Belabored Podcast #5: Bargaining Against Banks

Sarah and Josh discuss port trucker organizing in Savannah, fast food strikes in St. Louis, and one union’s experiment with using collective bargaining as a weapon against big banks. Then they consider the anti-union record of Obama’s new nominee for the Commerce Department, and the Democratic Party’s future with organized labor.

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Sarah and Josh open the fifth episode of Belabored with a rundown of the past week’s headlines, including port trucker organizing in Savannah and fast food strikes in St. Louis. Then they discuss Sarah’s reporting on one union’s experiment with using collective bargaining as a weapon against big banks. Finally, they consider the anti-union record of Obama’s new nominee for the Commerce Department, the other Obama appointees drawn from companies with ugly labor relations, and what it all reveals about the Democratic Party and organized labor.

Here are some links to follow along at home:

Josh’s reporting on the St. Louis strike, and the inter-union struggle between SEIU and NUHW in California.

Amy Traub and Robert Hiltonsmith’s new Demos report, Underwriting Bad Jobs: How Our Tax Dollars Are Funding Low-Wage Work and Fueling Inequality

Sarah’s American Prospect feature, “Unions to Banks: Pay Up”

Sarah on Penny Pritzker, and Josh on fellow Obama nominees Jack Lew and (with co-author Lee Fang) Sylvia Matthews Burwell

Like every week, we close the podcast by plugging two great articles from the past week:

“The bloodshed behind our cheap clothes,” Kalpona Akter, CNN.com

“U.S. Activists Help Global Domestic Workers’ Movement as U.S. Government Drags its Feet,” Sheila Bapat, RH Reality Check