What do a "Charlie Brown Christmas," "Love Actually," "Little Women" and many of your other holiday faves have in common? We at the Labor Notes pod have played them backwards to decipher their coded organizing messages. 

You can count cards, mute your poker tells, or patiently coax the windfall out of a slot machine that someone just gave up on—but the house always wins, right?  And yet, 200 casino dealers at the Horseshoe Indianapolis Casino in Shelbyville, Indiana, just found a surefire strategy to stack their odds: solidarity. Dealer Tera Arnold joins the pod, along with our editor Al Bradbury, who reported last month on what has since become a victorious strike for union recognition, as members voted  overwhelmingly on Dec. 5 to join Teamsters Local 135.

Listen here to part 2 of our webinar this month with Haymarket Books and The American Prospect, featuring contributors to our Roundtable Series on how unions can defend worker power under Trump 2.0. You can read all the articles in the series here! Hear perspectives from Baltimore Teachers Union President Diamonté Brown, Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jackson Potter, and UAW Region 9A Director Brandon Mancilla. This webinar was co-moderated by pod co-host Natascha and David Dayen from The American Prospect.

Mail and parcel delivery workers at Canada Post, who are members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, have been bargaining for two years against an intransigent management whose stonewalling is being supported by the Canadian government.  CUPW members have mounted full on strikes twice in just the past year, and taken several other disruptive actions. Management meanwhile has largely ignored their proposals and advanced policies that would end vital services and slash jobs.  This story reflects a phenomenon of the privatization era: the rhetoric of fiscal responsibility is being used to erode affordable, quality public services, and to eliminate stable middle class jobs. And the way that CUPW members are organizing to fight back has lessons for workers everywhere.  Read the story by pod co-host and staff organizer Danielle Smith: “Canadian Postal Workers Strike Again.”

Listen here to part 1 of our webinar this month with Haymarket Books and The American Prospect, featuring contributors to our Roundtable Series on how unions can defend worker power under Trump 2.0. You can read all the articles in the series here! Hear perspectives from Baltimore Teachers Union President Diamonté Brown, Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jackson Potter and UAW Region 9A Director Brandon Mancilla. This webinar was co-moderated by pod-cohost Natascha and David Dayen from The American Prospect.

International solidarity more than just a chant. It’s how we will raise conditions for workers across borders without allowing the bosses to play us against each other. Few things make that more explicit than the story of what auto workers in Mexico have been dealing with—from their employers, from some of their unions, and from U.S. trade policy. The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), passed in 2020, was tasked with reviewing the implementation of Mexico’s labor reforms. But those reforms have proved challenging to implement, demonstrating the limits of legal solutions to problems that ultimately call for organizing. Read the story by Labor Notes pod co-host and staff writer Natascha Elena Uhlmann: "We Can’t Bridge the U.S.-Mexico Wage Gap Without Supporting Organizing in Mexico."

As of Thursday morning, members of Starbucks Workers United were on strike in 65 stores across the U.S., a massive escalation in their fight for a first contract. They are asking customers not to buy coffee at any Starbucks location during their strike.Starbucks baristas have been in bargaining for over a year and half now, after striking regularly to get the company to the bargaining table in February 2024, as our editor Jenny Brown reported at the time.Baristas have said that they are subjected to low pay (starting at $15 to $19 an hour) that leaves them dependent on SNAP and Medicaid, and that they are dealing with dire understaffing that's led to overwork for them and long wait times for customers.Joining the pod this week are Jenny Brown, and Starbucks barista Sabina Aguirre, who works in Columbus, Ohio. Learn more about how members organized to get strike ready in Jenny’s recent piece, “Strike Captains and Practice Pickets: Starbucks Workers Aim to Bring a Contract Home.”Starbucks Workers United members are asking customers to show solidarity by:  Not crossing the picket line — don’t buy Starbucks from any of its locations during the strike. Joining a picket line near you by using the Starbucks Workers United picket line map.  Joining the allies call on Monday, November 17  Amplifying their posts on Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok, and Bluesky.  Learn more at nocontractnocoffee.org.

The current moment in the U.S.—marked by billionaire assaults on the working class, the Trump administration’s authoritarian maneuvers, and widespread voter dissatisfaction with both major political parties—presents new challenges and opportunities for the labor movement. Rank-and-file members can and are demanding more of their leaders, and unions are being challenged to think about how they should be mobilizing their roughly 14 million members right now. If the goal is to lift up independent working-class leaders and organizations, what should unions be doing differently to rebuild union density and democracy?  Eric Blanc, one of the contributors to the Labor Notes Roundtable series, where we have invited organizers and scholars to address that question, joins the pod to discuss his piece, “After No Kings, How Can We Escalate?”Blanc is an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University and an organizer trainer in the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee.

What can horror movies and fiction teach us about fighting back against the real life horrors of our bad bosses? Tune in to our Hallowepisode to hear about the organizing lessons we saw in the 1988 cult classic from John Carpenter, They Live, and Shirley Jackson’s 1959 pillar in the horror genre, The Haunting of Hill House. Plus, a little Stewards Corner with… Nosferatu (2024) Gulp! But don’t worry, we don’t bite.

Federal Workers organizing with the Federal Unionists Network have been using the shutdown to organize within their unions, and to push the message that workers should collectively stand firm against cuts to vital programs and executive overreach. Their actions are bringing clarity and organization to the fight at a time when leading Democrats are framing the shutdown as an inconvenience and Donald Trump as its perpetrator. Labor Notes editor Jenny Brown joins the pod.

Employer-run safety games are not merely instructional or even “fun.” They’re there to trivialize workplace hazards and to pass the buck onto individual workers for their own safety, instead of listening to workers about how to eliminate the dangers they encounter at work every day. Labor Notes Organizer Kari Thompson joins pod co-hosts Danielle Smith and Natascha Elena Uhlmann to talk about a Stewards’ Corner piece we ran on this topic, titled, “Workplace Safety is Not a Game.” This piece was adapted from the UE Steward, a project by the United Electrical Workers Education Department that publishes how-to articles. Browse them all at bit.ly/UESteward.

Workers at Wells Fargo are organizing the first union at a major U.S. bank—in one of the least-organized industries in the country. Labor Notes Editor Dan DiMaggio, whose story on their organizing efforts is on the cover of our October issue, joins the pod. You can also read his piece,“Wells Fargo Workers Push to Bring A Union to the Banking Industry,” on our website. Subscribe to the Labor Notes magazine by Tuesday, October 14, to start receiving it from the November issue onwards: labornotes.org/subscribe

May Day 2028 can be an opportunity to demonstrate widespread worker power as a force that is capable of turning the tide of billionaires’ oppressive incursions into our daily lives.    We can tap into the currents that brought us the organization, rights and strength we do have, going back to the era that May Day came from, where miners, steel workers, railroad workers and many others put their bodies on the line against wage cuts, and for safer workplaces and humane working hours.

We're taking a break from the pod this week as our staff meets in person to make plans for the next six months of Labor Notes programming! We'll be back to our regular schedule next week with a new episode on Friday, 10/3. In the meantime, send us voice notes of your organizing questions to podcast@labornotes.org! We can't wait to feature them on a future episode and answer your questions. See you back here next week!

Last month, workers at some of the Los Angeles and Santa Monica locations of Sugared + Bronzed, a salon chain offering spray tanning and sugaring hair removal services, voted to unionize with Communications Workers Local 9505. Workers say the job is an arduous balancing act of delivering a comfortable, safe experience providing intimate services to customers, while navigating a breakneck pace of appointments. Inside the fight to build a beauty salon chain union. 

Union members have Weingarten rights, stemming from a Supreme Court ruling in 1975, to ask for a steward at any meeting they believe could lead to discipline. Stewards can do a lot to support members in these meetings, and also organize against patterns of unfair discipline.Labor Notes Organizer Kari Thompson, who leads some of our Stewards’ Workshops, joins the pod.

Air Canada flight attendants, who in August had voted 99.7% to strike, were hit with a back to work order within a day after they walked out last month.  But 10,000 of them defied the order and held the line, highlighting their campaign to get paid for all their uncompensated work when the cabin doors are open. Plus: the Labor Notes Troublemakers School is coming to Toronto in October, and will spotlight the rank-and-file militancy of our union siblings up North! Sign up here to join workers in Toronto on Saturday, Oct. 18!

Workers at Mauser Packaging Solutions in Chicago, who handle dangerous chemicals with what they’ve said is insufficient safety equipment, have been on strike since June 9. These workers, members of Teamsters Local 705, have been on an unfair labor practice strike after Mauser also illegally surveilled union members who were speaking with their business agent during a break, according to the union.  Labor Notes Organizer Luis Feliz Leon joins pod co-hosts Danielle Smith and Natascha Elena Uhlmann. Stories we talk about in this episode: 1. ‘Toxic’ Laundry, Melting Aprons: Mauser Strike Hits Two Months 2. Dispatch from the Employer Offensive: Mauser Teamsters Strike Back 3. “Want to Defend Immigrant Workers in Your Contract? Here Are Some Suggestions.”

In their book, Get on the Job and Organize, former Starbucks worker and organizer Jaz Brisack tells the story of the seemingly improbable success of organizing baristas scattered in small stores across the country. A good companion to Brisack’s account is What the Boss Doesn't Want Us to Know: Discovering Power and Winning Campaigns, by Tom Juravich, Olivia Geho, and Andrew Gorry, a book-length adaptation of research techniques outlined on the website strategiccorporateresearch.org. If you want to learn who finances your employers, who its key decision makers are, where your employer makes most of its profit, you’d want to start here.  Labor Notes editor Jenny Brown joins pod co-hosts Danielle Smith and Natascha Elena Uhlmann.

Meeting with management is never fun. And worse, those meetings can become another place the bosses try to push workers around. But we can take control back in the meetings by showing up united and acting like a union. Labor Notes Organizer Joe DeManuelle Hall joins pod co-hosts Danielle Smith and Natascha Elena Uhlmann as they discuss how we can make labor-management committees and other meetings with management work to our advantage. For more in-depth advice, don't miss this guide by the late labor educator Charley Richardson.