You are listening to the labor radio podcast, weekly excerpts from shows in the labor radio podcast network. You'll find them and dozens. [email protected], if Trump takes a more moderate position vis a vis the labor movement, uh, than he did during his first administration, then all these questions, um, will require a kind of second level of analysis.
Um, than, than the one, uh, that we gave during the first administration, which was to fairly assume that President Trump would take the most muscular anti union position conceivable. A labor. Law analysis. Of what could. Happen under the new Trump. administration. On the power at work. Podcast. in 2024, Amazon had 9,200 warehouse jobs approved for H one B visas. And speaking rather snarkily. Very few Americans are capable, much less trained, to be warehouse workers. On The voice of. The people.
podcast, H one B or not to be. That's the visa question. that's how I started. I ground out a couple of blades, put an edge on them, heat treated them and put a handle on them. And I was like, okay, that looks cool. Then a masterclass in Bladesmithing with Tony Bravo on The Power Line podcast. the problem with the Lion King is that. The lions have four legs, but human beings have two legs.
And so it's not like planet of the apes where you can have an actor in a suit and right away that motion capture is translated to the character On the director's cut. Barry Jenkins discusses Mufasa the Lion King. With Ben Affleck.
We had men and women and children, 25, 000 here in Ballarat from all corners of the world Many victims of political persecution, British charters, political refugees from the failed revolutions in Ireland in 1848 and the rest of Europe who gathered here trying to find their fortune. and in our final segment from Australia, the stick together podcast brings us the fascinating story of the Eureka Rebellion.
When in 1854, the army and police attacked miners for daring to call for the end of mining licenses and universal suffrage. I'm Chris Garlock, and that's all ahead on this week's edition of the Labor Radio Podcast Weekly. Here's the show. hello, powerful people and welcome back to power at work. My name is Seth Harris. I'm a senior fellow at the burn center for social change. Welcome to the second broadcast in a, in Power at Work series entitled What could happen under Trump?
Speaking of challenges and disruption and, and other things, uh, today I'm going to talk with two top labor law academics about what we should expect from the national labor relations board and the courts, including the Supreme court in their interpretation. An application of American labor law. Charlotte Garden is the Gray Plant Moody, Moody and Bennett professor of law at the university of Minnesota law school.
Ben Sacks is the Kestenbaum Professor of Labor and Industry at Harvard Law School and the Faculty Director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy. There's, there's a little bit of an open question about what Trump's labor policy is going to be like full bore. Um, you know, he, he has appointed or nominated to the Department of Labor. Uh, a nominee who supported the PRO Act, he's come out in favor of the Longshoremen in their, ongoing labor dispute.
I'm really curious to see whether Trump or Vance or, uh, Josh Hawley says anything supportive about the Amazon workers strike. Holly himself wrote to the, uh, NLRB a while back telling the board that they ought to look at Amazon's delivery service provider structure. Um, so there's, this is just to say that there's some open questions here about how anti union.
This administration will be, um, you know, and, and, you know, if, if Trump takes a more moderate position vis a vis the labor movement, uh, than he did during his first administration, then all these questions, um, will require a kind of second level of analysis. Um, than, than the one, uh, that we gave during the first administration, which was to fairly assume that President Trump would take the most muscular anti union position conceivable.
And it's just not clear to me that that will be the case again. That is perhaps the most optimistic take on the second Trump term that I have heard. So Charlotte, let me, let me talk to you about, um, what the hit list might be at the NLRB What would you say are the three or so Biden board decisions that the Trump board is most likely to reverse as soon as they can? Yeah, so I think, um, first on my list is CEMEX, um, and I'm guessing that's not going to come as a surprise to a lot of people.
Either of you, uh, so the, uh, CMEX decision did two things. One thing it did was, uh, say that if, um, a union has, makes a showing of majority support, um, presents it to the employer, the employer has to do one of two things. One, recognize the union and start to bargain. Two, file a petition for a union election.
Um, the second thing it did was say that, uh, if, um, During the period between, uh, the filing for a union election, the election taking place, the employer committed unfair labor practices that called into question the kind of accuracy or validity of the election, then rather than having a rerun, um, the remedy would be a bargaining order. So, you know, Much making it much easier, much more likely that if an employer committed serious unfair labor practices, the result would be an order.
Now you have to bargain with the union rather than okay, we're going to rerun this and you get more time to, you know, tell your employees that they shouldn't vote for union representation or more time to erode majority support. So, uh, I would expect that decision to, to be overruled very quickly, right? As soon as the, as soon as the board finds a, Vehicle to do that. Um, you know, you said you said choose my top 3 and my other 2 are really low are like low hanging fruit for the for the board.
So I think the board will very quickly go back to, um, uh, go back to a standard that makes it easier for employers to argue that more employees ought to be included in a bargaining unit than the union initially petitioned for. And then the other one, um, So, uh, there's also been isolation on certain election procedures issues. Um, The Trump board, um, and, uh, promulgated a rule that did a number of things, um, several of which, um, lengthens the time from petition to election.
Um, the DC circuit held that many of those changes were procedural. Uh, they didn't have to go through notice and comment rulemaking. So I think that's another, uh, so I think that's another, um, issue where the Trump board will say, Oh, we can just do this immediately. I mean, that. It's probably already drafted. Charlotte garden from the university of Minnesota law school, Ben sacks from Harvard university law school. We are so delighted to have had you here. What a fantastic conversation.
I knew it would be. Thanks for helping us to understand better what could happen under President Trump in labor law. Thanks very much. Thanks for having us. Thank you Good afternoon and welcome to Voice of the People, Radio Buy in for the 99 percent for January 7th, 2025. It's season six. Episode six. So let's hope we don't have a third six and get the evangelicals mad at us. We finally got snow in, in Western Montana on the ground. I mean, not in the mountains, but on the ground.
So it feels like winter now. Good. So, our word of the week is H 1B. This is normally an obscure topic. Does it have anything to do with the battle going on in Trump world? Nailed it, Jim. Uh, we will cover that story later in the show, but first we need to dig down and explore what H 1B visas are to understand the context of this battle. Um, so let's go ahead and be specific. What exactly are H 1B visas?
according to Wikipedia, quote, The H 1B is a visa in the United States under the Immigration and Nationality Act. That allows United States employers to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations. It is the largest visa category in the United States in terms of guest worker numbers, end quote. So, in other words, this is, this is the professional, uh, professional work, right? Of all kinds. And technical work. Yeah, we had a, we had a young, um, adjunct at the university.
Who was from Mexico, she had all the qualifications to do what we wanted and a little bit more and we were able to hire her just because of that specialty, but she could not then go and take a job any place else. Right? That's part of the part of the restriction, but as we shall see. Uh, those usually aren't very well enforced, but yeah, and, um, the 64, 000 question or rupee question is how many H 1B visas have been issued? And has there been a change in the amount of them issued in a year?
Yeah, there has been. Yeah. Yeah. So in, in the, uh, Wikipedia article, the, They say there exists congressionally mandated caps limiting the number of H 1B visas that can be issued each fiscal year to 65, 000, but that has been updated recently to 85, 000 per year. An additional 20, 000 visas can be issued to those graduating with a master's degree. Or a higher qualification from a U. S. college or university.
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, USCIS, estimated there were 583, 420 foreign nationals. on H 1B visas. That's over a half a million people as of September 30th, 2019. Between 1991 and 2022, the number of H 1B visas issued has quadrupled. There were 206, 002 initial and continuing H 1B B visas issued in 2022 end quote.
And then, uh, according to Robert Sterling publishing on Twitter, X applications for the H one B visa are 10 times those available in 2024 Sterling also points out that computer and software companies overwhelmingly dominated the applications. for H 1B visas over the past five years. According to Thomas Neuberger, in his God's spies blog of December 31st in 2024, Amazon had 9,200 warehouse jobs approved for H one B visas. And speaking rather snarkily.
Very few Americans are capable, much less trained, to be warehouse workers. Oh, is that it? Of course. That might, that has to be it, uh, Jim. I, what other explanation is there? Oh, well, yeah. I know. Bezos is a billionaire. That's, I forgot about that. Or, um, only people with homes with, they can put shelves in, are, you know, trained to put things on shelves. The unhoused don't have that benefit. Right. Thank you.
And, please join us every week on Voice of the People, radio by and for the 99%. All right, Tony Bravo. Okay. I was just doing some research for the episode and looking back to when we first recorded together was episode 82. And so we're damn near a hundred episodes between since we last talked. It's crazy. Wow. I know, right? It's wild. Pretty cool. I can't believe it. So, uh, welcome back.
And like I just said a minute ago, I just want to dive into your craft, your new craft of knife making and bladesmithing or whatever you want to call it. What is the pro name for it? What do you, what do you call yourself? It's just a bladesmith. Yeah. So, um, born and raised in Southern California and, uh, started in the trade as far as line work in, uh, 2002. So that's where I learned all my work ethic and, uh, everything that's contributed to today, right.
And in, in building knives and everything. So I started in line work as a groundman and then, uh, became a journeyman lineman, uh, roughly four years later, got an apprenticeship after six months.
And I worked outside construction for a while and, uh, about 10 years into it, I came to the utility and I've been at the utility since, uh, and after that, you know, I got into supervision, you know, got out of the field, got into supervision and, uh, had a little more time on my hands and, uh, I'd lost a blade that I had just purchased. And, uh, decided to make my own because I was pretty pissed. I'd spent 400 bucks on this blade and pretty pissed that I lost it. So I got into knife making.
Since I got all this time on my hands, I don't work the OT anymore. You know, I started, started, uh, dabbling into that and started making blades and And really dove in hard, man, started buying machines and really investigating what it takes to make a good, to make good steel, how to make Damascus and just took off from there, man. So you start diving into trying to figure out how to make knives, make blades. Where did you start? I started just on YouTube, you know, kind of crazy school.
Right? It's like you could do anything on YouTube. So I started there, just started looking at what it, what I needed, what's the minimum requirement to make a steel blade. And, um, I started there, obviously, uh, the first steps into knife making is, um, where most people start off is grinding a blade out of a piece of steel. Or cutting it out and then putting your bevels in and doing all that. And the heat treating, there's a little more to that. There's more of a science to the heat treating.
And, uh, we can get into that a little later, but, um, that's how I started. I ground out a couple of blades, put an edge on them, heat treated them and put a handle on them. And I was like, okay, that looks cool. Um, as I got more into it, that's when I invested in the forge and started forging my own steel and forging the blade out. Um, cause there's benefits to both. what do you need for, for forging, for forging? You need, what does that process look like?
Yeah. So you need your heat source, right? So you could use a conventional, an old style coal forge, which is a little more difficult to use and not practical for urban living. Sure. She got a coal plant next door. Um, but I use a propane forge. You know, so that's my heat source is propane. And, uh, you need, I seen guys, uh, sorry to interrupt you, but I seen guys with like an, like a, an electric forge as well.
Is that something that they just stick the metal in there and it's heated up right away? Like, how does that work? Called an induction forge. Okay. And do crazy. You could stick a piece of steel in the coil. Um, and it'll be white hot in about. 20, 30 seconds. Incredible. And then after that, which is really cool, you could touch the coils and it won't burn you, man. So it's just the metal that you put in between the coil that heats up. That's wild.
So if I need to tune up a knife, you know, like, Oh, that doesn't look right. I'll throw it in the induction forge for 20, 30 seconds, beat it. Done deal. I hope you guys got some value out of that episode. follow us at powerline podcast on all social media. Social media platforms. And then also YouTube. Appreciate you guys. Hope to see you again soon. We'll see you again soon. Peace. Hello, and welcome back to The Director's Cut, brought to you by the Directors Guild of America.
In this episode, the backstory to the original Lion King unfolds in director Barry Jenkins prequel epic, Mufasa, the Lion King. The film tells the story of Mufasa, an orphaned cub who befriends a lion destined as heir to a royal bloodline. The two become allies on a journey of adventure and self discovery as they seek to start a kingdom of their own. Following a screening of the film at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles, Jenkins spoke with director Ben Affleck about filming Mufasa the Lion King.
You know, I don't, um, understand all the facets of the technology. Uh, you know, it's, it's realistic. Yet it's, uh, you know, animated, it's, it's, it's this massive sort of property. Um, what was it that made you go connect to this and say, I want to do this, you know, and spend three, four years of my life doing it? Yeah. I think, uh, the, the biggest thing was, you know, I read the script and, you know, nobody grows up.
You know, in this country, you know, in the place that I did and doesn't encounter the Lion King. So this is pre being someone who creates cinema, just being like a child, like these children, the front row here, um, and really falling in love with these characters. And I just didn't believe there was any more to sort of explore with them. And I was very happy to be proved wrong Nathanson. And so I read the script and immediately was like, Wow. There's something here, something worth chasing.
I always feel like I'm chasing something when I'm making a film. I just wanted to do something completely different, just completely, completely different. Um, and there was nothing more different. But anyway, this because I was so just overwhelmed with the Underground Railroad. I didn't even realize The Lion King had come out in 2019. It overlapped with us making that show, so I went and watched it and realized the technology was just very strange.
And I thought, uh, well, maybe this is something I should do. Uh, that we should chase after and that was really what added up to the decision. Can you help me understand what literally what the process is of making this movie? Like what are the I don't mean you don't have to go into great detail, but like how much of it is photography? Uh, how much of is you setting up shot? How much of is pure animation? When are the voices done relative to you know, how you Lay it out for me a little bit.
Yeah, you start out with the voices, just like any animated film. You start out with the voices and then you storyboard the whole movie into what they call an animatic. And so we did that twice with the temp acting troupe, just to get the storyboard artists going. And then with the principal cast to, to get the actual sort of scenes together. And that was fully exploratory.
Once we had cut together the animatic, you know, we could show it to the studio, but we could also start to build the animation that we were actually going to shoot. They call this live action animation because rather than building the animatic and then turning it over to animators and having them replicate those frames and the style of the movie is going to play in, we actually more or less build a version of the movie. Let's say it was like.
A rough version of Toy Story, but then we placed Toy Story into a virtual space that we can go into with a virtual camera. And rather than watching Woody in a scene only one way, we can go in and play the scene. He's moving around, but now with our virtual camera, we're creating dailies. We're getting angles for the editor. we went and visited, the people who make avatar at Lightstorm Entertainment. And some of them came up and embedded with us.
And we figured out a way to create a hybrid of our system to where the problem with the Lion King is that. The lions have four legs, but human beings have two legs. And so it's not like planet of the apes where you can have an actor in a suit and right away that motion capture is translated to the character. We had to have animators come in because they could understand how to manipulate the suits, that it was a rough translation from two legs to four legs.
But what that gave us was we could play any scene out loud on the stage. With PIP directing everyone, just like she would in the real world. And the animators are now moving around. So I've already directed the performance of the principal cast and voice. Now I'm directing just purely the blocking the physical performance of the scene with these animators. And in 2d animation, you're drawing with your hand.
In this case, it felt like the animators were drawing with their whole bodies, the physical blocking of the scene. And so if I was to step up and just. Come at you, Ben. Yeah, he's a big dude. I ain't gonna come at him. But if I came, I didn't think it was going to turn into this. All right. You might react, you might stand up or step back and the camera wants to react to that as well. Those were the kinds of things that we were able to sort of bring into the process.
Thanks for listening to another DGA Q& A. The Director's Cut is available wherever you listen to podcasts. And please share, subscribe, rate, and review. We'd love to hear your feedback, and you can help fellow foam buffs find the show. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time. G'day, Annie McLaughlin here for this week's edition of Stick Together, the only national program focusing on union news, workers stories and social justice issues.
As we put 2024 to bed, With its defining moment of Federal Labor's legislation placing the CFMEU Construction and General Division into administration, it is worth considering the bedrock of workers struggle in this country, the first major event of post colonial Australia. Eureka Stockade.
We go to the pre dawn Reclaim the Radical Spirit of Eureka event held in Ballarat on December the 3rd on the site of the original stockade where in 1854 the army and police attacked miners for daring to call for the end of mining licenses. and universal suffrage. Dr. Joe Toscana, convener of Reclaim the Radical Spirit of Eureka, will set the scene and political context of the Eureka Rebellion. Eureka? To me, Eureka is encapsulated in the oaf. Eureka!
And our 29th of November, 1854, about 500 diggers after the monster meeting gathered round the Eureka flag, which was flown for the first time that day. And they swore this oath. We swear by the Southern cross to stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties. Now, this is an extraordinary oath. Many people claim the Eureka flag, but few understand the meaning of the oath. It was we.
We had men and women and children, 25, 000 here in Ballarat from all corners of the world Many victims of political persecution, British, British charters, political refugees from the failed revolutions in Ireland in 1848 and the rest of Europe who gathered here trying to find their fortune. They gathered here on this, at Bakery Hill, and they decided after the meeting to come here and set up a stockade at this site.
There's been a lot of Um, investigation where the site was now this monument behind us was established in 1884 by the Victorian government to mark the 30th anniversary of the Eureka Rebellion and, uh, uh, diggers who'd survive selected this spot as the spot, the site of the stockade. So we are standing on hallowed ground. As I speak, Think of a stockade about an acre in size.
Although 2, 000 men had drilled with their arms on the second, the Saturday, there are only 104 in the stockade site on the third of December because they never believed that the state would attack them on God's day, Sunday. So just remember that you're on this ground. This is where the battle occurred. So in my opinion, the four symbols, the four pillars of radicalism of the radical spirit, the Eureka Rebellion, uh, internationalism, we are all have a common oppressor, irrespective.
Of our religious beliefs, the color of our skin, our gender, our sexual orientation. And people seem to have forgotten that in 2024. Direct action. Taking up arms to defend what you believe are your rights and liberties. You can't be more direct than that. Direct action. Then we've got solidarity. And last but not least, we've got direct democracy. And I'd just like to look at this just for a minute. Because, you know, we think we live in a democracy.
Every three to four years we cast a ballot to elect representatives to make decisions for us for the next three to four years. Now remember this was a period before PA and you had monster meetings here in Ballarat of 15 to 20, 000 people who came together, made decisions, elected delegates, send the delegates to Melbourne to, um, you know, work with the, try to come to a solution to the problem with the government regarding the licenses.
And then the delegates would come back and report to the next mass meeting. So this is something, this is a type of democracy, which is familiar to many union activists and many union members, but it's the type of democracy that's being forgotten. So it's internationalism, direct action, Solidarity and direct democracy. I, I believe are the pillars of Eureka.
You've been listening to a three CR podcast produced in the studios of independent Community Radio Station three CR in Melbourne, Australia. And that is a wrap for this week's edition of the labor radio podcasts, weekly, a Roundup. Of some of the programs aired over the past week on more than 200 labor radio on podcast shows, they are 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.org. You can also find them use the hashtag labor radio pod on Twitter, X, Facebook, Instagram, blue sky. Wherever. Don't forget to let us know what you think of the show. Drop us note [email protected]. 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 into colors. At Labour radio network.org.
This podcast is recorded under a sag after collective bargaining agreement. The labor radio podcasts weekly edited this week by Patrick Dickson. I produced a show. And our social media guru always and forever is Mr. Harold Phillips. For the labor radio podcast weekly, this has been Chris Garlock stay active and stay tuned. To your local labor radio podcast show, we will see you next week.