You're listening to the labor radio podcasts weekly produced by the labor radio podcast network, labor radio network. Dot org. I'm Chris Garlock. On this week show. I think that we should not be blaming the voters for what happened. To me, that is like blaming our students. for not learning, right? From radio labor on K B O O F M a discussion of the democratic party and union's response to the election.
Uh, strike is about, uh, better working, working conditions, um, fair compensation, cooperation with, uh, employees, uh, and guarantees for the strikers. This is additional demand, uh, during the strike Then labor start brings us an interview with Tamara N Siani. One of the striking gaming workers at evolution gaming in Georgia. It doesn't matter gender, race, size, ethnicity, does not matter anymore.
People just doing the same job are going to get the same amount of money and it's going to give them some certainty in life. On the mining and energy union podcast, one of our new network members, a discussion of same job, same pay laws. the job is shit But it was progressively starting to slowly get better better, but they just got no no You Policies, no procedures, no nothing in place, at all, at all, this incident didn't need to happen, like nothing like this ever needs to happen.
Campo. And Sparrow. talk. About a recent death at a wind farm on the golden Plains on concrete gang and another new network member. Where was the organizing message behind things like labor law reform? You know, things that really are definitely going to give that 80 percent of the electorate that don't have the value of a union, a chance at. Capitalizing on things that the federal federal government, the Democratic Party has stood for. They were not pillars. They were talking points Next.
On the power at work podcast. Painters president Jimmy Williams has ideas about the democratic party's failure to elect Kamala Harris president. Plus president William shares his views on the current state of labor. and how he envisions the future of the labor movement. that's sort of the environment that they would prefer to operate in. And because they're a multi trillion dollar company, they feel that they are able to dictate terms to entire country.
In our final segment is Amazon trying to Americanize Canadian labor law. Find out when radio labor looks into this question. That's all ahead. Plus Harold shows you should know on this week's edition of the labor radio podcast, weekly. Let's get started with Harold's quick rundown of shows. You should know.
Thanks, Chris. Social media guy Harold Phillips here again, folks, and yeah, we're all getting adjusted to this new reality we're living in, but There are other things to talk about besides the election and what may happen afterwards. Here are just a few shows you should know for the week of November 17th. AFSCME District Council 33's Greg Boulware and Antoine Little talk with J Doc and Krausey about the local's possible strike with the City of Philadelphia on The Labor Show.
On Union Talk, Randy talks with Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Hsu about the transformative power of labor, the recent rise in labor unions, and how to secure a better future for our kids. On What's Going on Labor Monday, New York City Central Labor Council President Vinnie Alvarez discusses the results of the 2024 election, and the RWDSU's Chessie Conner discusses Barnes Noble workers fight for a first contract. Patricia Hills and Joseph Inton talk about Philip Tipperman's labor paintings.
Dean Anderson looks back at the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and Rick Smith remembers Karen Silkwood on the Labor Heritage Power Hour. Workweek Radio shares a panel on what fascism is and how to fight it. And stories on East Palestine residents fighting to get health care, U. S. imperialism in Puerto Rico, and more. And, Debra Kahn discusses Season 2 of Netflix's The Diplomat. How the show's writers room aims for authenticity.
And more on the Writer's Guild of America's third and Fairfax podcast, and where can you find links to those shows and well over 200 more labor radio shows and [email protected]. Of course, find out about the latest episodes of labor radio shows and podcasts by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and yeah. Twitter. At. LaborRadioNet. And, by the way, yeah, we are looking at moving over to blue sky, too. And be sure to follow the hashtag, LaborRadioPod. Back to you, Chris.
To you, the nine to fiver, just making your way home. To you, the all night driver, out in your cab a long. To you, waiting for lunch break, as the minutes direct so slow. Take courage, turn the volume up, it's Labor Radio. Good evening and welcome to labor radio of the working class, by the working class, for the working class. I'm your host, Steven Siegel, broadcasting around the world from Portland, Oregon.
I'm a public school teacher, and Rachel is a And I host every second Monday of the month. But Rachel is not with me here today. I think I want to really just start with what's going on? How are people feeling? Um, how are we going to respond to the election of Donald Trump?
A lot of what I've been seeing so far coming out of our union has been around, um, how do we talk with our students and to a lesser extent, you know, our members feelings and sort of trying to address those and reassure people that, hey, we as a union will continue to, to fight for you. We still have your backs. you know, one of the things that I'm noticing too is when people are talking about why did, you know, why did the election go this way? Why did, why did Trump win again?
And there's this tendency to want to blame the election. The voters, right? Well, it's these, you know, they're, um, what's the term? Not mis or under informed, but, um, low information voters, as, um, they have sometimes been referred to, and I think that's a big mistake. I think that we should not be blaming the voters for what happened. To me, that is like blaming our students. for not learning, right?
Like we don't blame our students or I should say we shouldn't blame our students for when they, when they fail. When they don't pass their class. Or when they don't learn the material that we want them to learn. Now, there have been some good policies that have come out of the Biden, um, administration, um, but a lot of the best things were really watered down, or he refused to really follow through on and carry out once there was some pushback.
and we need to be looking at our own unions too, right, especially on the national level. What are our national, what are our unions doing on the national level? Well, what I see is a lot of aligning ourselves with the Democratic Party. And as long as we are basically just cheerleaders of the Democratic Party, and as long as we continue down that road of, well, they're better than the Republicans, so that's what we got to do, then this is what we're going to get.
So thank you for joining us on KABOO. You've been listening to Labor Radio. Hello, this is Eric Lee and this is another Labor Start podcast. Today we're talking to Tamar, who's one of the strikers at Evolution Gaming in Georgia, and she is the Vice president of the Labor L-A-B-O-R Union there, which has been on a strike there for about four months now. Welcome to the show, Tamar. Welcome. Hi. Hi. Thank you for inviting me in your podcast. We're very happy to have you here.
Tamar, can you tell us briefly what this strike is about? Uh, strike is about, uh, better working, working conditions, um, fair compensation, cooperation with, uh, employees, uh, and guarantees for the strikers. This is additional demand, uh, during the strike. What are the guarantees for the strikers? Is they, they get their jobs back or what is the demand?
Uh, the guarantee, uh, uh, to the strikers means that, uh, after the strike, they're going to have guaranteed that they will not lose, uh, the job for any other reason. Okay. Are you, are you talking to the company? Are you in negotiations with the company? During the strike? No. No. No, uh, during the strike, uh, we had, uh, uh, zero communication with the administ uh, with the management of, uh, uh, the company. Tell us a little bit about the company.
I know it's a Swedish owned company operating in Georgia. Tell me, what do you, what do you do there? What is evolution gaming? the player can, uh, play from the home, uh, by computer, by laptop or, uh, mobile, the blackjack and the other casino games, um, and, uh, they. Game is presented by real, uh, humans dealers. Um, they're working also shufflers who are preparing the cards for the game.
And the game presenter is responsible, uh, to, uh, present the game, uh, to say shortly and the company of founded, uh, 2006. And this is Swedish company. And here in Georgia, a company came 2018, 2018. And after, after it, uh, the profit for the company was increasing time to time every, uh, years. And, uh, for example, when the company came to Georgia, uh, profit, uh, for, for the company was, um, 83 million Euro. And, uh, after. 2020 19, it was increased, uh, twice.
And for 2023, the profit for the company was, uh, uh, more than 1 billion. So there were 88, 000 employees in Georgia of evolution. How many of them have gone on strike? Half of them gone on strike 4621 from the beginning. But today is First month of the strike. And of course, most of them can't keep this striking because most of them was without any income. Some of them return back to the work in evolution. Some of them leave the company and start new job.
And, uh, several hundreds are still striking. so Martha, the best of luck from us. We may do another interview later on after you've won. I want to talk to you after the victory as well. Thank you very much. Thank you for your support and, um, yeah, we will, we will keep, uh, our struggle here. You're listening to the Mining and Energy Union podcast. Same job, same pay is one of the great reforms that will be a legacy of Black Ducky. Well, same job, same pay has arrived.
As of the 1st of November, companies using labour hire to rort their employees out of pay can be taken to the Fair Work Commission. And forced to play by the rules. I'm at the mining and energy union conference in Brisbane, and we have some direct beneficiaries of these new laws. Tanya Henschel from Queensland. Do you want to tell us your story? Yeah, I started working at Coppabella.
And the union was actually having trouble finding labor hire to help with the application for the same job, same pay. I was asked on night shift, so heaven forbid I have to apologize to the lawyer and the union reps because night shift is horrible. But we found out this week that the application went through unopposed. So it's going to happen for us, which is awesome. For me in particular, it means an increase of up to 17 an hour. It's around about 750. week that I'm on deck.
For me, that means that I can help my daughter buy her house, put down money on a car. It means that I can actually pay for psychiatry help for my son who wants to do firefighting and search and rescue with dogs. So this money allows my family to study. My daughter wants to help people get out of jail. My son wants to help people and rescue them. This money allows that to happen and I don't have to sacrifice anything else and it's going to go through.
Graham Middlebrook is president of the Callied Valley Lodge. The lodge is important because it was one of the first places that the union's legal eagles and we've got the top legal eagle here. Who's ready to tell us a bit more about it in a second, decided to roll out these laws or some applications. Can you tell us a bit about it? G'day, by the way, Graeme. Yeah, hi. Um, oh look, it was, uh, it's, it's an amazing journey.
I know we ended up with a terminology called same job, same pay, but ultimately this started 20 odd years ago around trying to create, Permanent opportunities for people to, you know, be able to just live in life and be comfortable and, and have some certainties. It's an amazing journey from Adam's team, working with us at the Lodge level, like it's taken a lot of work and a lot of research and data to get through this decision. And thankfully we've had the, uh, the.
The government support us through this as well. So been absolutely amazing. What does it mean for our team at Kallied or our members? We currently have about somewhere around in the vicinity of 350 labour hire workers, which is probably about 60 percent of our workforce. So a lot of people are affected. Ultimately, you know, they are going to get paid the same as our host agreement, which is really important.
The relief on their faces with the cost of living, with inclusivity, you know, we've got people doing the same jobs, are going to get paid the same amount of money. It doesn't matter gender, race, size, ethnicity, does not matter anymore. People just doing the same job are going to get the same amount of money and it's going to give them some certainty in life.
Which ultimately contributes to the wellbeing of mental health, viability of communities, the viability of sporting events within your community as well. It's, uh, the, the ripple effect is, is massive. Of course, you would have heard Adam Walkerton on the podcast before. He's the MEU's top legal eagle. Adam, this must bring a smile to your dial, hearing this story. It does, Tim, because what we've been able to achieve here is an excellent outcome.
We've been able to build momentum with the applications we've filed so far. So, as we speak now, the union's filed about 43 applications, same job, same pay applications, at about 24 commons. We estimate that there's about 4, 000 labour hire workers who will be covered by those orders. And we estimate that the annual pay increase, collectively, is 120 million. And that's just with the applications we've filed to date.
So our plan, Tim, is to continue to make these applications on a site by site basis and build on the momentum and the wins we've had with respect to these workers who have had success thus far. I'm Tim Brunero, you're listening to the MEU Podcast. Good morning from the Concrete Gang, bright eyed, bushy tailed, 8. 55 on your AM dial, 9. 30 every Sunday morning, apart from now of the week, because we're all away and on the drink, so. Yeah, had a good long, long weekend.
I tell you what, since we've been off, there's been a lot of things happening, you know. Obviously, the world's been saved. We've got Donald Trump as the president, and you know, everyone thinks, that many people I know are like, oh, how good is it, Donald Trump? I would like, oh my god, like, you know what I mean, like, I don't know, like, Bitcoin's going up. Bitcoin's going up. We're about, we're about two steps away from World War 3, um, yeah. Women can't get abortions.
Women can't get abortions. Elon Musk, Tesla, Tesla shares are going up. Oh, Elon Musk just got a cushy job, but he donated like 18 billion or something. Did you see how much he donated? But apparently, after the election, how much Tesla shares went through the roof. Sparrow will give a report, but you know, it's on a sad note. We had a Young construction worker die.
I think 36. 36. Yeah, we're actually in the organizers meeting what happened and got called out down at Oracle golden plains one of the wind farms. I've been out there a few times Obviously cory's been out there a fair bit and emma and and the job is shit But it was progressively starting to slowly get better better, but they just got no no You Policies, no procedures, no nothing in place, at all, at all, this incident didn't need to happen, like nothing like this ever needs to happen.
Nah. But we got out there, and then, by the time we got out there, it probably took us an hour and a half, nearly two hours to get there, cause it's, it's, it's It's a good hour pasture long in the middle. It's very remote. Probably closer to the Meridiv. Meridiv is a major town near there, wouldn't it, you could say. Yep, there's not much out there. And you know, those wind farms are very spread out. It was, I think the incident happened three caves from the main compound.
So, yeah, I've dealt with a couple of like wind farms, gas farms. You go to the front gate, but the front gate, the job and the incident, that's spread out. We're talking, they're over probably miles. Yeah. So when it was actually, it was a pretty warm day.
And, with the, the, it took the ambulance an hour and a half to get there, after the incident, they couldn't do anything, you know, and, a few, few of the workmates tried to revive him, one of them, the guy, one of them was the, the guy who was under, whose crush was the godfather of this guy's kid, so he was trying to revive him, they're all pretty close crew, you know, and then, cause they're working remotely, virtually, so they get really close.
And normally, yeah, we've all been on them, like, especially, because mainly on them wind farms, I'm, I'm presuming, it'd be mainly just crane crew, standing at arm's length, you know what I mean? Yeah, they do their bit, then they move on to the next bit, you know? Yeah, and most of them would have got each other's mates jobs, you know, we all know that. And what didn't help, within 20 minutes of it, before the ambulance got there, the media were flying over.
Putting out shots, so everyone who's got family and friends working there are freaking out. Oh, 100%. And, so, what, what, like, the, so, the turn boy, what happened? They pick up the turn boy, they sit on these trestles, like, which, who knows what they're rated to, but these turbines, they sit in like a, a clamshell, so you gotta open, and, when they come on the ship, they're vertical, and then they come on the truck, they're horizontal, so they sort of get jammed in a bit.
Yeah. But we don't know how the incident happened, but the, Their process is they open up this, this sort of clamshell, they put the grabber onto it, and they've got to yank it a bit to get it out, and then they put the pins through. But whatever's happened, it's come off and the young bloke's died. Died, tragically killed. You've been listening to a 3CR podcast produced in the studios of Independent Community Radio Station 3CR in Melbourne, Australia.
Hello, powerful people and welcome back to power at work. My name is Seth Harris, and I'm a senior fellow at the Burns Center for Social Change. Welcome to another Power at Work broadcast. Today, we're going to have a challenging and important discussion. Uh, I'm going to speak with President Jimmy Williams, Jr. of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades about the 2024 election.
We will discuss why a majority of working class voters supported President Trump instead of Vice President Kamala Harris. And we will examine whether there's. Anything the democratic party in the labor movement can and should do about bringing working class voters back into the progressive coalition. Mr. President, Jimmy, it's a great privilege to have you on Power at Work. I'm really grateful to you for making the time today. Yeah, thanks for having me.
And thanks for giving a voice to these issues that are so important to one of the tragic Thank you very much.
Ironies of those voting results that we just talked about in your critique of them is that the economic agenda that the Biden Harris administration pursued, the American Rescue Plan, the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Chips and Science Act, were largely aimed at creating good union jobs for workers who don't have college degrees and either have been left out of the middle class or risk falling out of the middle class. And I know.
Your union, the Painters Union, and other building trade unions invested a lot of effort and money in educating their members about these policies that are putting them back to work. So, why didn't that message get through to non union working class voters? Who's talking to them? You know, organized labor has the ability to speak directly to our members. 19 percent of the electorate, 20 percent of the electorate. That's great.
Who's talking to the other 80 percent and explaining to them all of the great things, because I agree with you. 1000 percent said president Biden is an outlier. On a lot of levels on how he governed and his support for labor unions, all the way to down to, to walking picket in one of the most important, you know, strikes in the history of the, of the automotive industry.
I mean, there was no questioning what Joe Biden's values were to union members and to folks that pay attention to this stuff every single day, Joe Biden was removed from the ticket. Kamala Harris. Was running for president, and I'm not blaming Vice President Harris. She was put in a very difficult position by the party. And, and it's about who can organize the message to working class voters of all of those things that the democratic party tried to legislate, but could not communicate.
So is, let me, I want to focus on that particular issue. Is it a question of the Democrats policy agenda? Or is it a question of their messaging? I think it's equal because I think that oftentimes we We that see progress like to think it stops at the moment it's done. Progress is done the minute it took place in a legislative fashion. What was next? You know, what came behind it? Where was the organizing message behind things like labor law reform?
You know, things that really are definitely going to give that 80 percent of the electorate that don't have the value of a union, a chance at. Capitalizing on things that the federal federal government, the Democratic Party has stood for. They were not pillars. They were talking points. And you have to be able to organize a populist message that people can feel. And I don't believe that we do a good enough job when we're also trying to organize a populist message. Placate corporate America.
I don't believe we do a good enough job when we take money from corporate America. You cannot serve two interests in this economic system of ours. It just doesn't work. You know, there are monopolies that are monopolizing our health care system, our media system, you know, our retail system. You know, you want to talk about who the enemy is. Well, the enemy are those that are controlling prices in this country, and it never seemed to resonate to the working class. So thanks again for joining us.
We will see you on Power at Work again very soon. This is Solidarity News on Radio Labour. This is a Radio Labour Canada report recorded on Friday, November 15th, 2024. I'm Mark Balazsek. In April, 2024, 200 workers at the Amazon warehouse in Laval, Quebec were the first Amazon workers to successfully be certified as a union bargaining unit. The workers are members of the Confe de or CSN. The Anti-Union Company reacted by trying to bring American style labor law into Canada.
I talked to Barry Eidlin about the situation. Mr. Eidlin is an Associate Professor of Sociology at McGill University. I asked him about the Amazon workers in Laval. They have been organizing for over two years, but the actual certification petition came in April of this year and was certified by the Quebec Administrative Labor Tribunal. It's a two year organizing campaign, but the actual unionization is fairly recent.
And it is the first successful unionization campaign in Canada, and only the second in North America, with the first being the JFK 8 warehouse in Staten Island, New York. There have been other attempts at organizing Amazon warehouses, but this is the first one that where we've actually ended up with a certified bargaining unit. How did Amazon react to the workers deciding to unionize? Unsurprisingly, they are a notoriously anti union company, and so they contested the certification.
What is perhaps a bit more surprising is how they contested the certification. Normally, when employers contest union certification, they will nitpick about technicalities, about, Oh, this isn't the appropriate bargaining unit. There should be more workers in the bargaining unit. There should be fewer workers. There were some irregularities. These people, you know, signed their cards irregularly or what have you.
No. What Amazon did in their challenge, Was they declared that the entire method of union certification as laid out in Quebec labor law It was unconstitutional and in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And what they argued was that it was unconstitutional because there was not a secret ballot election involved in the certification process.
There are four Canadian provinces in the federal jurisdiction that use this model that we use in Quebec called card check certification. Some of your list may be familiar with where you certify union by. Workers signing union cards. And once you have a majority of workers signed up on cards, you go to the labor tribunal or the labor board. They verify that these are actual workers at the workplace and they certify it.
What Amazon claimed in contradiction to 80 years of Canadian labor jurisprudence was that this was somehow unconstitutional. The labor tribunal recently issued a decision smacking this down as a ridiculous argument and rightly so. But, the fact that They seemed confident in making such an argument, speaks to both their hubris, but also the degree of anti union animus that permeates Amazon as a company and, and their entire business model.
there's been an entire industry of union avoidance industry that has cropped up in the past few decades in the U. S. There's, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of high priced consultants, lawyers. Who specialize in basically persuading, put it mildly, workers to reject unionization and to keep workplaces non union. And Amazon has availed itself of these services in the U S considerably. They have a lot of them in house and they basically are trying to export that model to Canada.
And. So far it's failed, but that's sort of the environment that they would prefer to operate in. And because they're a multi trillion dollar company, they feel that they are able to dictate terms to entire country. And so that's the situation that we're in right now. And that's it. Labor news you can use. Thank you for listening and remember it's all about solidarity. Hey, that's a wrap for this week's edition of the labor radio podcasts, weekly.
Our sampling of some of the amazing programs aired over the past week on more than 200 labor radio and podcast shows. They're all part of the labor radio podcast network shows the focus on working people's issues and concerns. We've got links to all the network shows labor radio network dot, or you can also find them use the hashtag labor radio pod on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Reminder, let us know what you think of the show. Drop us a note [email protected].
And you can be part of the network. 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 colors at labor radio network taught or. This podcast is recorded. Under a sag after collective bargaining agreement. The labor radio podcasts weekly was edited this week by Patrick Dickson. I produced the show and our social media guru always in forever. Is Mr. Harold Phillips.
Quick reminder, we will be off next week for the holiday. So it looks for the next labor radio podcasts weekly on Friday, December six. Have a happy and safe holiday, everybody. For the labor radio podcasts weekly. This has been Chris Garlock stay active and stay tuned to your local labor radio podcast show. We will see you in two weeks.