Belabored Podcast #76: May Day Special! Labor Shuts It Down From Baltimore to Long Beach

Subscribe to the Belabored RSS feed here. Subscribe and rate on iTunes here or on Stitcher here. Check out the full Belabored archive here. Tweet at @dissentmag with #belabored to share your thoughts, or join the conversation on Facebook. Belabored is produced by Natasha Lewis. This May Day, we bring you voices from two labor frontlines. First, we hear from the streets of Baltimore, where United Workers organizer Todd Cherkis is helping mobilize community members against police terror and for economic justice. Then, OUR Walmart activist Venanzi Luna talks about her experience organizing coworkers and confronting anti-union hostility at her store, which was recently abruptly shuttered in a move that activists call retaliation. We also bring you a slew of strikes—the ILWU’s May 1 port shutdown to protest police brutality, West Coast port truck drivers battling wage theft, federal contract workers demanding $15 and a union—plus the latest on the Trans Pacific Partnership. With recommended reading on embattled nurses and the decline of the eight-hour day. News ILWU announces it will shut down Bay Area ports to protest police brutality (Daily Kos) Live stream of the event at KPFA The Battle Over the Trans-Pacific Partnership and “Fast Track” Gets Hot (Truthout) Michelle and Sarah: Belabored #73 with Celeste Drake Alleging Millions in Wage Theft, West Coast Port Truckers Strike (In These Times) Sarah: Port Trucking Companies Steal More Than $1 Billion in Wages From Drivers (In These Times) Michelle: Federal Contract Workers Just Went on Strike in DC (The Nation) Conversation: United Workers Michelle: Baltimore’s Inescapable Inequality (The Nation) OUR Walmart Sarah: What’s the Real Reason Behind Walmart’s Store Shutdowns? (DAME) Argh, I Wish I’d Written That! Michelle: Alexandra Robbins, “Doctors Throwing Fits,” Slate Sarah: Nathan Schneider, “Have We Seen the End of the 8-Hour Day?” The Nation The post Belabored Podcast #76: May Day Special! Labor Shuts It Down From Baltimore to Long Beach appeared first on Dissent Magazine.