Workers from all sectors continue to organize for better pay, improved working conditions, and basic dignity, as support for labor unions is at its highest point since Gallup began polling on the issue in 1965.
On this edition of Your Call, we discuss the continued wave of organizing across the country, from Starbucks to major airports.
University of California postdoctoral employees and academic researchers returned to work on Monday after ratifying a new contract, but 36,000 academic student employees and student researchers are still on strike.
A coalition of business and restaurant trade groups say they have enough signatures for a ballot measure that would overturn California's Fast Recovery Act, a law that gives fast-food workers two seats on a 10-person council to decide wages, hours, and working conditions. The groundbreaking law could raise wages to $22 an hour. It’s the first of its kind bill in the country.
We’ll also discuss President Biden's decision to call on Congress to block a nationwide rail strike.
Guests:
Steven Greenhouse, former labor reporter for the New York Times, senior fellow at the Century Foundation, and author of "Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present & Future of American Labor"
Kenzo Esquivel, head steward of UAW Local 2865, agroecology student, and graduate student researcher at UC Berkeley's department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management
Sandro Flores Avonce, organizer with Fight for $15, fast food worker, and Cal State Los Angeles graduate