Stewards' Corner: Did You Know You're Allowed to Read Your Boss' Emails?
Stewards are often thought of merely as enforcers of a union contract on behalf of the unit.
But as unit members themselves, stewards are in a real position to organize their co-workers—not just play a form of de facto legal defense in individual grievance cases.
Joining this week's pod is Labor Notes organizer Joe DeManuelle-Hall, who leads Labor Notes stewards’ workshops on how to think like an organizer, and how to get the information you want from the boss.
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18:41
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.
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25:21
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.
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12:36
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.
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16:28
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.
The Labor Notes Podcast is a new show from the folks who put on the Labor Notes conference every two years.
We’ll talk each week about the strikes, contract campaigns, shop floor actions, reform caucus organizing, and union elections that our staff and rank-and-file workers in the labor movement’s troublemaking wing write about and work on all year round.
New episodes on Fridays.
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