America’s Work Force Union Podcast
by BMA Media Group
America’s Work Force Union Podcast provides a clear and unfiltered voice for the working people of America. Radio veteran Ed “Flash” Ferenc leads the discussion with a focus on topics that include the impact of labor unions in America, workers’ rights, legislative actions and labor-management relations. Featured guests include various labor leaders, politicians, journalists and more. America’s Work Force Union Podcast provides updates and information from sources around the United States and continues to be the trusted voice for workers across the country.
Episodes
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AFL-CIO’s Fred Redmond on Election Night and Allina Hospice Nurses’ First Contract
Two conversations about workers coming together: one on what AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond says organized labor proved in Tuesday’s election and one on hospice nurses who say they won a voice by organizing. On First Friday with Fred, the monthly segment held on the first Friday of each...
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olumbus Trades' Dorsey Hager on Bayer, Intel and Election Results
Dorsey Hager says it is more important to keep workers on a job than to get them there, and he hopes Intel and Bechtel roll straight from the first two fabs into fabs three and four. On today's Trades Day episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, Hager, executive secretary-treasurer of the...
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New Bedford Firefighters' William Sylvia on the Fight for Engine 9
Fires can double in size every 30 to 60 seconds, and a room can flash over in about three to five minutes, according to William Sylvia, a New Bedford firefighter of 20 years. He says that is why closing a fire company and sending fewer members to a call puts residents and firefighters at risk. On...
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Trails to Trades' Matt Kosara on Scouting and the Skilled Trades
At one training center event, bricklayers had kids building a brick wall, ironworkers set up a beam to walk on, operating engineers brought a digger that the kids ran by remote control, and the Teamsters brought trucks. On today's Trades Day episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, Trails…
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LA/OC Trades' Ernesto Medrano on Prop. 45 and Apprenticeships
Californians vote Nov. 3 on Proposition 45, and the building trades in Los Angeles and Orange counties are urging a no vote. Executive Secretary Ernesto Medrano says the measure excludes the trades and local residents from the conversation about what gets built in their communities. On today's...
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USW's Charleeka Thompson on NextGen and Engaging Young Union Members
She started at a hazardous waste disposal plant in El Dorado, Arkansas, where the workers know which chemicals can be stored together, which can be incinerated at the same time and how to handle both safely. Today Charleeka Thompson directs the United Steelworkers NextGen Department, the union's...
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NABTU's Dr. Tom Kriger on Trades Futures and the Apprenticeship Boom
Ask 100 parents how to get into college, and they can fill a blackboard. Ask how to get into the Insulators Union, and you get silence. That information gap is the single biggest barrier keeping qualified young people from union apprenticeships that pay $80,000 to $100,000 three to five years…
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TTD on Spirit Airlines Worker Data and FEP Blue on Open Season Benefits
Two conversations that go to the heart of what workers deserve — one on a bankrupt airline treating its fired employees’ most sensitive personal data as a commodity to be sold, and one on making sure federal and postal workers get the most out of their benefits during one of the most important...
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Kim Pierce on The Hands That Built This and the Future of the Trades
For too long, the trades have been treated like a fallback — something you choose when college does not work out. The truth is the world runs on the backs of builders, welders, riggers, electricians and laborers. It is time to start acting like it. That is the back cover of Kim Pierce's book, The...
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Policy Matters Ohio on the $8.6 Billion Gap Between Work and Wages
Ohio workers are 84% more productive than they were a generation ago. Their wages have gone up 22%. Ohio's union density has fallen from 35.5% in 1979 to 12.8% today. That collapse represents $8.6 billion in annual wages that should be in Ohio workers' pockets and is not. Ohio's minimum wage is…
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UFCW 1776 and FarmSTAND on Pennsylvania's Farm Worker Rights Lawsuit
Pennsylvania modeled its labor law on the federal Wagner Act in the 1930s, including the exclusion of agricultural workers from the right to collectively bargain. The exclusion was the product of industry lobbying and the deliberate effort to deny rights to the predominantly Black workforce in…
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SMART's Michael Harris on Sheet Metal Careers and the Training Pipeline
First-year apprentice wages: $87,500. Wages and benefits within four to five years: $125,000 to $200,000. Student debt: zero. Three out of four teens say they would consider a trade over college. And the sheet metal industry still has more work than it can easily fill. On today's Trades Day…
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OFT’s Melissa Cropper on School Funding and Labor Lawyer Richard Mack
Two conversations about fighting for the people who need it most — one on what is at stake for Ohio’s schools and working families heading into November 3rd, and one on nearly three decades of labor law in Detroit and a campaign to bring that experience into the boardroom at one of the country’s...
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AECOM Tishman's Frank Noviello on 9/11, the Cleanup and Rebuilding NYC
He had a meeting scheduled at the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11. His wife called. He canceled. The next morning, he was at Ground Zero through an empty Long Island Expressway on a police escort. Six days later, LIUNA Local 79 members had cleaned out the Verizon vault beneath…
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AFSCME 1072 on Withheld Raises and Layoffs at University of Maryland
The University System of Maryland negotiated raises with its workers. The raises were legally binding. The state sent the money to cover them. The USM withheld them anyway. The governor had to order them to comply. Then UMD College Park laid off 73 workers — the first mass layoff of state-funded...
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American Legion on Veterans Careers and Alliance on Social Security
Two conversations about protecting what Americans have earned — one on helping veterans translate their military service into civilian careers and one on stopping an unelected commission from quietly cutting the Social Security benefits workers have paid into their entire lives. American Legion...
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IATSE Local 415 on Two First Contracts Ratified in Tucson
A projectionist at the Loft Cinema was making $15.50 an hour. After more than a year of bargaining with IATSE Local 415, the vote to ratify the first contract was unanimous. Projectionists now make approximately $20 an hour. Three days earlier, 20 workers at the Arizona Theatre Company ratified...
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CWA on Call Centers and Ohio AFL-CIO on Election Prep and November 3rd
Two conversations about the work happening right now — one on legislation to stop corporations from offshoring call center jobs while collecting taxpayer money, and one on the first day of early voting in Ohio and what the labor movement is doing to make November 3rd count. CWA District 4...
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Amazon Driver Fred German on DRI-1 and the Fight for the Teamsters
He had been the driver of the month the month before. Top performer two weeks before that. Let go after five years. The stated reason: reduced routes. The actual reason: he was organizing with the Teamsters. The workers who were terminated are now flyering outside the station. On today's episode…
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OUP USA Guild’s Arbitration Win and TTD’s Regan on Rail and Aviation Safety
Two conversations about workers fighting back — one a hard-won arbitration victory against a prestigious publisher that broke its first contract two weeks after ratifying it, and one a monthly check-in on the transportation safety fights that never go away. OUP USA Guild operations chair Mark...
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EPI's Lynn Rhinehart on Sectoral Bargaining and the Path Forward
Millions of workers say they want a union. The law makes it too hard to get one. Most of Europe has a model that sets wages for entire industries at once, covering every worker, whether or not their individual workplace is organized. Three US states are already trying a version of it for…
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Bricklayers' Victor Castro on Restoring the Capitol and a Life in Stone
He came from Spain in 1986 with his father's encouragement. He worked his way up to foreman. He left, came back and became a U.S. citizen in 2008. And somewhere in between, he spent decades restoring the U.S. Capitol, the Washington Monument and the National Cathedral — working on stone set by...
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AFSCME 2975's Evan Newton on Corvallis Workers' Contract Fight
The city of Corvallis, Oregon, calls itself an employer of choice. Over the past four years, 75% of its union-represented workforce has turned over. Management recently gave itself extra pay steps for retention. Workers at the bargaining table are being offered a contract worse than the one they...
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SMART-TD's Bob Guy on Rail Safety, PSR and What East Palestine Proved
Every three hours in the United States, a vehicle or a person is hit by a train. More than 2,300 people are injured or killed every year in North America at railroad crossings and along tracks. More than 60% of those collisions happen at crossings already equipped with lights or gates. And the...
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32BJ SEIU on BWI Airport Workers and IAM's Buffenbarger on AI and Work
Two conversations that cut to the heart of what workers are facing right now — one on the fight to lift airport workers out of poverty wages today and one on what AI and quantum computing are doing to skilled work tomorrow. 32BJ SEIU Executive Vice President Jaime Contreras discusses the campaign...
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AFL-CIO's Fred Redmond on Election Protectors and the 2 Million Goal
94% of workers say their paychecks are not keeping up with the cost of living. Four in five say politicians are not showing up for them. The AFL-CIO's response is 50,000 trained election protectors deployed in yellow vests at battleground-state polling locations, a worker-first endorsement…
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C/COBCTC's Dorsey Hager on Data Centers, Honda and Ohio's Gas Tax
The Yotta data center conference in Las Vegas started three years ago with 1,500 attendees. This year it drew 7,000. Columbus/Central Ohio Building and Construction Trades Council Executive Secretary-Treasurer Dorsey Hager was there, meeting one-on-one with hyperscalers and developers — some...
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Animation Guild on DreamWorks Win and ILEPI on the Union Membership Surge
Two conversations capturing what the union movement looks like right now — one tracing how remote animation workers at DreamWorks won their first collective bargaining agreement and one showing what the national data says about where the labor movement is headed. Animation Guild TAG Local 839…
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Pete Ielmini on Energy Conservation and the Federal Mechanical Insulation Act
At Ellis Island in the early 1900s, the Bricklayers' union was advertising to arriving immigrants. The biggest selling point beyond wages was the eight-hour workday, because the workers coming over had been working 12- and 14-hour days. That was a union promise. The eight-hour workday, the…
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UC Doctors United's Jacob Lentz on Organizing Physicians at UC Health
He spent eight and a half years writing for Jimmy Kimmel, went on strike twice with the Writers Guild and watched a well-organized union deliver real results. Then he went to medical school, became an ER doctor at UCLA, and watched conditions worsen every year for 11 years. Now he is one of the...
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MIT's Paul Osterman on Disposable Workers and a New Employment Crisis
A McKinsey report argued that 95% of a firm's value is produced by 5% of its workforce. An MIT professor spent years finding out what that means for the other 95%. His answer: approximately 35% of the entire US workforce is now employed with no employer intention of retaining them — building...
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BMWED on CSX Cutting Track Workers While Reporting Record Profits
CSX reported $3.94 billion in quarterly revenue and approximately $1 billion in quarterly net earnings. Then it notified the union it plans to cut its maintenance of way workforce by 29% and defer capital track maintenance at the same time. Nine hundred system production employees will be...
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Andrew Strom on the Fifth Circuit's OSHA Mental Health Ruling
A refinery worker responds to an eight-hour fire and is later diagnosed with PTSD. ExxonMobil does not record it as a workplace illness. OSHA cites them. The case goes to the Fifth Circuit. Three judges rule that OSHA never had authority to require mental health injury reporting in the first…
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Mass Building Trades Recovery Council on No Stigma, No Shame
A union member stands before a construction crew and tells his story. Raw. Personal. The crew that did not want to be there goes completely silent. And the phone rings a dozen times the next day, with workers saying, "I think I need help." That is what a stand-down looks like. That is what the...
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BCBS NLO on the 988 Coin Campaign and Mental Health in the Trades
A union worker hands a coin to a colleague. On it: someone cares about you. Call or text 988. That act — started in the construction trades with poker chips, now at 150,000 coins distributed in the industry and heading into schools nationwide — is what the BCBS National Labor Office is building...
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American Legion and Alliance for Retired Americans on November Voting
Two conversations connecting veteran service and senior advocacy to the November election — one previewing the October issue of The American Legion Magazine and one with an urgent message for every voter: check your registration now. American Legion Director of Media and Communications Henry…
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QPR's Shayna Klassen on Suicide Prevention with the Iron Workers
She walked into a conference room full of ironworkers for a one-hour presentation on suicide prevention. The room was packed beyond fire code. When she finished, no one left. Union brothers and sisters stood up and said: “We are dying. We are losing our colleagues. We don't know what to do.”…
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Ohio Teachers in Crisis and CWA on the Union Wave Into November
Two conversations that connect the stress of the classroom to the energy on the shop floor — one on a national survey showing the teaching profession is in crisis and what Ohio educators are facing in the November governor's race, and one on a wave of recent union wins and how CWA is mobilizing...
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Steven Ruggles on the Coming Labor Shortage and What It Means
Wages for young workers peaked in 1973. Real wages for young men did not fully recover until after 2015, reaching a low of approximately 25% below the 1973 peak — a 42-year stagnation caused not just by the baby boom entering the labor force but by that cohort continuing to occupy jobs for…
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AGMA's Opera Colorado Win and Ohio AFL-CIO on November's Stakes
Two conversations connecting the ground-level work of organizing to the political moment that makes it possible — one tracing the first wall-to-wall unionization of an American opera company in more than 40 years and one taking the temperature of Ohio workers heading into a November election that...
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EPI's Heidi Shierholz on Tripling Union Density and the Policy Roadmap
If typical worker pay had kept pace with productivity over the past 45 years, today's typical paycheck would be roughly 40% larger. That income went to shareholders and corporate executives. A new Economic Policy Institute report finds that tripling union density to 30% — where Canada sits today,...
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BRS's Tim Tarrant on Ludlow, Blair Mountain and Railroad Safety Today
On Easter Sunday morning, April 19, 1914, the National Guard and the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency set up a machine gun overlooking a Colorado miners' tent colony, murdered union leader Louis Tikas and two lieutenants who came out to negotiate a truce and burned the camp. Eleven children and two...
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St. Mary's Nurse Emily Berceau on Organizing and the Fight Ahead
They started organizing in 2019. COVID shut them down. They started again. Then again. Management took down their flyers, told nurses they could not discuss the union despite federal law protecting that right and threatened workers with suspension for wearing a badge reel that said Nurses United....
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Lorena Gonzalez on California Labor, Women in Trades and Worker Power
Her father came from Mexico as a teenager to work North San Diego County's strawberry fields, following her grandfather who was a bracero. Her mother spent 40 years as a nurse trying to organize her hospital, watched co-workers get retaliated against and voted for a union in her 40th year without...
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Labor Day 2026: U.S. Rep. Norcross on Worker Power and Zhavoronkova on TradesFutures
Two Labor Day conversations that connect the fight for workers in Congress to the programs building the next generation of union construction workers — one making the legislative case for faster contracts, higher wages and union political power and one tracing a nationwide network of free...
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Fred Redmond on CEO Pay, the 2025 Paywatch Report and Labor Day 2026
The AFL-CIO had to add more digits to its Paywatch database this year just to fit one person's compensation package. S&P 500 CEOs averaged $22.8 million in 2025 without Elon Musk. His $158.3 billion Tesla package pushed the average to $340.1 million, approximately 1,700% higher than the prior…
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C/COBCTC on Data Centers, Infrastructure and Outreach
A million people are projected to move to Central Ohio by 2050. Two Ohio Power Siting Board hearings drew nearly 100 speakers in one week. The outer belt needs more lanes. And the IBEW is preparing to blanket Columbus job sites with organizers and then sit workers down with contractors to place...
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Rep. Steve Horsford and Dave Megenhardt on Fighting for Workers
Two conversations that connect the fight for workers in the halls of Congress to the fight for workers on the streets of Cleveland — one making the legislative case for tipped wages, overtime pay and AI transparency and one tracing 55 years of a labor-rooted organization that has never stopped...
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NABTU's Dr. Tom Kriger on Apprenticeship, AI and The Wizard of Oz
The tornado is the high interest rates. The Scarecrow is the caricature of the uneducated farmer. The Tin Woodsman is the industrial worker who lost his humanity as wages fell. The Yellow Brick Road is the gold standard. The Emerald City is Washington. And behind the curtain at the end, a few...
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Tom Buffenbarger on ‘Wimpy’ Winpisinger and the Origins of Labor Day
A machinist named Matthew Maguire proposed Labor Day in 1882. When Grover Cleveland signed it into law in 1894, he gave the ceremonial pen to a carpenter with a similar name and told Maguire's wife he was sorry. The machinist never got proper credit. The debate starts every Labor Day again. On...
About this show
America’s Work Force Union Podcast provides a clear and unfiltered voice for the working people of America. Radio veteran Ed “Flash” Ferenc leads the discussion with a focus on topics that include the impact of labor unions in America, workers’ rights, legislative actions and labor-management relations. Featured guests include various labor leaders, politicians, journalists and more. America’s Work Force Union Podcast provides updates and information from sources around the United States and continues to be the trusted voice for workers across the country.
Hosted by
BMA Media Group