Send us a text Shawna Bader-Blau heads up the Solidarity Center in Washington DC which has for many years been one of the great sources of support for workers around the world trying create and sustain independent, democratic trade unions. But with the inauguration of Donald Trump earlier this year, all that has come under threat. In our interview, Shawna discusses what the Solidarity Center does, the new threats it has to face, and how it intends to fight back. Learn more about the Solidarity C...
Jun 25, 2025•22 min
Send us a text The Alberta Federation of Labour and some 25 Alberta unions, representing more than 300,000 workers, recently unveiled the Solidarity Pact, a commitment to collective defence against any attack on workers by public- or private-sector employers. The Solidarity Pact is intended to remain in force indefinitely. "The purpose of the Solidarity Pact is to let employers know that an attack on one union will be viewed as an attack on all unions and that Alberta unions will fight together—...
May 14, 2025•25 min
Send us a text Dr Debbie Goldman worked for 28 years at the Communication Workers of America (CWA) and is an expert on the subject of call centre workers. In this short interview we discussed her new book, Disconnected: Call Center Workers Fight for Good Jobs in the Digital Age . We talked about issues like surveillance in the workplace, how the CWA won impressive victories in defence of call centre workers' rights, and how employers export call centre jobs abroad only to run-up against internat...
Apr 22, 2025•14 min
Send us a text Luc Triangle, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), was LabourStart's guest this week on our podcast. The ITUC represents around 200 million workers in 169 countries and territories and has 340 national affiliates. LabourStart's Eric Lee interviewed Luc about the vicious attacks by the Lukashenko dictatorship in Belarus against trade unionists -- and what the international trade union movement is doing to fight this. Luc spoke about the upcoming ...
Apr 09, 2025•9 min
Send us a text Nilufar Mammadrzayeva is an activist in İşçi Masası (Labor Desk), an alternative Confederation of Trade Unions operating in Azerbaijan. As she explained to us, "Right now, four of our comrades are facing dire conditions in prison due to their labor rights activism. One of them has already been sentenced to eight years, and the situation is only getting worse." In this interview, we discuss the situation faced by workers and independent trade unions in her country and what the inte...
Apr 02, 2025•11 min
Send us a text This week, LabourStart's Pat Bulmer interviews Mark Hancock, national president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees -- the largest union in the country. Mark was asked to speak about the union's recently-adopted "Montreal Declaration" which was drafted in response to US President Donald Trump's threats against Canada. “The declaration acknowledges the formidable contribution that the labour movement has made to building what makes us proudest to be Canadian: our public healt...
Mar 20, 2025•13 min
Send us a text LabourStart's podcast this week is - unfortunately - about Belarus, which is probably the worst place in Europe to be a trade unionist. We are now coming up on the 3rd anniversary of the mass arrests of Belarusian trade union leaders and the crushing of the country's independent and democratic unions. Liza tells us why this happened, the role of the Ukraine war and Putin, and what we can do to help free the jailed union leaders and force the regime in Belarus to respect workers' r...
Mar 03, 2025•13 min
Send us a text This week's LabourStart interview is with Kıvanç Eliaçık from DISK, one of Turkey's national trade union centres. We talked about workers' rights in Turkey, the role played by LabourStart and global unions, what individuals can do to help -- and about the central role that workers in struggle are playing in all this. We also discussed a new LabourStart campaign being launched this week in support of striking workers at Telus, in Izmir. A must-listen podcast this week, in our view....
Feb 11, 2025•17 min
Send us a text This week's LabourStart podcast is a short interview with Daniel Blackburn, who runs the International Centre for Trade Union Rights (ICTUR), based in London. Daniel spoke with us about ICTUR's history, the journal it produces (International Union Rights), the incredible reference book they publish on trade unions of the world, and even their wall map of workers' rights around the globe. ICTUR is not well-known enough in the trade union movement but we think that after you hear wh...
Feb 03, 2025•12 min
Send us a text The LabourStart Podcast this week -- our first in 2025 -- is an interview with two Canadian writers who've written an important new book about one of the country's largest trade unions. Stephanie Ross is an associate professor in the School of Labour Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., and founding president of the Canadian Association for Work and Labour Studies. Larry Savage is a professor in the Department of Labour Studies at Brock University in St. Catharines, O...
Jan 30, 2025•20 min
Send us a text This week we interviewed Tamar Ansiani, who in addition to being a striker (one of over 4,000) at the Swedish-owned Evolution Gaming in Georgia, is also a vice president of LABOR, a Georgian trade union. Tamar spoke about the reasons for the strike, the importance of international solidarity and much more in this short interview. To learn more about the struggle at Evolution Gaming -- and to show your solidarity with the workers -- click here . To donate money to the strikers (via...
Nov 13, 2024•9 min
Send us a text "We were dying," says Sultana Hossain, describing the conditions that led thousands of Amazon employees in New York City to begin organising into a trade union. Initially, their union was independent and had no backing from anyone else -- and yet the workers were able to force an election in the workplace, win a majority and inspire millions of workers with their story. Click here to learn more about that union and its amazing story. For full coverage of workers' struggles at Amaz...
Oct 19, 2024•13 min
Send us a text China Steel Express (CSE), the most profitable subsidiary of Taiwan's largest state-owned enterprise, China Steel Corporation (CSC), has long exploited Taiwanese seafarers through illegal fixed-term contracts. Recently, CSE replaced Taiwanese seafarers with Chinese crew. As a result, more than 300 seafarers lost their jobs. In July, CSE abruptly cut the insurance of over 100 seafarers to force more of the workers out of jobs. To defend their labour rights, the CSE Union held a str...
Sep 25, 2024•7 min
Send us a text An interview with Judith Kirton-Darling, general secretary of IndustriAll Europe, about the ongoing fight of Liberty Steel workers in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland in the face of catastrophic job losses. Judith talks about the background to the struggle, including latest developments, including a walk out this morning by Liberty Steel workers in Hungary, and the importance of solidarity messages sent through the LabourStart online campaign ....
Aug 13, 2024•15 min
Send us a text This week we interviewed Srđan from Radnicki Glas (Workers Voice) in Serbia. The group is very involved with the ongoing campaign at the Yura factories in Serbia -- which is the subject of a LabourStart ActNOW campaign. ( Click here to learn more. ) We talked about unions and workers in general in Serbia and the specific issues faced by workers at the South Korean-owned Yura factories, which are suppliers to major European auto companies. Srđan explained the background to strikes ...
Jul 30, 2024•15 min
Send us a text We spoke with David Edwards just three weeks before the opening of the congress of the Education International, which unites trade unions of teachers and other educational professionals. The EI is one of the biggest global unions -- it has 383 member organisations, representing more than 32 million people in 178 countries and territories -- and faces immense challenges. We spoke about the EI's current Go Public! campaign which has been fighting to get governments to invest in publ...
Jul 10, 2024•11 min
Send us a text Less than 24 hours after the results of the first round of the French legislative elections were known, and with the threat of a far Right government for the first time since Vichy, we interviewed Judith Kirton-Darling. Judith is General Secretary of IndustriAll Europe, which represents 7 million working men and women united within 200 national trade union affiliates in 39 European countries. We discussed a range of issues including the threat of the far Right, what Europe's union...
Jul 02, 2024•11 min
Send us a text Earlier this month there were giant protests across Argentina following the attempts by the country's new president, Javier Gerardo Milei, to impose his dystopian vision on the country. Milei's government is cracking down on workers' rights, downsizing and privatising much of the public sector, and triggering a huge increase in unemployment and poverty -- especially child poverty. This statement by the International Trade Union Confederation paints a bleak picture of Argentina und...
May 22, 2024•11 min
Send us a text This week, we spoke with Esther Lynch, the General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). The ETUC represents 45 million members from 93 trade union organisations in 41 European countries, plus 10 European Trade Union Federations. In a wide-ranging discussion, we spoke about the upcoming European elections and why they matter for unions and working people. The European unions have come up with a joint list of 12 key commitments and they have gotten some -- but...
May 15, 2024•18 min
Send us a text Khaing Zar is President of the Industrial Workers Federation of Myanmar (IWFM) and Treasurer of the Confederation of Trade Unions of Myanmar (CTUM). Forced into exile following the military coup d'etat in February 2021, she is a leading spokesperson for the embattled trade unions of her country, which have now been effectively banned and driven underground. In this interview, we discussed what's currently happening with workers and their unions in Myanmar, the Arthur Svennsson pri...
May 07, 2024•14 min
Send us a text This week we interviewed Jan Willem Goudriaan, General Secretary of the European Public Service Union (EPSU). EPSU brings together trade unions from across Europe. It influences the policies and decisions of employers, governments and European institutions that affect public service workers, their families and communities. It mobilises for action and change and is committed to achieving another, social Europe. EPSU represents 8 million public service workers across Europe and is t...
Apr 30, 2024•12 min
Send us a text Luc Triangle is the new general secretary of the global labour movement's peak body, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). The ITUC represents 191 million workers united in 340 affiliated national trade union centres around the globe. We spoke with Luc about the ITUC's new "For Democracy" campaign, about the globally-recognised "right to strike" which is now before the International Court of Justice, and about the major challenges facing him as ITUC general secretary...
Apr 24, 2024•13 min
Send us a text Rebecca Owens is a proud flight attendant and active member of AFA (Association of Flight Attendants)-CWA Council 30 in Anchorage, Alaska. She has stepped up as her union is in contract negotiations at Alaska Airlines by helping to organize informational pickets, volunteering to go on camera to share the stories of her union brothers, sisters and siblings and making sure her colleagues participated in their recent strike vote. She is also working with the Alaska State AFL-CIO to g...
Apr 19, 2024•13 min
Send us a text Darren is an Amazon worker and Amanda is a senior organiser for the GMB union in the UK. Together, they tell a story of low pay, union busting and an atmosphere of fear at Amazon -- but also a story of courage, solidarity and hope as workers unite and take on one of the largest and most powerful corporations in the world. Learn more about the fight of Amazon's workers in the UK on LabourStart's UK news page and also on the GMB website about the Amazon campaign ....
Apr 11, 2024•11 min
Send us a text When Bea Bruske was a teenager she found herself walking a picket line for many months -- a strike prolonged unnecessarily because her employer had hired scabs. Today she's the President of the Canadian Labour Congress and is leading the fight for anti-scab legislation. A bill now making its way through the Canadian federal parliament will ban scabs in the federal sector, covering a million workers, but she's hoping for even more down the line. LabourStart's Pat Bulmer conducted t...
Apr 04, 2024•13 min
Send us a text The textile workers at Egypt's state-owned Mahalla factory have a history they can be proud of -- their strikes helped to bring down the Mubarak dictatorship. In March 2024, when the Egyptian government decided to exclude them from a minimum wage equal to US $120 (per month - before taxes), they rose up in protest, led by women workers. Having won some of their demands, they returned to work -- but two of the activists remain in the hands of the state security services. At the req...
Apr 03, 2024•12 min
Send us a text Australia under its new Labor government is seeing a huge revival of the trade union movement with new "closing loopholes" laws that strengthen workers' rights. At the centre of the struggle is Sally McManus and the Australian trade union movement. Sally is a fighter and is often quoted saying: "I believe in the rule of law where the law is fair and the law is right, but when it’s unjust I don’t think there’s a problem with breaking it." Fighting words from a genuine trade union m...
Mar 27, 2024•9 min
Send us a text Colombia used to be described as the most dangerous place on earth to be a trade unionist. Sadly, that is still the case. But as Nick MacWilliam from the UK-based, trade union-backed Justice for Colombia explains, things are getting better. Colombia now has a progressive president, supported by the unions, and Nick -- who has just returned form Colombia -- brings us a message of hope. For much more news and information about workers and their unions in Colombia, check out LabourSt...
Mar 20, 2024•15 min
Send us a text Kazem is in charge of international relations at Free Them Now , which was set up in 2005 to build international support for jailed workers in Iran. News from Free Them Now can be found on LabourStart's Iran page .
Mar 13, 2024•12 min
Send us a text Marc Belanger was doing labour education and union organising online back in the 1980s. That's NOT a typo -- he established SoliNet (Solidarity Network) for Canada's largest union, CUPE, nearly 40 years ago. He went on to run the International Labour Organisation's training centre in Turin, Italy and now is back in Canada, where he founded and runs Radio Labour . In this interview with LabourStart's Eric Lee, Marc talks about what he calls "activist podcasting" and gives us a prev...
Mar 05, 2024•18 min
