Working People

Latest Episodes:

Mini-cast: Who Cares for Care Workers? (w/ Dave G.) Apr 17, 2019

Show notes

We chat with Dave G, cohost of the Mandatory OT podcast, member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and longtime State Tested Nursing Assistant (STNA) in the Ohio Valley. We talk about what it's like to work as an STNA, the low pay, the rampant injuries workers sustain, and about the difficulty of unionizing when your coworkers are reactionaries.

Additional links/info below...

Mandatory OT podcast Soundcloud and Twitter page
IWW Twitter page
West Virginia IWW Twitter page
Sample CNA Job Description
ZipRecruiter, "What Is the Average CNA Salary by State"
John Caniglia & Jo Ellen Corrigan, The Plain Dealer, "Ohio Nursing Homes' Low Staffing Called a 'Crisis,' Puts Residents at Risk: A Critical Choice"
Zack Budryk, Fierce Healthcare, "Workplace Danger: Nursing Assistants Suffer More Physical Injuries than Construction Workers"
Alexandra Bradbury, Labor Notes, "Don't 'Lean' On Me, Hospital Workers Say"
Jeff Spross, The Week, "America Is on the Verge of a Nursing Crisis"

Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

Lobo Loco, "Malte Junior - Hall"

Don't Shop, Don't Stop! Apr 13, 2019

Show notes

At 1:00pm on Thursday, April 11, over 31,000 Stop & Shop workers across New England walked off the job. The strike is going on at this very moment and gaining public support, even as Stop & Shop bosses try to ice out and undercut workers. We talk to Mike LaFrance, a deli worker who's been at Stop & Shop for over 20 years, about what's going on and how folks around the country can show support.

Additional links/info below...

PETITION: Support Stop & Shop Workers
SUPPORT LINE: Sign up for updates. Text "support" to 698329 to get latest updates on the strike and how you can help
Call Stop & Shop Customer Service and express support for striking workers at 1-800-767-7772
Support Stop & Shop Workers Facebook and Twitter page
Alexia Fernández Campbell, Vox, "The Largest Private Sector Strike in Years Is Playing Out at Supermarkets Across the Northeast"
Meaghan Ottolini & Marie Szaniszlo, The Boston Herald, "Teamsters Back Up Striking Stop & Shop Workers"
Tal Axelrod, The Hill, "Biden, Warren and Sanders Express Support for Striking Stop & Shop Workers"
Kim Kelly, Teen Vogue, "Strikes and Picket Lines, Explained"

Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free MusicArchive: freemusicarchive.org)

Lobo Loco, "Malte Junior - Hall"

Mini-cast: In the Dish Pit (w/ Christina Clark & Jon Deitcher) Apr 10, 2019

Show notes

We chat with Christina Clark and John Deitcher from Endorphin Films about their viral short documentary, Dish Pigs, which tracks the lives and jobs of three professional dishwashers in Montreal.

Additional links/info below...

Dish Pigs
Endorphin Films' website and Twitter page
Tim Forster, Montreal Eater, "Refreshing New Documentary Spotlights Dishwashers in Montreal Restaurants"

Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

Lobo Loco, "Malte Junior - Hall"

Mini-cast: Smooth Operator (w/ Miriam Posner) Apr 08, 2019

Show notes

We chat with Professor Miriam Posner about her recent articles in The New Yorker and LOGIC magazine on the global supply chain software that shapes workers' lives.

Additional links/info below...

Miriam's website and Twitter page
Miriam Posner, The New Yorker, "The Software that Shapes Workers' Lives"
Miriam Posner, LOGIC, "See No Evil"

Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

Lobo Loco, "Malte Junior - Hall"

Lucy Lloyd Apr 06, 2019

Show notes

We talk with Lucy Lloyd, a self-taught Apple product repair and support technician living in Sedan, Minnesota, a town with a population of less than fifty people. We talk about everything from growing up in a small town to setting up her independent repair business in the corner of her mom's flower shop. We also talk a lot about the right to repair, a really important political issue that directly impacts repair workers like Lucy and all of us who use, consume, and depend on technologies from cars to smart phones.

Additional links/info below...

U.S. PIRG - Right to Repair
Repair.org
iFixit
Emily Matchar, Smithsonian Magazine, "The Fight for the 'Right to Repair'"
Nathan Proctor, WIRED, "Corporations are Co-Opting Right-to-Repair"
Nathan Proctor, WIRED, "Right to Repair Is Now a National Issue"
Maximillian Alvarez, The Baffler, "The Death of Media"
Rosie Spinks, The Guardian, "We're All Losers to a Gadget Industry Built on Planned Obsolescence"
Jason Koebler, Motherboard, "Tractor-Hacking Farmers Are Leading a Revolt Against Big Tech's Repair Monopolies"
Matthew Gault, Motherboard, "The World Economic Forum Tells Davos: Electronics are 'the Fastest-Growing Waste Stream in the World'"

Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

Lobo Loco, "Malte Junior - Hall"
Creo, "Place on Fire"

Mini-cast: Kingdom Came (w/ Tarence Ray) Apr 03, 2019

Show notes

We chat with Tarence Ray, writer and 1/3 of the Trillbilly Workers Party, about his recent article in The Baffler about what liberal pundits like Paul Krugman get wrong about rural America.

Additional links/info below...

Tarence's Twitter page
Tarence Ray, The Baffler, "Get Real"
Trillbilly Workers Party Patreon, Twitter, and Facebook page
Tarence's author page on Popula and The Baffler

Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

Lobo Loco, "Malte Junior - Hall"

Mini-cast: Suicide Squeeze (w/ Nate Kalman-Lamb) Apr 01, 2019

Show notes

We chat with with author and scholar Nate Kalman-Lamb about his extensive work on the labor politics of professional sports, and about his and Dirk Hayhurst's recent Jacobin piece on the exploitation of professional baseball players.

Additional links/info below...

Nate's website and Twitter page
Nate Kalman-Lamb & Dirk Hayhurst, Jacobin, ""Inside the Game, You Are Still a Commodity""
Nate Kalman-Lamb, Fernwood Books, Out of Left Field: Social Inequality & Sport
Nate Kalman-Lamb, Fernwood Books, Game Misconduct: Injury, Fandom, & the Business of Sport
Michael Baumann, The Ringer, "The Disgrace of Minor League Baseball"

Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

Lobo Loco, "Malte Junior - Hall"

After the Academy Mar 28, 2019

Show notes

In this special compilation episode, we talk to eight working-class scholars about loving, leaving, and being left behind by academia.

Additional links/info below...

Working People, Season 1, Bonus Episode #2, Trevor Griffey
Working People, Season 1, Episode 10, John Buckley
Maximillian Alvarez, The Baffler, "Contingent No More"
Erin Bartram, "The Sublimated Grief of the Left Behind"
The Nostalgia Trap, "Episode 89: Erin Bartram"
Patricia A. Matthew (ed), UNC Press, Written/Unwritten: Diversity and the Hidden Truths of Tenure
Kevin Birmingham, The Chronicle of Higher Education, "'The Great Shame of Our Profession'"
James M. Van Wyck & Lynn Arner, Inside Higher Ed, "Blue-Collar Ph.D."
Trevor Griffey, LAWCHA, "The Decline of Faculty Tenure"
Marc Bousquet, NYU Press, How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation
Hamilton Nolan, Gawker, "The Horrifying Reality of the Academic Job Market"
Anonymous, Inside Higher Ed, "Treadmill to Oblivion"
Herb Childress, The Chronicle of Higher Education, "This Is How You Kill a Profession"
Jonathan Kramnick, The Chronicle of Higher Education, "How the Jobs Crisis Has Transformed Faculty Hiring"

Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive:freemusicarchive.org)

Lobo Loco, "Malte Junior - Hall"
Breath Before the Plunge, "End of All Things"
Marisa Anderson, "Pulse"
Return to Normal, "The Observer"

Mi familia Mar 24, 2019

Show notes

A special Alvarez family sequel to the very first episode of Working People.

Additional links/info below...

Working People, Season 1, Episode 1, Jesus Alvarez
Maximillian Alvarez, Current Affairs, "Can the Working Class Speak?"

Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

Lobo Loco, "Malte Junior - Hall"
Small Tall Order, "Easily"
Anamoli, "En la casa"

Mini-cast: You Don't Know the Half of It, Part 2 (w/ Torrey Wilson) Mar 19, 2019

Show notes

While all eyes have been on a high-profile #CollegeAdmissionScam involving super-rich people buying and bribing their kids' way into elite universities, hardly anyone noticed that an entire network of private and for-profit universities was shut down this month. Faculty and staff have been abruptly fired and tens of thousands of students have been completely abandoned with no more financial support--the government cut off their student loans, which many used to pay for basic living costs--and no certainty that they will be able to graduate, transfer their course credits, or get their money back. In Part II of this mini-cast series, we talk with Torrey Wilson, (former) Associate Professor at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology at Argosy University.

Additional links/info below...