Labor Unions

Episode notes

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedians/podcasters Matt Apodaca, Heather Anne Campbell, and Nick Wiger (‘How Did This Get Played?’ podcast) for a look at why labor unions are secretly incredibly fascinating.

Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week’s bonus episode.

LINKS FOR THE GUESTS:

• How Did This Get Played? (Earwolf)
• Matt Apodaca’s page on Earwolf.com, featuring guest spots on Comedy Bang Bang and elsewhere
• Matt Apodaca on Twitter
• Whose Line Is It Anyway? (The CW)
• Heather Anne Campbell’s website
• Doughboys (Headgum)
• Nick Wiger’s IMDb page

RESOURCES USED TO INFORM THE EPISODE’S LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

• native-land.ca
• U.S. Department Of Arts And Culture
• The True Native New Yorkers Can Never Truly Reclaim Their Homeland (Smithsonian)
• Mapping Manahatta: 10 Lenape sites in New York City (6sqft)

UPDATES ON RECENT UNION ACTIONS:

• The IATSE strike — 60,000 IATSE Workers Will Begin Nationwide Strike Monday If an Agreement Is Not Reached (Gizmodo)
• Organizing at the Amazon facility in Bessemer, AL — Alabama Amazon Workers May Get Another Crack at a Union (In These Times)
• Kellogg’s — Kellogg’s strike week 2: Workers vow to picket ‘one day longer’ than company holds out (The Battle Creek Enquirer)
• Nabisco — Nabisco Workers End Weekslong Strike After Reaching New Contract (The New York Times)

RESEARCH SOURCES:

• Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor by Steven Greenhouse
• Most Americans view unions favorably, though few workers belong to one (Pew Research Center)
• U.S. Bureau Of Labor Statistics — Union Members Summary for 2020
• Looking Back On When President Reagan Fired The Air Traffic Controllers (NPR)
• This Day In History: August 05 1981: Ronald Reagan fires 11,359 air-traffic controllers
• State of the Unions: What happened to America’s labor movement? (The New Yorker)
• The Economist explains: Why trade unions are declining
• When Margaret Thatcher Crushed a British Miners’ Strike (History.com)
• IMDb page for ‘Brassed Off’ (1996)
• Why labor unions make people less racist (Slate)
• Let ’Er Rip (Tedium.co)
• Approval of Labor Unions at Highest Point Since 1965 (Gallup)
• Workers of the World Unite: Labor unions and strikes from throughout time. (Lapham’s Quarterly)
• The Strikes in Ramses III’s Twenty-Ninth Year (JStor page for article in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies)