On this edition of Your Call, we're discussing this year's fight for workers' rights. There have been almost 1,000 strikes and labor protests this year, according to Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations tracker. Thousands of workers have successfully fought for better pay, benefits, and working conditions.
Workers in Buffalo, New York just formed the first unionized Starbucks coffee shop in the US. Several other Starbucks stores are now following their lead.
Hundreds of Frito-Lay workers in Kansas, more than 1,000 Nabisco workers across five states, and 10,000 John Deere workers all walked off the job this year demanding wage increases and better working conditions.
Around 1,400 Kellogg’s workers at cereal plants in Nebraska, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee have been on strike for more than two months and over 1,000 coal miners in Alabama have been on strike since April 1.
Workers say they are tired of companies putting profits before basic dignity. What has worked this year and what's in store for 2022?
Guests:
Steven Greenhouse, longtime labor reporter and author of Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor
Dr. Lane Windham, labor organizer/historian and Associate Director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University, where she directs WILL Empower, a project that promotes women’s leadership in the labor movement and the struggle for economic justice. Dr. Windham is the author of Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide
Colleen McMullen, barista at one of the Starbucks locations in Buffalo, New York that is voting to unionize. Colleen is an organizer with the Starbucks Workers United movement
Web Resources:
OnLabor, Steven Greenhouse: The union win at Starbucks may seem small, but it could be a very big deal
The Guardian: Kellogg to replace 1,400 strikers as deal is rejected
The New York Times, Maria Cramer: Frito-Lay Workers in Kansas Ratify Contract, Ending Strike
CBS News: Nabisco workers in five states end company's first strike in 52 years
NPR, Aline Selyukh: Amazon warehouse workers get to re-do their union vote in Alabama
The Nation, Molly Crabapple: How the Taxi Workers Won
The American Prospect, David Dayen: The Great Escape
