I think what's what's been interesting to me as a chronically online person is how many people do you have on your feed right now who immediately turned their Palestine watermelons into coconut trees in the usernames? 20 years ago, you really didn't think about it and you really didn't think about, okay, if the network goes down, It's going to be an inconvenience, but now businesses rely on those networks that that network goes down because it was hacked through a back door.
Uh, somebody didn't do something right. It's millions of dollars that these companies are losing. they accept bad trips, what we call bad trips, uh, very badly paid trips that don't, don't make us money. And it keeps going down because a lot of new drivers don't know how to work. They don't know what what's actually making their money. The Saddledome's a really old building, unfortunately. It was built in the 80s and accessibility was sort of Not even a thought back then, unfortunately.
So even though I've been working for the organization for nearly 18 years, there are sadly still places in the building where I can't physically get to from the perspective of the DIA and the Arts Commission, the purpose of the Detroit industry murals, um, was to celebrate Detroit history. And to use that as a primary means of communicating to these new immigrants, uh, to the city and to sort of, um, uh, sort of acclimate them, uh, into American culture.
You're listening to the labor radio podcast weekly produced by the labor radio podcast network, labor radio network. Dot org. I'm Chris Garlock. On today's show the art and labor podcast crew discussed Kamala Harris and millennialism. From the, say what podcast? The influence of technology. On the electrical industry. Then a couple of driver organizers from San Diego drivers United talk with the union or bus podcast. About their efforts to organize app based drivers, including Uber and Lyft.
Calgary based disability advocate, karaoke, enthusiast, and entertainment, usher. Dan Peterson on the Alberta worker podcast. And in our final segment, Dr. Jay CFUs considers two. To depression, era murals in Detroit, in their contracting messaging about workers, labor, and power that comes to us from the tales from the Ruth or library podcast. That's all ahead on this week's edition of the labor radio podcast weekly. We're going to start off with a segment.
We hope will become a regular feature, which we're calling shows. You should know. Regular listeners know, we feature four to six shows every week from the labor radio podcast network, but that's just a tiny fraction of the shows that come out each week shows. You should know. is a quick rundown by Harold Phillips, who posts about them daily on our Twitter, Facebook and Instagram feeds. Here's Harold with his first installment.
Thanks, Chris. Social media guru Harold Phillips here with a few episodes of labor radio shows and podcasts you might've missed over the past week. Sophie talks with Marie Barsak about the 2024 Olympics social charter, which links the entire games delivery process with social goals that are inspired by the ILO's decent work agenda on the future of work. Dan, Lena, and John talk about industrial action at the Olympics. Workers fighting against fines in South Korea.
REI workers fighting for a contract for two years and more on work stoppage. Joe and Janine share stories of glaciers gearing up for a strike, and the nuts and bolts of the Working Families Party, while Irv Hirshenbaum recalls his work with the United Farm Workers on Working Voices. Michael talks with labor historian Steve Babazon about Trump and Vance's populism and why real populists are progressive on the Radical Songbook.
Ryan talks with Larry Lopez about growing up in a rough area in L. A., building a thriving life as a journeyman lineman, and the fact that it's never too late to change on the Powerline podcast. And the SAG AFTRA podcast, one that's close to my heart as a SAG AFTRA member, Continues its examination of contract negotiations by looking at communications with other unions, the structure and dynamic of different negotiation sessions, and more. Looking for more labor radio shows and podcasts?
Search for the hashtag LaborRadioPod on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Back to you, Chris. Thanks. Harold shows you should know. Find them search for labor radio pod on Twitter, Facebook. And Instagram. Now. On with the show. Why can't I hear you when you're talking to the mic? Are you being picked up? No, I didn't turn my switch on. There you go. Yay! I'm an audio engineer! Hey! Welcome to Art and Labor. I'm OK Fox, I'm the audio engineer. I kind of take a back seat to the podcast.
I'm not like the main focus. So, um, my name is OkayFox. I'm joined as always by Nos. Hello everybody. And Marshall. Hey. Um, welcome. Uh, we have a lot to talk about, um, because, um, history is, uh. Herstory. Herstory is, herstory is happening. Herstory is happening before our eyes unraveling. The very threads of our American consciousness. And, by the way, thank you for correcting me.
Oh, absolutely, you know, as a land acknowledgement, I find it important that we need to recognize the, our great sisters who have given us everything. Um, yeah. Kamala, Charli XCX, Hillary Clinton, um, Margaret Thatcher, of course, um, who are we putting on our Rushmore, yeah, uh, Nancy Reagan, Throat Goat, um, uh, Nancy Pelosi, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, of course. Ruth. Ann Coulter. Notorious RPG. The Notorious RPG, of course. She'd be at the top. She would be at the top. Yeah. Um, we love women.
Yes, we absolutely do love women. I love women. Okay. I love women. Guys, I'm feeling really good. I'm feeling really hopeful right now. Good. I'm feeling really good. Women are in charge now. Women are going to be in charge. Mommy, Mamala is coming for us. Mamala is going to take us in a big hug and like be zanned out. And like, give us all that. We're going to be in the back seat. And just playing our little game boy, and she's going to do her woman, our game woman.
She's going to be singing along to like her silly classic rock songs on the radio. It's going to be beautiful. It's going to be a beautiful country. Just all that. All that awesome zanned out advice from the front seat. Just ramblings, memories like, Oh, so many good things we'll have to look back on. You know, just as long as we, as long as we divorce from granddaddy Trump, you know, everything will be okay. Our evil stepdad? Forget about it. Forget about it.
Like Nas was saying, it feels like such a PSYOP because, like, it was so prevalent and it took me until, like, it really took me until the, the Kamala Uh, tweet to like fully, fully kind of understand that this is like, this is millennialism. Like this is full ascendant millennialism. And like, this is like the language of power is being shifted like in front of us.
And like everything that we think of as quaint and cute and subversive is now The language of power and like, like, we're only going if we continue to move and like express ourselves in those ways, we're probably only going to move further and further away from relevancy and understanding what's actually happening in the world. Um, yeah, cause you're right. It's not, it's not a Gen X, like it's our responsibility and our generation that's enabling a lot of this too.
We can't just like with, like with the elimination of Biden, we can't just like blame our parents generation or like whatever, and we can't quite blame Gen X. Um, for Kamala either. I mean, Kamala is a millennial construct, a hundred percent. And I think like, I think like, yeah, I wrote this. Yeah. I sent this thing around in the group chat, but I'll read it out. Like millennials have completely subsumed the current culture.
This, like this moment shows that we own everything, the successes and the failures. Cute millennial language is the language of power. Kamala Harris is ours. We have nobody to blame but ourselves. We can pretend this is a Gen X candidate, but this is a millennial candidate. Future people will look back and recognize the ascent of the millennials of this time. We will be blamed for all of the failures that are to come. And we deserve every bit of blame, because it's true.
Like, like, we're not, you know, it's like coconuts or coconuts or memes or revolution. And like, yeah, I mean, I've chosen coconut. They've chosen coconut. Well, I mean, I think what's what's been interesting to me as a chronically online person is how many people do you have on your feed right now who immediately turned their Palestine watermelons into coconut trees in the usernames?
I mean, I'm a serial comment reader, so it's like I'll, I'll see the same people cycle in and out and I think it's really fascinating that. you know, these allegiances that a lot of people, especially on Twitter, um, put themselves behind is like, okay, yeah, you guys think the coconut is going to save us, huh?
You think that's going to be, and I mean, I imagine the DMC must be selling t shirts to the night, like, if they don't have a coconut shirt right now, I don't know what the fuck they're doing. Art and labor is a podcast for art workers, trying to understand their place in the brutal capitalist systems of power. Find it. Wherever you listen to podcasts or at Labour radio network. Dot org. Say what? Hello. Welcome back. It's time for say what?
Where we hear from those connected to our industry about what's going on in our world of electrical apprenticeship. And that always includes the topics you're suggesting, so please don't hesitate to share those with us. I'm your host, Cindy Sandefur, and to say that technology has come a long way and completely changed our lives, big understatement, huge. Um, just look at what we're doing here, a podcast, right?
Where we use Zoom, something that I think prior to 2020, most people weren't engaging with. We've got Matthew Apfel, Jeff Beavers, and Jim Simpson. What does our industry need to know, to recognize about what we're doing in this world of technology, so to speak, on the job sites, right? If we would say in the field and in our training, in our classrooms, like what's, what's the impact? What's important about what we're doing now? So there's quite a few things that are important.
Um, number one, we, we are trying to stay on top of. What new technologies are coming out and get that training out as fast as we possibly can. Um, and it's a benefit to the apprentices, but it's also a benefit for on demand training. Uh, you know, you think about a local that gets a, uh, or chapter gets a, um, data center job and they have no knowledge about what has to happen in a data center. We have the resources available that we can provide that in an on demand training format.
Um, and I just had a conversation with somebody in Montana about that very thing. Um, and it's like, okay, tell me what you need and we'll make it happen. So we have the flexibility where we can, you know, be that resource. Oh, that's huge. Like, yeah, cause some of this work or a lot of it is new and some areas have never seen it, um, in person, if you will, right? So it's. It's a whole different level.
Well, one other thought on that too, is we do have a lot of training partners that will be willing to go out to job sites or go into a training center and do specific training. And I'll use Temple Communications as an example. Uh, you know, the fiber industry is blowing up right now and they're scheduling typically about. at least one fiber training session per month. And that's an asset that, you know, we just can't do away with.
It's so important to get our people trained on the fiber optic technologies.
Yeah. so, you know, you're saying safety and I think, okay, I, so I am saying I, not, not we, um, when you hear safety for me, you know, you start, first of all, maybe thinking glasses, gloves, boots, right, those are things you think about, you think about OSHA, code, um, you may even go into like, you know, electric shock and, and start, you know, going PPE and, and those sorts of things, but it's like, man, safety is, one, it has to be safe, You have to work safe, regardless
of what kind of electrical work you're doing, what you're installing, right, what, what you're working with, um, but then there's that other safety, right, that what we're putting in works, that the consumer, that customer, so I just think it's, it's so interesting to me, um, yeah, how it all fits in, and, and this adaptability, you all are already talking about it, like the code, you're talking about, okay, is this even relevant?
You know, in a few months, I mean, that's so a couple of things and Matt, I love that you brought up cybersecurity because that is a ticking time bomb right now. When you, when you really look at, you know, what we're doing on networks, computer networks and all of the devices that our industry is placing on the network and the liability involved with, you know, somebody getting in through a back door because somebody didn't do something right. when they were tying in that device on the network.
Um, and that is a safety issue. Um, it's not a physical safety issue. It's a network safety and a, and a business safety point. Uh, you know, we are absolutely addressing that, um, codes and standards are addressing cyber security now.
So, you know, it's a, uh, an item that 20 years ago, you really didn't think about it and you really didn't think about, okay, if the network goes down, It's going to be an inconvenience, but now businesses rely on those networks that that network goes down because it was hacked through a back door. Uh, somebody didn't do something right. It's millions of dollars that these companies are losing. And that's a big issue that we have to address in the industry.
Stay powered up, and we'll see you next time. Say what? How's everyone doing? Chris Lopez, your union brother on tick tock, Instagram. All the platforms. Welcome to another exciting episode of union or bust. Anyway, uh, just want to introduce our, our guests. We have Lee Sperry. and also we have Luis Arias from, um, uh, San Diego Drivers United, So what's the mission of San Diego Drivers United? What ultimately is the goal for you guys? Well, one of the goals is to educate new drivers.
Because there's a lot of new drivers that don't know the difference between what it was. And what it is, and they, they're just breaking also the industry because the new drivers, they, they accept bad trips, what we call bad trips, uh, very badly paid trips that don't, don't make us money. And, and they, that, that, as you said, AI turns that, that it just has like a learning curve. And if it sees that everybody's taking those bad trips, it keeps lowering the wage.
And, and it, it won't, we won't get what we used to make. And it keeps going down because a lot of new drivers don't know how to work. They don't know what what's actually making their money. They don't know how to like run their expenses. They don't factor in insurance. They don't factor in the maintenance. They don't factor in miles. Actually. Uh, one of the biggest things is that the, the, the IRS says that to be a driver. You, you have an expense of 60, I think 67 cents per mile, right?
And sometimes the trips are paying 60 cents. So how can you be making money if you're, you're accepting a trip that, that, that, that's lower than the IRS study that your expenses per mile. So they're using like AI against you in a way, because so if they have a bunch of rookies, you know, brand new drivers.
And they, uh, if, if, if the algorithm and what you're talking about is, is all these new drivers who don't know how to do their expenses, who don't know how to do all that, they all rush to it, they lower the, the, the price. Yeah, exactly. And, and so you guys are kind of training the new drivers in a way, or? We are educating drivers. We are trying to advocate for them.
We're trying to unite them because it's very hard for us to talk to every driver because we, we are always working in the streets and to actually talk to them. We were have, we have to have a page. We have to catch them at the airport when they find them in the airport or you just hunting down in the streets. So it's very hard to actually, Tell them what's going on. It's very hard to actually tell them. Oh, that's not a good trip. Oh, dude Have you factored in your gas today?
I mean, there's a lot of misery for misinformation. There's a lot of Ignorance And another thing is that there has been times that somebody gets hurt in, in a ride or, or, or somebody even died once. And they don't, they don't give insent to that, that, that, that driver's family. Nothing. So, all those things that we're working towards trying to fix or just level the industry, but we're not only working towards the driver's side. We have to pass a background check and a lot of stuff.
And for the passenger, there's no way of verifying who they are. They can have, uh, uh, a fake account. And they can keep going because you only need a fake, uh, phone number and fake email and, and, um, and just a prepaid card and you can write it with Uber and Lyft and they're not verified. Wow. So there's, there's things that we want to fix. So it's safer for, for drivers. Yes. Or safety concerns, you know, drivers.
Are looking to have this balance where drivers are being, you know, running their background check But how can we make safer for the drivers as well? Uh, you can check the news every week. There's somebody being assaulted A driver or somebody got shot uber driver got shot and murdered and who who can make Uh, give us the safety, you know for our drivers. We we love our community, but also we have to protect the drivers In our city.
Thank you for joining us for another episode of union or bust and san diego drivers united kick an ass for the working class See you later. Thank you Hey fellow workers, my name is Kim Siever. Welcome back to the Alberta Worker Podcast. You are tuning in to episode three on season three. We are a proud member of the Labour Radio Network as well as the Harbinger Media Network and broadcasting from the territory of Today's guest is Dan Peterson.
disability advocate, award nominated events worker, karaoke enthusiast, and accessibility nerd. Welcome, Dan. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here. You betcha. Looking forward to this interview. being a sports enthusiast in 2006, I had a friend that was just looking for a part time job and we were hanging out anyway, so I said, well, if you're going down to a job fair with the flames and at the saddle dome, I'll go down and then, you know, take my chances there. And I have been.
Part of the Calgary Sports and Entertainment Corporation, Ushering and Stan Experience team since September of 2006. Oh, wow. Extremely passionate about the organization and team and all of the teams, obviously, but I have been there, like I said, since oh six and in my almost 18 year history there, I'm one of only. six people in that time to navigate that position while using a wheelchair. And so I've kind of become their accessibility guy kind of by default.
In some ways I sort of forced it on them because I'm not shy about giving my opinions on things. Sure. And then I, just a quick question. Uh, you said, uh, sure. And what else they've morphed it into what they're calling the fan experience department. So, oh, fan experience. Okay. Anything, uh, Kind of front facing, customer service, guest relations kind of a role. And you attend all the concerts or just depends on what your shifts are? I try to work as much as I can.
Okay. It is a department of close to 300 now. So trying to manage everybody shifts and make sure everything is balanced out. Sometimes you miss out on the odd thing here or there, but I also enjoy attending events as well. So. Sure. It's, it's a nice balance. You sometimes have to cover like concerts or whatever of artists that you're not really keen on. Oh, all the time.
That's what makes the customer interaction a bit more fun because you get a chance to deal with their fans and maybe, you know, hear experiences as to why they're fans and, and maybe, you know, Sometimes I've, I've learned to appreciate different artists that I would not normally have grown to enjoy. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Sometimes there are artists you've never been exposed to yet, and then being able to go to the show, especially like opening acts and stuff. Oh yeah.
And getting an opportunity to see stuff like that. Absolutely. All right. So yeah, so we're, we're here at now. And so. One thing I usually ask my guests is how has your intersections of marginalization ever influenced your experience as a worker?
And that could be, you know, everything from ethnicity to gender orientation, ability, religion, economic class, whatever it happens to be, you know, how has those intersections and marginalizations influenced how you've experienced the workplace and being a worker? I mean obviously there's positives and negatives. The Saddledome's a really old building, unfortunately. It was built in the 80s and accessibility was sort of Not even a thought back then, unfortunately.
So even though I've been working for the organization for nearly 18 years, there are sadly still places in the building where I can't physically get to, you know, there's been hesitancy to on both ends of my end and the organization's end to kind of move me up into a supervisor role, because there's certain things that are required for that type of role that are not logistically The constraints of the building. It's one of the reasons I actually took a recent vacation.
When I talk about being an accessibility nerd, we're building a new event center here in Calgary for the flames to play out of and replace the old saddle dome back in April. I followed the team down to California with a friend of mine. We actually drove the whole stretch and caught games in four different arenas. Okay. And the entire time, yes, I was there watching the game because I'm a hockey fan, and that's my team.
They pay the bills, but I was also looking at You know, how things are handled in different buildings from a working perspective and from a accessibility standpoint, kind of getting ideas that I plan on sharing with our brass. And I don't know, I find it funny that I wound up in two industries, being the sports and entertainment fields that are, are sadly not super accessible, but I am extremely passionate about both.
Thanks so much, Dan, for joining us, and thanks to all the listeners for listening in and as always, solidarity. Hello and welcome to Tales from the Ruther Library, a little podcast coming to you from the Walter P. Ruther Library on the campus of Wayne State University in the very heart of Detroit, Michigan. I am your host, Dan Gelodner, and with me is the amazing Troy Eller English. So today's episode, we were talking with Princeton University assistant professor Jay Cephas.
Jay Cephas is an historian of architecture, landscapes, and cities, conducting research that explores the relationships between labor, technology, and identity in the built environment. And he's founder director of Studio Platte in Boston, which supports urban change makers in their mission to make cities better places to live, work, and play.
He wrote a great chapter in the book, Architectures of Care, a compilation of essays about the issues that surround urban design, architecture, and the likes, and that can be expressed through the materials, spatial, and labor practices of architecture. His chapter is called Detroit Industry, and quote unquote, The Mural. Representing labor and appropriating care in the museum and the Union Hall. Um, his chapter is about two great murals here in Detroit.
The mural hangs in our reading room here at the Rutherford Library. And the other mural is the Diego Rivera murals called Detroit Industry, which are down the street at the Detroit Institute of Art. The Diego murals are a part of Detroit. We see it everywhere. It's part of our ethos basically, but let's give it our listeners. What was the purpose of creating the Detroit industrial murals in Detroit? And what was the purpose of that art form? Yeah. So, um, they were.
Commissioned by Edsel Ford, um, who was president of Ford Motor Company, um, and also, uh, maybe just as importantly, the chair of the Arts Commission that was overseeing the DIA during that period in the 1930s, um, and it was during a period where there is lots of immigration into Detroit from Europe, um, and the population of Detroit is more than 70%, um, immigrants, and the DIA by its arts commission is understood as playing this important role of helping
to Americanize these immigrants in part, uh, by displaying arts of the U. S. and of Europe, um, but as a way of also kind of centering the American experience within those art forms. Um, and so that was already a way of thinking about organizing the existing collections at the DIA, um, but there was then a desire to bring in new work that could sort of extend that work, and Diego Rivera's name came up, you know, the year before.
Rivera had his first, uh, personal retrospective, um, uh, in New York, um, and over the last sort of couple of years prior to the murals, um, he was becoming widely known to a specifically American audience, right? So it seemed to be a great moment, uh, for that. Um, so from the perspective of the DIA and the Arts Commission, the purpose of the Detroit industry murals, um, was to celebrate Detroit history. Um, and to sort of really, uh, center Detroit, um, in.
The, uh, or in the American Industrial Revolution, um, in the auto industry, of course. And to use that as a primary means of communicating to these new immigrants, uh, to the city and to sort of, um, uh, sort of acclimate them, uh, into American culture.
Because Detroit is on this sort of, uh, precipice in this moment, uh, with this rising, uh, labor movement, one of the things I became interested in is the way in which the commissioning of this mural, uh, that centers the industrial worker, um, also serves to distract from that glo growing labor movement, um, and to do so by sort of positioning Ford, Edsel Ford himself, but the Ford Motor Company, um, in general, and of course Henry Ford as well, as these kind of
benevolent caretakers of the industrial working class because they kind of gift to the city, um, this amazing mural, uh, and really the art collection of the DIA as a whole, uh, which, um, was, um, up until very recently, um, owned by the City of Detroit. Um, and so I think that this sort of tension is sort of quite interesting, right?
Between, uh, kind of creating the mural as a way to kind of fold in these newcomers to the city, of creating a history, uh, of Detroit that's, that centers, um, industrial development, that centers the automotive industry, and using that narrative at the very same time to turn attention to away from this growing unionization as tens and thousands of workers are being sort of folded into these industrial unions, or at least there's these
fights around, uh, unionizing these workers, which, um, would have been, you know, from force perspective, detrimental to what they're trying to do. Jay. Appreciate it. Thanks so much for being with us, man. Of course. Thank you. Tales from the Ruther Library is a production of the Walter P. Ruther Library and Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University, coming to you from the heart of the Cultural Center of Detroit, Michigan.
The producers are Dan Geladner and Troy Eller English. The music was composed by. And of course, this podcast could not be done without the research and the support of the entire Ruther Library staff. For more information, please visit our website at www. ruther. wayne. edu. Thanks for listening. Say goodbye, Dan. Goodbye, Dan. Alright, let's do mic check number two. Cephus is a doctor. Cephus in the house, please. Let's try it again. Let's try that again. One more time, Mr. Cephus.
You are wanted in the mural room. Alright. We rockin and rollin Yeah, I think so. Okay. Okie dokie, artichokie. Oof, artichokes. What a waste of a vegetable. Those guys are so goofy. I just loved their credits and the show too. Of course. Hey, that is going to do it for this week's edition of the labor radio podcast, weekly, just a small sample of the amazing programs aired over the last week. On more than 200 labor radio and podcast shows.
They're all part of the labor radio podcast network shows that focus on working people's issues and concerns. We've got links to all the network shows, labor radio network.org. You can also find them use the hashtag labor radio pod. On Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. And you can be part of the network too. You don't even need a microphone. Labor radio podcast network t-shirts are available. They're union made. You'll find them in all sizes and two [email protected].
This podcast is recorded under a sag after collective bargaining agreement. The labor radio podcast, weekly edited this week by Patrick Dickson. I produced the show and our social media guru. As always and forever is Mr. Harold Phillips. For the labor radio podcast weekly, this has been Chris Gerlach stay active and stay tuned to your local labor radio podcast show. We will see you. Next week.