with the pieces they wish they’d written, they issue a call to Belabored listeners: Tweet at us with ideas for labor concepts or issues you’d like to hear broken down in a new explainer segment on the podcast. Hashtag, as always: #Belabored.   Some links for those following along at home: Sarah on the Savannah Port Drivers Organizing Committee Josh on fast food workers striking in Seattle. Allison Kilkenny on Chicago school closures. Mike Elk on the Patriot Coal bankruptcy ruling. Sarah on “Bad Green Jobs” Josh on the first-ever “prolonged strikes” by US Walmart employees   And the “Stories We Wish We’d Written”: Daniel Denvir, “Who’s Still Killing Philly Schools?”, City Paper Nicholas Lemann, “How Michelle Rhee Misled Education Reform”, The New Republic The post Belabored Podcast #8: Bad Green Jobs and the Long Strike appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Subscribe and rate on iTunes here. Tweet at @dissentmag with #belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Belabored is produced by Natasha Lewis. “A good organizer is a social arsonist who goes around setting people on fire.” Those are the words of Fred Ross, the organizer who trained Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and many others who’ve shaped the labor movement. Ross is little-known outside of organizing circles, but journalist and author Gabriel Thompson aims to change that. He’s writing a new biography of Ross, and he joins Josh and Sarah to talk about what drew him to Ross, from his techniques to his focus on women and people of color at a time when the labor movement mostly ignored them. He also discusses the current immigration bill and what it will (or won’t) do for the workers he met while reporting his last book, Working in the Shadows. In the news roundup, Josh discusses the latest strikes by low-wage workers, this time in Washington, DC, and a strike in Dubai of immigrant construction workers. Sarah talks about Venezuela’s move to grant pensions to housewives and Minnesota’s vote to let home care and child care workers form unions. Help Gabriel Thompson fund his book project and learn more about Fred Ross here. Find Gabe’s articles and other books here. Stories we wish we’d written: Micah Uetricht on the re-election of CORE, the progressive caucus led by former Belabored guest Karen Lewis, to lead the Chicago Teachers Union for another three years. Katie Baker on why your favorite stores aren’t signing a worker safety agreement for the people who make your clothes. The post Belabored Podcast #7: Social Arsonists appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

  Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Subscribe and rate on iTunes here. Tweet at @dissentmag with #belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Belabored is produced by Natasha Lewis. This week’s Belabored podcast opens with a rundown of recent headlines, including a circuit court rejecting President Obama’s appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, and strike authorizations by legal services staff, stadium concessions workers, and sub-contracted Target janitors. Sarah and Josh discuss the state of fast food workers’ organizing efforts—which this week included a strike in Milwaukee and the release of a report on wage theft in New York—and the challenges of maintaining momentum and attention. Then they interview journalist Jake Blumgart about his recent stories on anti-sweatshop activism, at-will employment, the future of Atlantic City, and high-stakes testing at a sushi restaurant (full disclosure: the unions representing stadium workers and Atlantic City casino workers are both affiliated with Josh’s former employer, UNITE HERE). Blumgart also previews his forthcoming review of the latest Star Trek movie. Links to follow along at home: Josh’s reporting on judicial challenges to Obama’s NLRB appointments, and on Twin City Target janitors organizing. Sarah’s reporting on organizing by port truckers in Georgia (discussed on last week’s episode). Josh on Wednesday’s fast food strike in Milwaukee, and Sarah on last month’s in New York. Jake Blumgart’s recent articles “Sweatshops still make your clothes,” “It’s All Too Easy to Get Fired in America,” “Has Atlantic City Reached the End?” and “A Swank Sushi Joint Gets a May Day Scolding From Angry Workers.” Blumgart’s book review in the current issue of Dissent. Finally, here are the stories we wish we’d written: Sarah Nicole Prickett, “Who Are the People That Get to Make This Thing We Call Art?”, Bullett Gordon Lafer, “Discipline and Punish: The New Unemployment ‘Reform’”, Labor Notes The post Belabored Podcast #6: “That Can Get You Fired” appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Subscribe and rate on iTunes here. Tweet at @dissentmag with #belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Belabored is produced by Natasha Lewis.   Sarah and Josh open the fifth episode of Belabored with a rundown of the past week’s headlines, including port trucker organizing in Savannah and fast food strikes in St. Louis. Then they discuss Sarah’s reporting on one union’s experiment with using collective bargaining as a weapon against big banks. Finally, they consider the anti-union record of Obama’s new nominee for the Commerce Department, the other Obama appointees drawn from companies with ugly labor relations, and what it all reveals about the Democratic Party and organized labor. Here are some links to follow along at home: Josh’s reporting on the St. Louis strike, and the inter-union struggle between SEIU and NUHW in California. Amy Traub and Robert Hiltonsmith’s new Demos report, Underwriting Bad Jobs: How Our Tax Dollars Are Funding Low-Wage Work and Fueling Inequality Sarah’s American Prospect feature, “Unions to Banks: Pay Up” Sarah on Penny Pritzker, and Josh on fellow Obama nominees Jack Lew and (with co-author Lee Fang) Sylvia Matthews Burwell Like every week, we close the podcast by plugging two great articles from the past week: “The bloodshed behind our cheap clothes,” Kalpona Akter, CNN.com “U.S. Activists Help Global Domestic Workers’ Movement as U.S. Government Drags its Feet,” Sheila Bapat, RH Reality Check   Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Subscribe and rate on iTunes here. Tweet at @dissentmag with #belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Belabored is produced by Natasha Lewis. The post Belabored Podcast #5: Bargaining Against Banks appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Subscribe and rate on iTunes here. Tweet at @dissentmag with #belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Belabored is produced by Natasha Lewis.   On the fourth episode of Belabored, Sarah and Josh discuss the past week’s labor news, from restaurant workers striking over wage theft in Philly, to protests over the deadly factory building collapse in Bangladesh. Then they interview Hyatt hotel housekeeper Cathy Youngblood, a leader in the hospitality union UNITE HERE (full disclosure: Josh’s former employer), about labor’s battle with the hotel giant, Obama’s choice of a Hyatt heir to run the Commerce Department, and her “Someone Like Me” campaign calling for a worker to be added to Hyatt’s board. Excerpts from that interview are below, followed by links to some of the articles they discuss.   “Talk To Someone Like Me”: an interview with Cathy Youngblood Cathy Youngblood on why she wants to join Hyatt’s Board of Directors: I really think that the board members, and of course their executives right under them, do not know what actually goes on in the hotel. So this would be an education on both our parts. They would learn from me and I would learn from them…they say that we are Hyatt family…Well, don’t keep closing the door on family. On hotel housekeeping work: In the hotel we are first responders…We’re treated like we’re invisible, but we’re really not…housekeeping work is extremely fast-paced. This is not the kind of work you do in your home, OK? You can have anywhere from thirteen to twenty-eight rooms [per day] depending on which Hyatt you’re working for. It’s very hard, it’s very heavy. By the time you finish, you’re drained with sweat, I mean all of your clothes are drained with sweat…All of the housekeepers are in pain every day…and then you injure yourself… In housekeeping, I do things like push a linen cart over carpeted hallways, and it weighs 120 pounds of more…By the time I’m on my sixth room I have lower back pain—this is very common …Sometimes when I do the bathroom, in order to get it really clean, I do use a toothbrush to reach between the tiles…It’s very detailed work…[We have] a 100 point inspection sheet…We have to pass this by 94 percent every day… We are the ones who keep the guests coming back and a lot of people don’t understand what it is that we do. On Hyatt heir and board member Penny Pritker’s (then rumored, since official) nomination as Obama Commerce Secretary: If she is appointed and accepted as Secretary of Commerce, well, that’s a good thing and I wish her all the best. But I do wish that she would sit down and talk to me. I think she could learn a lot. Of course I could learn a lot from her…I wish her the best, but oh my! Her and the rest of the board, wouldn’t it be just dandy if they could sit down with me and understand what the problem is? Especially before she exits the board, if that’s the case. On the progress of UNITE HERE’s multi-year struggle with Hyatt: We’re very far apart on some issues…I think that we’re winning. And I think it’s a process of, we’re wearing Hyatt down with the truth. I see us winning everything that we’re asking for…I have not given up the fight on getting fitted sheets and better tools…There are a lot of instances where if they would just sit down and talk to someone like me, you know that would really help… We’re going to settle for what we need to make our jobs safer. We’re going to settle for what we want…Hyatt is looked upon as the industry leader. People are looking to Hyatt…Hyatt’s business model, as far as I am concerned, needs to change. For much more, check out episode four.   Links to Follow Along At Home Sarah on Hyatt’s use of iPods to monitor housekeepers’ productivity. Josh on Hyatt housekeepers who charge they were fired for taking down photos of themselves. Sarah on May Day 2013. Josh on Walmart’s responsibility for November’s deadly factory fire in Bangladesh.   Stories We Wish We’d Written Esther Wang, “As Wal-Mart Swallows China’s Economy, Workers Fight Back” (The American Prospect) Nicole Aschoff, “Imported From Detroit” (Jacobin)   Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Subscribe and rate on iTunes here. Tweet at @dissentmag with #belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Belabored is produced by Natasha Lewis. The post Belabored Podcast #4: “Talk To Someone Like Me” appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Subscribe on iTunes here. Tweet at @dissentmag with #belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Belabored is produced by Natasha Lewis. On the third episode of Belabored, Josh and Sarah discuss this week’s strikes by fast food and retail workers in Chicago, the latest in a wave of one-day, low-wage, non-union work stoppages. They review some of the week’s top labor stories, including the deadly fertilizer factory explosion in West, Texas, and the re-introduction of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Then they turn to an in-depth discussion of Sarah’s feature in the new issue of Jacobin, on feminism, care work, and strikes. To follow along, here’s Josh’s reporting, at Salon, on Wednesday’s big strikes. And here’s Sarah’s Jacobin feature, “A Day Without Care.” In the podcast’s final segment, Stories We Wish We’d Written, Josh plugs Richard Kim’s The Nation piece “Boston, West, Newtown: For Whom the Bells Toll, For Whom the Alarms Ring.” Sarah discusses Megan Erickson’s Jacobin essay “The Strike That Didn’t Change New York.”   The post Belabored Podcast #3: “Strike.” appeared first on Dissent Magazine.

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Subscribe on iTunes here. Tweet at @dissentmag with #belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Belabored is produced by Natasha Lewis. This Week in Labor Minimum wage, maximum subsidies, the expansion of Working America, the end of the American Crystal Sugar lockout and the beginning of a strike at “Fashion Police.” And we take a closer look at the role of guestworkers in the immigration debate, and recent guestworker organizing. “The neoliberal era is over”: an interview with Paul Mason As the economics editor of BBC Newsnight, Paul Mason has been front and center for the collapse of the global financial system and the wrenching austerity policies that have been imposed across Europe in its wake. His latest book, now in a revised edition, Why It’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere, looks at the global revolutions and movements that started in 2011; his previous book, Live Working or Die Fighting, draws on hundreds of years of labor history to examine today’s global labor movements. We spoke to Mason shortly after the death of former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher about the role of labor in Europe’s fight against austerity. Excerpts from his answers are below. On Thatcher: Those of us who lived through it are very keen to stress that the number one priority for Margaret Thatcher was defeating the labor movement. Those of us who lived through it, and I did live through it, are very keen to stress that the number one priority for Margaret Thatcher was defeating the labor movement. The power of organized labor in Europe and above all the UK was very strong in the 1970s. Thatcher assumed that once organized labor was defeated, lots of other things could be done. The restructuring of UK society, business, politics even, and ultimately the restructuring of the Labour party as a pro-neoliberal party, all of these things followed from the defeat of the trade unions, so she prioritized defeating the trade unions, executed a strategy very carefully, and almost like sort of incrementally. For me and for those of us who lived through that time, that is what Thatcher’s legacy was, it is the defeat of organized labor. And I mean strategic defeat, we’re not talking about the old strike defeated, we’re talking about a whole demographic of working-class people, who lived their lives through the labor movement, who had some ideals, saw those ideals if not capable of being fully realized, those ideals sustained them, they sustained a political project. All that went, with Thatcher, with the defeat of the miners, the printers, and ultimately then the collapse of union membership. On the end of the neoliberal era: For me the starting point of the book I’ve written is that the neoliberal era is over. That the whole last twenty years, the twenty years in the run-up to Lehman Brothers, turns out to have been built on a fault line, and that fault line was globalization of production, the downward pressure on wages in the west, leading to the stagnation of actual wages, and so where did demand come from, where did growth come from? It turns out it came from credit, and much of it therefore was fiction. There’s no going back to that model. If we then ask, what is the alternative to neoliberalism? That’s where the contradiction lies. The future is waiting to be born, as it were, but it’s not there. The social movements in southern Europe that have resisted austerity don’t have a coherent alternative. On labor’s role in fighting austerity: In each of the countries, the relationship between the occupation-of-space movements and the labor movement is different. So in Spain, you have a very strong Communist left. They’ve got about 10, 15, 20 percent, depending on where you are, of electoral support, the main union is Communist, CCOO, many young people have grown up in a kind of Communist tradition. So the Indignados were much wider than that. They obviously included what they include everywhere, which is anarchists and autonomists. But it’s also fair to say that the Indignados drew in a lot of middle-class young people into a sort of verbally anticapitalist type of protest, but who didn’t have a major labor movement orientation. “You know what those sticks are for? They’re to beat the anarchists.” In Greece it was different. The unions have been absolutely front and center in resisting the austerity since it started. The union movement there, there’s a Communist-allied union federation but there are two big federations that are traditionally allied to PASOC, the Social Democratic party. Those union federations remain very militant in their opposition to austerity, but I’ve stood on Syntagma Square so many times and seen the following process: There’s at the front the sort of protesters, whether it be anarchist, autonomist, far-left, Syriza&#823

We’re proud to present our first episode of Belabored, featuring hosts Josh Eidelson and Sarah Jaffe. Huge thanks to our talented producer, Natasha Lewis. If you’re in New York, please join us for our launch event next week. Subscribe on iTunes here. Ideas for the podcast? Tweet with #belabored. In this episode, Sarah and Josh highlight developing stories that they’re watching in labor, interview Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis, and talk about the stories they wish they’d written. Like what you hear? Your support makes it possible. – Editors Episode One Josh Eidelson and Sarah Jaffe This Week In Labor In our first segment, we discuss several stories, including fast food worker strikes in NYC. You can read our on-the-ground coverage here and here. “We will shut down your city”: an interview with Karen Lewis In 2010, a slate led by Karen Lewis ousted the incumbent leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union, promising deeper community engagement and a more aggressive defense of teachers and public education. In 2012, with Lewis as president, CTU mounted the city’s first teacher’s strike in a quarter-century, and the most dramatic recent challenge to the bipartisan education reform consensus. For the inaugural episode of our new Dissent podcast, we sat down with Karen Lewis last month to discuss teaching and intersectionality, professionalism and solidarity, and unions and Democrats. Some excerpts from Lewis’ answers to our questions follow. On the Chicago school closure fight: School closures are a symptom of a really bad school policy that we as Chicago have been struggling under for over ten years…As schools close, they destabilize other schools that are close by…Children don’t do better… I kept saying, why are they continuing to close schools, open up charter schools that don’t do any better and don’t even take the kids that were in the schools that were closed?…What we saw years ago was that the union did not have a response to this, had not done any research about it, and certainly had not mobilized its membership around it, but was dealing with things on an individual basis. So they would help teachers write resumes… Our children know their culture, they know where the safe streets are, [and now are] going to another school that may or may not have the same culture. Chicago has a very, very different gang structure than many other cities…this block may be fighting against the next block, literally. And so we have little fiefdoms and again they’re not defending drug territory – they’re defending respect, because our children have so little of it, if somebody disrespects them it escalates outrageously. Part of the problem is we don’t have counseling programs for children early enough. We have almost gotten rid of play in preschool and kindergarten because we’re so busy trying to get them to pass tests that we don’t focus on the things that actually build their social-emotional learning along with the academic piece. So some of the conflict resolution that you learn through play has disappeared… Our children have to walk from where their neighborhoods are. They know their culture, they know where the safe streets are, [and now are] going to another school that may or may not have the same culture… 45% of the [99% black] apartheid schools are on this [closing] list, and 37% of the intensely segregated schools are on the hit list. On race, class, gender, and the union’s opponents: …We just feel like teachers have been an easy target. Because we’re not used to fighting. We’re not used to confrontation. We’re used to kind of like, OK, whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it, because we all care about what’s best for kids…But it is never enough when your goal is to really destroy public education, so you don’t really care who you take out with you. So the narrative that teachers don’t care about children has been very interestingly woven. People kind of took it and ran with it – the only problem is it absolutely makes no sense… We’re used to saying, OK, whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it, because we all care about what’s best for kids…But it is never enough when your goal is to destroy public education. This is a narrative that we started poking holes in about four or five years ago, and then people started to [say], so explain to me how the billionaires who don’t believe in public education, don’t care about black and brown children, don’t send their own children to public schools – all of the sudden they care deeply about black and brown children as if they exist in some kind of vacuum? …On one level, there’s still this sort of paternalistic ‘I have to protect women’ thing, and on the other hand, ‘Let’s cut them off at the knees, let’s put women out of work,’ women who may actually be caring for their own children and families. So this is a very anti-family mentality. And it’s also the magical thinking, as if children don’t have their ow