In this episode, we talk to Tom Madden, a native Missourian, a professional plumber, and member of the Plumbers and Pipefitters Union Local 562. We talk about what it was like for Tom and his brothers to grow up in a strict household, and we also talk about some of his wilder days at high school parties. We talk about Tom’s father, a professional journalist and labor reporter in St. Louis, and about the huge impression it left on Tom to hear his dad talk about unions and take him and his brothers to worker demonstrations around the city. And we talk about the complex and absolutely vital work plumbers like him do to keep our homes, buildings, and cities functioning. 

We also talk about the historic “Vote No on Proposition A” campaign to defeat so-called “right-to-work” legislation in Missouri this month, and about all the work it took from union and non-union workers across the state. We discuss what the threat of right-to-work has meant for workers around Missouri and elsewhere, and what it took for campaigners to reach voters around the state to work around decades of built-up misconceptions about what right-to-work actually is.

Additional links/info below...

• Local 562’s website 
• Alexia Fernández Campbell, Vox, “Missouri voters Just Blocked the Right-to-Work Law Republicans Passed to Weaken Labor Unions” 
• Judy Ancel, Labor Notes, “Why Missouri ‘Right to Work’ Went Down in Flames” 
• Lonnie K. Stevans, Review of Law & Economics, “The Effect of Endogenous Right-to-Work Laws on Business & Economic Conditions in the United States: A Multivariate Approach” 
• Joe Burns, Jacobin, “Don’t Take the Boss’s Bait” 

For more info about the nationwide Prison Strike... 

• incarceratedworkers.org 
• Natasha Lennard, The Intercept, “Prison Strike Organizer Warns: Brutal Prison Conditions Risk ‘Another Attica’” 
• Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, “US Inmates Stage Nationwide Prison Labor Strike Over ‘Modern Slavery’” 

Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive)

- Lobo Loco, "Malte Junior - Hall" - Dirty Fences, “High School Rip” - Sam Moss, “Working on a Building” - Cletus Got Shot, “Saw Mill”