Belabored Podcast #105: A French Uprising, with Jonah Birch

Belabored Podcast #105: A French Uprising, with Jonah Birch

Streets and workplaces in France have been roiling with protests against a reform that would threaten the country’s 35-hour work week. Jacobin editor Jonah Birch joins us to talk about what it means for labor.

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The streets and workplaces in France have been roiling with protests all spring, as the Socialist Party government attempts to push through a deeply unpopular reform of the country’s labor code that would include further “flexibilization” of the country’s famed 35-hour week. There have been strikes, mass marches, and “Nuit Debout,” nighttime mass meetings compared to Occupy and the Indignados in Spain. What’s happening, and why should we be paying attention? Jonah Birch is a contributing editor at Jacobin and a graduate student at New York University, where he studies France’s 35-hour week, and he joins us to fill us in on what’s been happening in France, what it means for labor, and how it fits into the overall situation in the European Union. 

We also hear from CWA political director Bob Master on the end of the Verizon strike and what was won, and Anannya Bhattacharjee of the Asia Floor Wage Alliance. And we check in on workers organizing in Walmart stores in China and farmworkers marching across New York for labor protections. For Argh, we consider prison labor strikes and the work of a translator, “fixer,” and journalist killed in Afghanistan.

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News

Sarah: Why the Verizon Workers’ Victory is a Big Deal (The Progressive)

Michelle: This Is What Goes Into Your Cheap T-Shirt (The Nation)

Farmworkers March Across New York State for the Right to Organize (Labor Notes)

Michelle: The Fight Against Walmart’s Labor Practices Goes Global (The Nation)

Conversation

Jonah Birch: A French Spring (Jacobin)

Nuit Debout protesters occupy French cities in revolutionary call for change (Guardian)

Riot police crack down on Paris protests against labour reforms (Guardian)

Argh, I Wish I’d Written That!

Sarah: Raven Rakia, “Forget Hunger Strikes. What Prisons Fear Most Is Labor Strikes” (Yes! Magazine)

Michelle: Philip Reeves, “‘He Had a Great Eye for a Story,'” (NPR)