Union Busters, Part I: An Origin Story

In this week's listener mail segment: SC updates the crew on recent news related to Havana Syndrome. Don Quixote needs someone to talk about these tankers and Trojan Horses. Grady asks about corruption and conspiracy in the world of 'standardized testing,' inspiring an episode in ...  Show more

Amid the rarefied air of tech billionaires, Peter Thiel carves a larger-than-life figure in the modern world. To some, he's a philosopher king. To others, a supervillain. One thing's for sure: pretty much everyone is baffled by his continual rhetoric about the 'antichrist' -- so, ...  Show more

The Amazon Labor Union made history when it won its election at the JFK8 facility in Staten Island — but they aren’t the only ones organizing. Petitions to form unions were up nearly sixty percent between October 2021 and March 2022! What does it take to form a union, and what do ...  Show more

How should we make sense of the current labor activism in transportation and entertainment? Heather and Joanne explain how the fault lines in the UPS contract negotiation can be seen in the 1894 Pullman Strike. And they compare the WGA and SAG-AFTRA “double strike” in Hollywood t ...  Show more

Union membership in the U.S. has been declining for decades. But, in 2022, support for unions among Americans was the highest it's been in decades. This dissonance is due, in part, to the difficulties of one important phase in the life cycle of a union: setting up a union in the ...  Show more

A very big tech company now has a very small union. Recode’s Shirin Ghaffary explains why highly paid workers in an anti-union industry still organized and made history. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices