Working People
Working People (in partnership with In These Times and The Real News Network) is a podcast about working-class lives in the 21st century. In every episode, you’ll hear interviews with workers from all walks of life. We talk about their life stories, their jobs, politics, and families, their joys and hopes, their dreams and struggles. Overall, Working People aims to share and celebrate the diverse stories of working-class people, to remind ourselves that our stories matter, and to build a sense of shared struggle and solidarity between workers around the world.
The Real News Network proudly partnered with Working People during Season Four of the show and will be posting all new episodes here on the TRNN website. To listen to the back catalog of Working People episodes, listen and subscribe on your podcast player of choice using the buttons below.
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Latest Episode
This new model for worker organizing could supercharge today’s labor movement
Less than 10% of American workers are now unionized. To reverse decades of decline and bring millions of new workers into the labor movement, unions need to embrace the worker-to-worker organizing model.
Recent episodes
‘Like being tortured’: Texas residents living next to bitcoin mine are getting sick and being ignored
Republican Governor Greg Abbott said Texas “wears the crown as the bitcoin mining capital of the world.” But in small towns like Granbury, working-class residents living next to giant data centers are the ones paying the price for Texas’s crypto boom.
‘The raids happened Wednesday, finals started Thursday’: FBI agents raid homes of pro-Palestine students at University of Michigan
We speak with four graduate student-workers at the University of Michigan and Columbia University about how their unions are fighting back against ICE abductions, FBI raids, and McCarthyist attacks on academic freedom.
A bitcoin mine in Texas is “killing us slowly,” local residents say
After a 300-megawatt bitcoin mining operation came to Granbury, TX, residents started suffering from hypertension, heart palpitations, tinnitus, migraines, and more—and they say their concerns are going ignored by the company and government officials. It’s “environmental euthanasia,” one resident tells TRNN.
‘A tremendous chilling effect’: Columbia students describe dystopian reality on campus amid Trump attacks
In the span of a year, Columbia University went from being the epicenter of the student-led Gaza solidarity encampment movement to ground zero for the Trump administration’s authoritarian assault on higher education.
‘People are hiding in their apartments’: Inside Trump’s assault on universities
“I have never seen a climate of fear like this in my life anywhere. We’re getting hundreds of emails every single day from faculty, staff, and students [saying], ‘I need a safe place to stay.’”
‘Kill these cuts before they kill us’: Federally funded researchers warn DOGE cuts will be fatal
On April 8, national ‘Kill the Cuts’ rallies mobilized unions across the country to protest the Trump administration’s DOGE-fueled cuts to life-saving research, healthcare, and education programs.
What’s really behind Trump’s war on federal unions?
Federal worker unions are a stubborn obstacle to the Trump-Musk administration’s illegal policies and abuses of power. So Trump is trying to eviscerate them.
Out of ashes, victory: How New York’s garment workers rebirthed the US labor movement
After the deadly Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, the Progressive Era kicked into high gear. What can the working class of today learn from our predecessors?
As Trump looks to privatize USPS, its workers fight for a contract
The National Association of Letter Carriers has been embroiled in a contract fight with the USPS for years. Who should we trust with our mail—the workers who deliver it, or the billionaires who want to gut the postal service?
Show us the ropes: How Touchstone Climbing Gym workers unionized five locations
Workers scaled new heights by unionizing Touchstone Climbing wall-to-wall in 5 of its Los Angeles locations. Now they want to keep a grip on their contract fight.
20 weeks in, Kaiser’s mental healthcare workers’ strike prompts Gov. Newsom to intervene
With contract negotiations in deadlock, Kaiser workers have been on strike for five months—and they won’t relent until their demands for patient care and workers’ pensions are met.
‘It’s not Elon versus government, it’s Elon versus everyone’: A dire warning from fired federal workers
“This is about a billionaire and his rich buddies seizing power and getting rid of anything they cannot profit off of, no matter the collateral damage, because it does not personally affect him.”
‘I had to move away from everything that I ever had’: Chemically exposed residents of East Palestine, OH, and Conyers, GA, have been left behind
“I don’t think it’s safe. If I go into my house, I get sick… our animals get sick… These are serious issues. We’re seeing serious things go on and, from where we were in the beginning to now, it’s just progressing.”
Democracy dies, first, in the workplace: A conversation with Hamilton Nolan and Sara Nelson
“To me, the one thing that can bridge that gap… and erase the distinction between ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ is the labor movement.”
‘Every time we come back, we all get sick’: GA residents affected by September BioLab fire are still going through hell
“Where do you go to escape this?… Is it safe to go back home? Do I stay here? Where do I go? How do you run from a chemical plume?”
Is the Great Depression a glimpse of our future?
A new history of poor and working people’s struggles to survive the dark 1930s, facing economic devastation and rising global fascism, can teach us a lot about the moment we’re in today.
What a can of tuna can teach us about international workers’ solidarity
Fishers in Southeast Asia are combatting horrendous abuses at sea—and they’re doing it by organizing transnationally with fellow workers.
‘Ascension Hospital…is making a mockery of the Church doctrine’: Baltimore Catholic nurses picket Bishops for fair contract
“We are here to show solidarity with St. Agnes [nurses] and let the Bishops know that the Ascension Hospital chain is making a mockery of the Church doctrine in Baltimore. I have witnessed firsthand how Ascension focuses on profits over patient care.”
“Let’s unite!”: Poisoned residents of America’s sacrifice zones are banding together
We speak with residents from four different sacrifice zones in the US about how the situations they’re facing in their own communities, and their struggles for justice and accountability, are interconnected.
How will railroad workers vote after Biden and Congress blocked their strike?
“I don’t think the screwing that we got in 2022 [is playing] any factor today,” one locomotive engineer tells us. “I can’t imagine any worker voting for Donald Trump.”
Kaiser workers’ strike enters second week in Southern California
As healthcare providers, Kaiser workers want better patient care in addition to better pay and a fair contract, but management is stonewalling them.
Two years into a strike, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette workers aren’t ready to give up
Seven years into their contract fight, Post-Gazette workers have faced every union busting tactic in the book.
‘Towns are gone’: In Helene-devastated Asheville, NC, volunteers battle misinformation and ‘apocalyptic’ wreckage
Two weeks after Hurricane Helene, mutual aid organizers say the devastation is incalculable and parts of Western North Carolina resemble a war zone. “It looks like the suburbs of Beirut, just fewer buildings.”
Cornell is about to deport a student over Palestine activism
PhD candidate Momodou Taal is facing expulsion and the termination of his visa for his role in the Cornell University student encampment for Gaza.
AI data centers are draining water from this drought-stricken Mexican town
The city of Colón in Queretaro state is now home to three massive data centers run by Google, Microsoft, and Amazon—and the companies are refusing to disclose how much local water they use.
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